Nikon Celebrates 100th Anniversary = Useless Diversion of Resources
Get Nikon 100th anniversary items at B&H Photo.
Where is the D810, their best and most emblematic DSLR? Or the Nikon 105/1.4E, their best-ever prime?
In the category of vacuous time-wasting diversions of corporate resources, Nikon’s best way of celebrating 100 years ought to instead be the following:
- Nikon should realize it isn’t Leica. Leica gets away with camel-scrotum yesterdays-yawn stuff that is irrelevant to 99.999% of camera users. Feeding off past glory is acknowledging no vision for the future.
- Stay financially viable and relevant by delivering products customers want, e.g., not giving away the farm to Sony mirrorless, starting by taking the best DSLR ever (Nikon D810) and doing something already about a worthy successor that breaks new ground and excites loyal customers (like me).
- Get new blood into a creaking consensus-driven broken-culture-nail-stands-up-gets-hammered-down planning system which invariably produces one more laughable increment over the last dinosaur design. At the least, study Sigma Photo, which is willing to take risks with new products (and of course Sony and Fujifilm medium format).
- Show some sense of not living in the past!!! At the least, deliver a Nikon D900 which bridges part of the gap to mirrorless (an EVF option along with Pentax K1 style pixel shift and image stabilization)—compatible with F-mount lenses but also taking a new mirrorless lens line. Kill off the entire APS-C DSLR line and focus on full frame and medium format—APS-C is a dead category, to be relegated to the dust bin of history.
- Give me something I can love as an adjunct, like a 72-megapixel monochrome D900m that will make me drool over detail.
I want to see a relentless single-minded focus on innovation, quality, usability. What Nikon did in past years has ZERO benefit for me TODAY. It is company-centric, not customer-centric to waste resources on 100th year celebrations.... the celebration ought to be every day of the year by moving forward and relentlessly improving and impressing. Celebrate today and tomorrow, not the past.
Hmmm... 100 years in the destroying? Because if Nikon doesn’t get its act together, there won’t be a 105th anniversary. See reader comments that follow.
Reader comments
Lawrence F writes:
Lloyd, you are being too hard on Nikon. They are merely manufacturing grave markers (hence the granite gray?). I unloaded my Nikon D810 and other gear last winter. Fond memories. Now I’m enjoying my Sony equipment.
DIGLLOYD: Nikon qualifies for greatness, but if they dead-end themselves by strategic stupidity then all is for naught.