V
Vivek
Guest
Smaller electronic player, Panasonic or Nikon, always is preferred over bigger electronic players!It's not a question of what works best but what the marketing departments of giants like Sony tell people to buy. For stills photography, few if any make cameras as good as those from Nikon. But sooner or later, the big electronics players will succeed in creating the critical mass needed to convince a majority of buyers that mirrorless and only mirrorless is the future. Those who are not successful in the mirrorless market will be seen as backwards and uninnovative by all but a few connoisseurs.
I doubt that Sony's camera division is making money from mirrorless cameras, and agree that they have other motives for keeping it alive. If and when Canon and Nikon launch well functioning full frame mirrorless cameras, Sony can most probably pack up their A7 bodies and go home, like what happened with their DSLR cameras. There is however a limited time window for this, and Nikon needs to jump on that train before mirrorless market shares reach sensible levels, even if they will lose money on the effort for several years.
I am probably a good example of what will be happening. I changed from Nikon (D810) to m4/3 (E-M1) to save money but wasn't very satisfied. However, with my current camera, the GX8, I see no reason to go back to DSLR and/or a larger format. The image quality of the D810 is superior, but what I get from the Panasonic is good enough, and the lenses are better, smaller and/or cheaper. If Nikon had a viable mirrorless alternative, I wouldn't have discovered that.
Why go from D810 to G8? Nikon make a lot of compact APS-C cameras with that same characteristic superior IQ.