What is all this talk about "the last DSLR"? The DSLR market is still almost twice as big as the mirrorless market, and it's basically shared by two companies, Canon and Nikon, while the mirrorless market, if we don't count the small players, is shared between:
- Sony
- Fuji
- Olympus
- Panasonic
- Canon
Roughly speaking, that means that even an optimistic forecast would give Nikon a mirrorless market share sized only a 5th of their DSLR market share, numbers not percentages. Even if they launch a few mirrorless cameras and even if they can fight their way up to a 20-30% share, there's no way they'll close down or give away their DSLR business in many years still. Why would they do that?
Hi,
I believe we both agree that technological change is not linear. Basically, it is governed by a feedback loop. As one gets into diminishing returns, progress becomes more and more expensive and leading technologies get the lion's share of the investment, pushing them ahead thus the market invest more in them.
Mirrorless has a series of advantages, in particular as pixel count grows, video becomes more important, etc:
1. Aligning the autofocus system with the sensor with enough precision to exploit the sensor is becoming more complex.
2. Mechanical assembly requires specialized personnel or you exacerbate problem 1.
3. Have you seen Nikon's QA record? mechanical issues can't be solved by a firmware update.
4. Moving parts, mirror slap, interference with video all are part of the DSLR.
5. An electronic viewfinder can use gain, so you can compose better in the dark. In particular, if you are older.
6. Mirrorless construction can be automated more easily.
7. Have you seen the rate at which Sony can innovate? A mirrorless camera is a consumer product. You don't have to build the full camera, you can update when one component do if you want.
8. Mindshare is shifting. This is very important.
9. The key idea of the DSLR was: "what you see is what you get". Today mirrorless is closer to that moto.
10. As technology progresses the electronic viewfinder problems with delays, refresh rates or color will be solved
I am not sure the D850 will be the last flagship DSLR. In fact, I am convinced that Nikon and Canon will have a next generation DSLR (at least for the sports one, for Nikon I am talking about a D5s). But after the A9 they know they need to react. The Nikon 1 was so much ahead of it's time that Nikon could have dominated the mirrorless market if they were not trying to protect DSLR (back then the moto was the mirrorless was smaller so maybe they did not get the change memo).
I still remember the first time I used the H4D with the 100mm f2.2, it mas magical, but the data analysis points that the future is the electronic viewfinder.
Note: Nikon may never go into mirrorless, they are willing to go small (downsize) that will be the a path to do it.
Best regards,