In body stabilization and Nikon

After reading Mike Johnston's SMP raving about the Konica Minolta

7D's body-based anti-shake and now the announcement of the new KM 5D

with specs looking much better than a D70 for less money I have

started dreaming. What if Nikon would come up with their own in-body

VR? Imagine a VR lens on a VR body giving us about 6 stops worth of

stabilization. A tripod killer camera! This could also be the answer

to Canon's range of IS lenses that Nikon seems to have a hard time

keeping up with... only if they do it before Canon does. But then

again, Canon has more IS lenses out there than Nikon which could

take a hit if an IS body was available...

 

Any thoughts anyone?

 

-hash

I used to shoot Minolta film cameras before I switched to Nikon a few years ago. Minolta made some killer bodies and very sharp lenses, and their last generation flash system was second to none in the film camera market at the time. Everything was very affordable. I really miss shooting with those bodies.

 

However, Minolta waited far too long to introduce a DSLR. Most Minolta photographers who wanted to go digital bailed and went to Nikon or Canon.

 

I don't think Nikon or Canon are going to see Minolta's in-camera IS feature as a grave threat to their business. Great idea - probably the best solution - but manufacturers would have to redesign their bodies, and there are going to be licensing issues to work out. Patents are involved and that means lawsuits or at least legal maneuvering.

 

I'm no engineer, but I cringe when I think of the headaches that would go into making an IS lens work in harmony with in-camera IS technology.

 

Minolta is making a great product, but they have to attract new DSLR shooters into their fold, and winning back people who switched out of the system will be extremely difficult. So I don't see other manufactrurers racing to incorporate this technology into their camera bodies anytime soon. We'll have to wait and see.

Hi, of course everything all at once would be cool, but I think the big camera companies will always introduce anti-shake improvements as slowly as possible so that they benefit from the market that way.

 

Personally, I sold my old Nikon F4s, I bought a Mamiya DTL1000 with 400mm 5.6 for $80. That leaves me plenty of $$$ for a good tripod and film.

 

Cheers.

Yeah im one who was forced to jump onto the D70 wagon from Minolta. The cameras dont make sense as much and now im kicking myself looking at all the minolta lenses floating about for killer prices.

 

Nikon wont introduce VR on the sensor as they would then never sell a single VR lens...

Nikon had an AF teleconverter TC-16A in its line up. This can make any non AF lens AF capable.

 

They can come up with a TC with AF and VR. That would be sweet.

 

But wait.. they are still selling crippled SLRs and DSLRs that won't meter with their own line of lenses while every other DSLR (Konica-Minolta, Olympus, Sigma, Canon..) will meter with the Nikon lenses when mounted through an adaptor!

 

You are dreaming too fast!!

Whether Nikon and Canon come up with in-body VR is based on only 2 factors:

<br>

1) How are sales of the competition with in-body VR compared to theirs without?

<br>2) Can they implement similar functionality without stepping on patents?

<br><br>

The decision will be made purely for business reasons.

Using two VR systems at once will not double the vibration resistance. They are two feedback systems with similar time constants and performance. If anything, they may interact and together give worse total performance. The Minolta system is not "free" when it comes to lenses. The image circle of the lens has to be large enough so that moving the sensor doen't place it in a position that vignetting occurs. Many of the DX lenses wouldn't work well with it.

I read the article too, and it would be nice to have a Nikon DSLR with VR built into the body and the Olympus self-cleaning sensor trick, long as that actually works - but I don't see either happening any time soon.

 

This feature in the Minolta isn't enough to get me to switch to the 7D. I did look into it a little, mostly out of curiosity and I'll be sticking with Nikon.

What had always apealed to me is a 7D with a converter to use the Nikon f/1.2 prime on for concert photography.

 

f/1.2 with anti-shake!! Could even sell my flash to fund it...

An F/1.2 prime with an antishake system? Thank would be AWESOME!

>>Using two VR systems at once will not double the vibration resistance. They are two feedback systems with similar time constants and performance. If anything, they may interact and together give worse total performance <<

 

Not necessarily, especially if both the lens and the body are made by the same manufacturer, designed to interact with each other. A VR lens would reduce the actual shifting of the image and could provide feedback to the camera so that the camera would know how much residual shake to compensate for.

 

>> The image circle of the lens has to be large enough so that moving the sensor doen't place it in a position that vignetting occurs. Many of the DX lenses wouldn't work well with it. <<

 

This seems more theoretical than practical. I have taken many many blurry photos in my life and I can't think of even one that has an amount of blur that would challenge the image circle of any lens or produce vignetting if corrected.

As far as I know, Nikon is not the fastest in adopting new technologies: It took Nikon years before we saw AFS, VR, or even a simple thing as lit AF points. I think Nikon would rather reinvent square lens mounts before license this technology from Minolta, as it would total their finally-expanding line of VR lenses... I'd rather see them licensing Olympus' supersonic=dust-shaker :)

I think it'd be great to see Nikon license the technologies from Konica-Minolta and Olympus to get the best from the triad's offerings. But it's not likely to happen for various reasons.

 

As others have said, Nikon is relatively slow to adopt new technology, even when they've conceived of and designed the technology many years before implementing it.

 

Also, as Contax (among others) proved, innovation alone does not lead to success. Several years ago Contax implemented what were arguably some of the most innovative technologies available in a film SLR: autofocus in the body rather than the lens, and a vacuum pressure plate to improve film flatness.

 

Similarly, the history of computer hardware and software is littered with the carcasses of innovations that were trampled underfoot by the superpowers or, if they were lucky, bought out, scooped up and buried.

 

The fittest do not always survive. The truth will not always out. And no good deed goes unpunished.