I would love to be able to assume the hopeful mode and believe that Nikon is thinking FF digital. However, if they are being serious about staying in the pro field, why have they stopped doing the 35mm and 28mm shifts?
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Rob,
If I recall correctly, that 35mm shift lens did not have tilt, did it? A few years ago when I decided to switch from Minolta to Canon, I considered the Nikon option. As I recall, Nikon had just one (or maybe 2) shift lenses on offer. Canon had 3 tilt & shift lenses, as well as a number of lenses with image stabilisation. Nikon had its first 3mp DSLR, but it was far too expensive for me, for what it was. There were rumours that Canon would soon release their first DSLR. I have no regrets switching to Canon.
It seems to me that the uses for tilt & shift lenses are slowing diminishing as software capabilities increase. We now have perspective correction in Photoshop as well as warp and distort. CS3 does an excellent job of correcting for parallax errors when stitching with Photomerge, so using these lenses for stitching purposes is no longer the advantage it used to be.
Likewise for tilt. Auto-align and stacking modes in CS3E can be used to seamlessly merge images with different focussing points to increase DoF.
I sense that Nikon has a huge problem in taking on Canon in the full frame market. Their D2X was hugely popular because it provided an attractive alternative to Canon's 1Ds. It had at least equal resolution, and often better resolution at the edges and corners because of the crop factor, and was cheaper and lighter.
The 1Ds2 has only marginally greater resolution yet is still significantly heavier and more expensive than the D2X. The undoubted superior performance of the 1Ds2 at high ISOs is not as significant as one might think after factoring in the DoF advantage of the D2X. Ie., for equal FoV, same shutter speed and DoF, you can use one stop lower ISO with the D2X.
There were good reason for someone to switch from Canon to Nikon because of the D2X, or for those who were not already locked into a system, to buy a D2X in preference to a 1Ds2.
If/when Nikon do produce their first full frame DSLR, it will be an event heralded and trumpeted with much fanfare. For such a camera from Nikon to be profitable, as the D2X was, it would have to offer some advantages over the current Canon FF models.
It's difficult to see how they could achieve this, but I'm going to offer some free advice . It's widely tipped that the 1Ds3, expected later this year, will be a 22mp model. If Nikon can release a 28mp (or higher) FF model around the same time which actually has
less noise at high ISO than the 1Ds3 because it employs the new Kodak sensor with panchromatic pixels, then I'm sure it will be a winner .