As I have been expecting, sadly, this past few weeks, there was no D3X announcement from Nikon today.  Instead they announced the D90, a rather nice upgrade to the aging D80 and including a feature not previously seen in a DSLR … high quality video capture!  Announced just a day after Canon announced it’s new 50D, it continues a real winning streak for Nikon this year.

So Nikon currently has Canon trumped in several market segments, but the high resolution king continues to be Canon.  Nikon now has a 12MP entrant in three different market segments, but at the top end, this is decidedly outdated.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my D3 for many reasons, but I really want to cature more detail, and Nikon’s first 12 MP body, the D2X, was announce four years ago.

Now Nikon has made some very smart, very aggressive moves in the past year.  So what is holding them back from striking at the head of Canon’s lineup?  We may never know, but a few possibilities occur to me:

• There is strong evidence that the fabled D3X (or whatever it will be called) will incorporate the 24 MP sensor announced by Sony early this year, or a variant of it.  Nikon has used Sony built sensors before, but this time Sony is expected to release a body incorporating the same chip.  Has Nikon agreed to wait until they are ready?
• Chip fabrication is sometimes a bit of a black art.  Is Sony having difficulty getting acceptable yields from their new chip, or encountering some other manufacturing difficulty?
• Today’s D90 announcement was a following day trump of Canon’s 50D announcement.  Is Nikon waiting for a chance to take the wind from Canon’s sails again with a high MP announcement?

Maybe it is none of the above, but for sure if Nikon wants to maintain its momentum, it better announce it soon.

Tags: nikon D90 Canon 50D

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Equipment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.