Ergonomic Roundup November 2013, Nikon

Head in the sand, going nowhere

 

An Illustrious History The Japanese corporation which was eventually named for it's most famous product, the Nikon camera, was founded in 1917. The first Nikon camera was produced in 1948. The Nikon name became synonymous with rugged reliability and excellent quality  in all things photographic. Nikon rose to the challenges of autofocus then digital capture and electronic operation.

Nikon Corporation is, I believe, the only entity which derives most of it's income from the manufacture of cameras.  The camera divisions of Sony, Panasonic, even Canon, are but a small part of the total corporate venture.

You would imagine then, that Nikon would be a leader in camera research and development and a leader in innovation in imaging practice. But some familiarity with Nikon's recent products would have to leave one wondering about that.

My History with Nikon Cameras  In the film days I briefly owned a little Nikon branded film compact. It's picture quality and performance were dreadful. This year I bought, reviewed and ran comparison testing on a D5200 DSLR with 18-200mm superzoom lens. Our family owns and I have fully tested,  two (!!) Nikon 1 Series V2 cameras, each with 10-100mm superzoom lens. I might have been tempted to buy one of Nikon's recent compact offerings but each of them is deeply flawed in one fashion or another, so no deal.

DSLR's   I think Nikon's golden era was 1950-1980.  The film SLR was the top camera for professional photojournalism and Nikon was the best SLR you could buy. The Nikon name was firmly established. Millions of people turned to Nikon when they wanted a top quality camera for personal or professional use.

Then along came autofocus, followed by digital capture and electronic operation. Camera makers with deeper roots in the electronics business challenged Nikon's primacy. But, to their credit, Nikon rose to the challenge. However in the last few years Nikon has fallen into the same rut as Canon. The problem is that Nikon's main income comes from DSLR's and the DSLR as a camera type has no future. There is no evolutionary pathway for the DSLR. So Nikon in recent years has been iterating more pixels, fiddling with  button layouts  and  making minor incremental improvements to the same basic DSLR design.

My review of the D5200 earlier this year hereshowed it to be a reasonably competent camera in some respects but it had many ergonomic flaws. Some of these are inherent in the DSLR concept,  others could easily have been fixed with better user interface design. The just announced D5300 is a very mild upgrade of the D5200 retaining most of the ergonomic deficiencies of the D5200.

Some of Nikon's DSLR's, such as the D7100, receive better reviews, particularly for ergonomics.

I see no consistency of ergonomic understanding at work  here. Various Nikon DSLR's have different control layouts for no particular reason that I can determine. Some have a fully articulated monitor, others have a fixed monitor.

Compacts  In recent times Nikon has been making some interesting advanced compacts.  But every one of them  has a problem which I regard as deal breaking. The Coolpix A has no handle, no viewfinder, no articulated monitor and no zoom lens, but they want you to pay more for this than many DSLR's. Huh ????   The P3300 has very good image quality for a small sensor compact but shot to shot time for RAW capture was reported by one reviewer as 6 seconds. Again, no handle, no viewfinder.  After several tries Nikon almost got the advanced compact formula right. The P7800 appears to have all the ingredients: handle, articulated monitor, plenty of controls and finally an EVF. But shot to shot times for RAW capture are quoted by several reviewers at around 3 seconds.

Mirrorless ILC's  Nikon has an entry in the MILC race, in the form of the 1 Series of cameras. By the way, the "1" designation is a reference to the diameter of the 1950's era cathode ray tube which might have been required to support an imaging sensor of about 16mm diagonal. The "4/3" and "Micro 4/3" designations arise from the same historical but now completely irrelevant source.

With the 1 series Nikon's engineers delivered something quite remarkable. The V1 and V2 cameras have some capabilities unmatched by anything else on the market at any price. Continuous EVF viewing at high frame rates, huge buffer sizes, 15 frames per second with continuous AF and focus on every frame. Spectacular stuff.

But the V1 has atrocious ergonomics. The layout and user interface is so poorly designed one has to wonder how it ever came to exist.  The V2 brings substantial ergonomic improvement but that camera still falls well short of excellence.

I recently saw a Nikon promotional video stating that all Nikon design is done in house and all of it by the same dedicated team. I find this difficult to believe. There is almost no consistency of performance, user interface  or ergonomic execution between the various Nikon DSLR's, compacts and MILC's.  How come one camera (the V2) can fire off  49 RAW still pictures in just over 3 seconds (in continuous shooting mode), with AF and AE on every frame then continue firing but at a reduced frame rate, while another (the P7800) can only manage one RAW frame (in single shot mode) every three seconds ??

Conceptual integrity  I think there is something fundamental missingin the Nikon design center. That something might be captured by the term conceptual integrity. The product development people at Nikon don't seem to have a clear direction as to the type of product which they should make or to which consumer this product might be directed.

Their current offerings are all over the place. Some have excellent picture quality but compromised ergonomics. Some of the DSLR's do most things a DSLR could reasonably be expected to do but are an evolutionary dead end. Some look good on paper but have compromised performance and/or ergonomics. There is little conceptual or ergonomic consistency between one camera line and the next or even between one model and the next within a line.

What does Nikon stand for today ?  On present offerings I would have to say...."Once great camera maker struggling to survive in a changing world but not managing very well".  Ouch.

The Crystal Ball    Like Canon, I think Nikon is in serious trouble. They face steeply falling sales in all sectors of production. Nikon's answer seems to be to concentrate on "full frame" ie 24x36mm sensor, DSLR's.  Their latest little adventure with the DF camera seems to be nostalgic wishful thinking that harking back to past glories will somehow rescue the company from it's present woes.  They are dreaming.  Nikon's problems are in the present and the solution to them will not be found in the past.

I don't pretend to know whence, or even if,  Nikon's salvation might come. However in terms of camera production the company is already sitting on a potential winner in the form of the 1 series of cameras. But Nikon having created the 1 series seems not to know what they might do with it. Well for starters, they could check out what Sony is doing with the "one inch" ie 15.9mm diagonal sensor.  There is the RX100 Mk1 and 2, now followed by the RX10 with very interesting specification indeed.  

Nikon could evolve the 1 Series into a highly attractive stable of camera types, some with interchangeable lenses, some with fixed lenses, some short zooms some ultra compacts, some superzooms.

Wake up Nikon, the big sleep beckons.