Nikon Goes Retro With Nikon Df Release As Camera Market Shrinks From Smartphone Competition

With its newest release, Nikon is betting its future on a camera that harkens to the past - perhaps a time when Nikon, and the camera industry as a whole, weren't being overtaken by smartphones with high quality cameras.

Nikon Df  - Retro Looks

The Nikon Df is the company's latest DSLR which features modern DSLR tech masked by retro looks. One optional variant of the Df harkens back to the Nikon "F Series" of cameras, with its silver-colored chassis and pentaprism viewfinder, and faux-leather textured grip and physical dial controls.

A special Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens is available for purchase with the Df to match the look and design of the body, and the camera includes a mechanical linkage that allows you to hook up pre-1977 lenses for a real retro shooting experience.

Specs

The Nikon Df, which stands for "Digital Fusion," has a 16.2-megapixel 36x23.9 full-frame sensor, which Nikon also uses in the D4, with a 2016-pixel RGP image sensor. The camera can shoot 5.5 frames per second for up to 100 shots, with no video recording capability. It has settings for 1:1, 3:2, and 16:9 aspect ratios.

The Df's native ISO range, which is physically selectable using a dial, is from 100-12,800 and includes IOS 50 and ISO 102,400, and an Expeed 3 processor powers it. It has a 3.2-inch LCD screen in addition to the viewfinder.

Availability and Price

The Nikon Df is now available for pre-order for $2750, with the optional lens kit for $3000, and if you don't want the retro look, it's also available in all black. It's expected to start shipping in time for the holiday shopping season.

Nikon Is Hurting, As Are Its Competitors

The Nikon Df is a great example of the kind of high-priced, high-end cameras that Nikon Corp., along with other DSLR makers like Canon Inc., design and sell. Those cameras, according to the Wall Street Journal, are having a harder time than ever this year finding customers looking to spend that much on a camera.

Market research group IDC is forecasting that interchangeable lens cameras, like the Nikon Df and other DSLRs, will be down 9.1 percent from 19.1 million units shipped last year to 17.4 million units this year. Nikon itself cut its own unit sales forecast for high-end cameras earlier this week, as Reuters put it, "as a dramatic fall in demand among photography hobbyists that began last year accelerated faster than expected."

Compact cameras had already taken a hit due to smartphones becoming the much more common way for most consumers to snap their day-to-day photos. That makes sense, as smartphone cameras basically mimic the abilities and features of the average compact camera - allowing for simple, fast, and automatic mid-quality photography.

While most smartphones have started to feature higher-megapixel sensors with more options and customizable features, even the most camera-centric smartphones can't hold a candle to the capabilities of an interchangeable-lens camera.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal's analysis, the profusion of apps for taking, editing, and sharing photos may be changing consumer tastes away from DSLR-style photography and toward lower-quality, more easily shareable photography. "Taking photos with smartphones and editing them with apps is like cooking with cheap ingredients and a lot of artificial flavoring," said Canon spokesperson Takafumi Hongo to the WSJ. "Using interchangeable-lens cameras is like slow food cooked with natural, genuine ingredients." If most consumers feel creatively sated by the "cheap ingredients," though, camera manufacturers will see their sales continue to shrink into a specialty niche.