Nikon to Stop Developing New DSLRs

[c_watson1]

Maybe you haven't noticed, but everyone is struggling with supply chain issues.

 

And maybe you've also noticed "supply chain issues" are the go-to excuse du jour for all sorts of mismanagement.

[mike_halliwell]

Maybe you haven't noticed, but everyone is struggling with supply chain issues.

Funnily enough, yes, I have noticed.... thanks for asking.

 

I have no issues with restricted production numbers, but I do with very odd/uneven distribution.

 

You can buy a Z9 from Best Buy, but not Nikon USA.... does that seem right to you?

[ShunCheung]

You can buy a Z9 from Best Buy, but not Nikon USA.... does that seem right to you?

Mike, you do not live in the US and totally do not understand how Best Buy sells the Z9. I had already explained how things work about 6 posts earlier, but you either didn't bother to read or still don't understand.

 

One cannot just buy a Z9 from Best Buy. If one could, everybody would just purchase from Best Buy and there would have been no Z9 shortage at all. The difference is that neither Best Buy nor Amazon takes pre-orders. They wait until they know how may Z9 Nikon will ship to them, e.g. in the following week, and they open the order briefly until the next shipment is all accounted for, and they wouldn't take any more orders for a while. In other words, 99% of the time you cannot order from Best Buy, and when they open, it is very brief, perhaps for just a few minutes.

 

At least that was how Best Buy handled Z9 orders in the early days, until about a month ago. It looks like currently they just take orders and you wait a while until they ship. Therefore it looks like Best Buy's current practice is the same as Adorama, B&H, and Nikon USA, but the waiting queues are now much shorter than they were 4, 5 months ago, perhaps except for B&H.

[mike_halliwell]

I read them all carefully... thank you!

 

However, unless I still don't get it (!)... where does the 'official' distributor of Nikon DSLRs, ie Nikon USA fit in?

 

Why does it bother selling it's own kit, if 3rd party retailers get more stock?

 

There seem to be people who pre-ordered with Nikon USA on day 2 who still haven't got their camera, whereas, as you highlighted above, they could go and get one off the shelf from an other seller.

 

Does that make sense to you?

[ShunCheung]

There seem to be people who pre-ordered with Nikon USA on day 2 who still haven't got their camera, whereas, as you highlighted above, they could go and get one off the shelf from an other seller.

 

Does that make sense to you?

That doesn't make sense to me, but "there seems to be people" also doesn't mean anything to me. If you are aware of any individual in that situation, please invite them to post to this thread and explain their exact situation, first hand.

 

I am aware of some cases that people ordered the Z9 directly from Nikon USA back in May, 2022, and they received it within 3 weeks in the US. In fact, Nikon USA seems to be the fastest way to get a Z9 in the US at this point, unless you want to use one of those apps that keep on checking whether Amazon or Best Buy suddenly opens the ordering. I have also heard of some cases that their credit card had problems and Nikon USA couldn't charge their cards when their Z9 was available, and Nikon USA sent them back to the end of the queue to start over. Needless to say, those people were really pissed.

[mike_halliwell]

They wait until they know how may Z9 Nikon will ship to them, e.g. in the following week,

...following week?

 

Apparently, official Nikon USA or UK, don't know which month they may get more...?

 

 

I talked to my local Nikon rep about three weeks ago. He said the current wait for the Z9 is about two months. But actually if you order directly from Nikon USA, it looks like you can get it within a month. In my case I found Amazon had it in stock and got one within a week or two. Some people use in-stock apps to help them locate stocks. Usually you can get the Z9 from Best Buy or Amazon pretty quickly.

 

Nikon rep... 2 months.

 

Nikon USA...within a month.

 

Amazon... within a week or two.

 

Nuff said......:)

[ShunCheung]

Nikon rep... 2 months.

 

Nikon USA...within a month.

 

Amazon... within a week or two.

 

Nuff said......:)

Mike, please keep these BS out. I have already explained to you twice that Amazon has a totally different waiting scheme. You have no right to deliberately misrepresent the facts. There is shortage everywhere. Nikon USA lets people order at any time. Amazon doesn't let you order until they know they have stock. It is a totally different situation.

[mike_halliwell]

Most stores in the US including Adorama, B&H, ... and Nikon USA would accept as many (pre)orders as they can get, and when cameras come in

That puts Nikon USA into the normal ranks of sellers.

 

That means Nikon doesn't care to assist Nikon over other 3rd party sellers.

 

Why?

[mike_halliwell]

Mike, please keep these BS out.

Eh?, I quoted text directly/straight from your message.

 

Is that BS?

[mike_halliwell]

These messages seem to be arriving out if sequence.....by some margin.......!

 

Sorry if i have misrepresented anyone.

[mike_halliwell]

Therefore it looks like Best Buy's current practice is the same as Adorama, B&H, and Nikon USA,

I think this lessens Nikon's place in the hierarchy of sellers very badly.

[BeBu Lamar]

I never bought a camera from Best Buys but I ordered a lot of things from Best Buys. They took my orders then cancelled them because they can't deliver.

[bgelfand]

You can buy a Z9 from Best Buy, but not Nikon USA.... does that seem right to you?

 

Yes, it does.

 

If you have a limited supply, your distribution channels get them first. They need to make money. If you do not give them priority, you will find they will not stock them when you have a fully sufficient supply; they will give priority to the manufacturers that supported them. It is the same reason Nikon USA will never underprice Best Buy or BH or... at least they will never sell for less than MSRP (unless it is a sale, and the retailers also get the discount).

[bobbudding]

And maybe you've also noticed "supply chain issues" are the go-to excuse du jour for all sorts of mismanagement.

 

Never let facts interfere with your opinion!

[Ed_Ingold]

Amazon stocks many products in their warehouse system, but most of their business is as a bundler, working with many separate sources. Amazon has been reliable in whether items are in stock and ready to ship at the time of order, unlike some major retailers. B&H is good too, and does accept pre-orders, which puts you at the head of the line once stock arrives. I've received several major items which were never in stock long enough for the B&H webpage to reflect that status.

[clark_roberts]

I don't know I alway's think there's room for SLR's for people who want them. They might be more in limited but they're be there.

[ShunCheung]

I don't know I alway's think there's room for SLR's for people who want them. They might be more in limited but they're be there.

Nikon will continue to sell new DSLRs, but it is unlikely for them to introduce newer, improved models. To a large degree DSLR improvements have hit a plateau. For example, the improvement from the D5 to D6 is fairly limited after 4 years. Likewise from the D750 (2014) to D780 (2020) is also kind of limited. The presence of the mirror will always restrict the design of wide-angle lenses. Without a lot of demand, it is difficult for Nikon to spend R&D resources to support a small market, especially nowadays with a lot of supply-chain issues and parts availability problems.

 

There is still a small group of people shooting 35mm film, but it has been close to 20 years (actually 18 years) since Nikon introduced their last film SLR in 2004, namely the F6.

[bgelfand]

Both Tamron and Sigma have dropped many F-mount lenses that were in production last year from their catalogs.

[mike_halliwell]

many F-mount lenses

Indeed! Those lists are long, but admittedly, of old designs.

 

It looks like they've almost stopped F Mount lens production all together and will only be selling old stock..

 

... and maybe only making Z lenses re-badged under the Nikon name.

 

Although where Sigma are going is a bit of a mystery....:confused:

[ilkka_nissila]

Well, those lists don't contain any of the modern Sigmas, the Art or Sport series of lenses, ie., they're just discontinuing the lenses which are obsolete anyway. Of course, they could discontinue the new stuff as well, but they haven't replaced those with mirrorless mount lenses for the most part, yet. They offer the Art series for Sony E mount but the designs appear unaltered, so there is no taking advantage of the shorter flange distance yet. I imagine it's very economical for Sigma to do this, simply offer these lenses with identical optics across several mounts, but they don't make much sense for mirrorless camera users to purchase because of the large size and weight. Once Sigma has a full line of Art primes completely redesigned for mirrorless systems (available across mounts for Sony, Canon and Nikon) then they would likely discontinue the "original" Art series which is based on requirements of DSLR cameras.

[mike_halliwell]

Interestingly, the net is full of deep unhappyness about Canon's 'outlawing' of Auto (as opposed to fully manual) lenses for it's RF series.... with what I think is called a 'Cease and Desist' order.

[ilkka_nissila]

Interestingly, the net is full of deep unhappyness about Canon's 'outlawing' of Auto (as opposed to fully manual) lenses for it's RF series.... with what I think is called a 'Cease and Desist' order.

 

I guess Canon wants to sell as many of their own lenses as they can, and because of their market position (and I suppose generally well-liked products), they're probably able to succeed with that strategy. What puzzles me is Canon's RF lens lineup's scattered approach, there are individual lenses in very different classes but not a consistent lineup. I prefer Nikon's Z lineup which covers the most important sectors quite well.

 

Nikon's strategy to third-party lenses seems to be also that they don't open the mount but are working with partners such as Tamron to offer a broad range of options. I think this is quite reasonable. There are a host of manual focus lenses available from various manufacturers for the Z mount, though, and this doesn't appear closed in the same way that autofocus lenses are. Viltrox AF lenses are available for Z mount and Nikon apparently hasn't challenged this. I suppose it could be that Nikon hasn't reacted to these lenses yet, or it could be that Nikon are being softer in their approach to mount exclusivity (presumably thinking it can help them with market share of the cameras and the mount).

[mike_halliwell]

What puzzles me is Canon's RF lens lineup's scattered approach, there are individual lenses in very different classes but not a consistent lineup. I prefer Nikon's Z lineup which covers the most important sectors quite well.

Yup, that seems to be something Nikon have tried quite hard to do, and, in my view, have succeeded pretty well.

 

The only 'error' there is the continued, conspicuous absence of the 200-600mm

[ilkka_nissila]

Yup, that seems to be something Nikon have tried quite hard to do, and, in my view, have succeeded pretty well.

 

The only 'error' there is the continued, conspicuous absence of the 200-600mm

 

There could be a couple of reasons for the apparent delay in the launch of the 200-600. It may be difficult to make a competitive lens of this type; Nikon haven't made an "affordable" internal zoom with such a long focal length before, and the competitor (Sony) has such a lens which Nikon needs to go head-to-head with. Another reason is that there is no ideal match camera body to go with it yet. Z9 users are expected to get top-of-the-line lenses such as 400/2.8 TC, 800/6.3 etc. However, the Z6 II and Z7 II are not ideally suited for moving subjects and I would expect Nikon to bring out the next-generation (III) models with Expeed 7 which can then take advantage of the faster processor to deliver better autofocus tracking of subjects that move quickly. Once those cameras are out on the market, the 200-600 makes sense to be used with them. Of course, some will mix and match different levels of cameras and lenses but still, I think to achieve success with the 200-600, they need a compact, affordable, but fast-focusing camera body. Nikon may be tweaking the lens so that it performs particularly well with those upcoming camera bodies.

[Mary Doo]

conspicuous absence of the 200-600mm

I was so looking forward to it. But it is irrelevant for me now because the Olympus 150-400/f4.5 w/1.25X lens (equivalent to 300-1000 in full frame) s so good and practical in so many ways it is insane.