Nikon D3100 specs and new lenses confirmed?

emh

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Sounds like a German magazine has prematurely published the specs of the D3100 and the new Nikon lenses:

Nikon D3100:

14 MP CMOS Sensor (23.2 x 15.5 mm)
Live View
3 inch Display
100 – 12800 ISO
ISO setting manual or automatic
11 AF points
full HD Video (1920 x 1080)
price 650 €
new EXPEED2 processor
improved objects recognition for the AF control
improved in-camera menu
user can save picture profiles


New lenses:

Nikkor AF-S DX 55-300/4,5-5,6 G ED VR (ca. 420 €)
Nikkor AF-S 85/1,4 G with Nano coating (ca. 1650 €) - the new lens contains 10 lens elements in 9 groups (the old version has 9 elements in 8 groups)
Nikkor AF-S 24-120/4 G ED VR with Nano coating (ca. 1220 €)
Nikkor AF-S 28-300/3,5-5,6 G ED VR (ca. 1000 €) – UPDATE: it will contain 19 lens elements in 14 groups

A bit more info here.
And pictures.
 
Why would Nikon jepardize D5000, and to a lesser extent D90/D300s sales, by introducing a D3100 with those specs?
 
Looks like Nikon is pumping more megapixels in their cameras.
 
Really? 650 euros = $834 US? that would be quite an MSRP increase. It would be above the D5000 MSRP. But better specs than the D90. One would think they would try to keep the same price points, at least within reason.
 
Wow, that's definitely an upgrade!
 
The lens designs are for real. The 85mm 1.4 AF-S G is a 10-element in 9 group design, adding 1 over the older 85/1.4 AF-D. The 24-120 VR at a constant f/4 seems like a direct replacement/equalizer for the Canon 24-105 f/4-L, and the new 55-300 seems like a logical way to create an all-new zoom category that would appeal to many two-lens-kit type of shooters/customers.

The Nano-coating system that Nikon invented is really the first breakthough in lens coatings in several decades. Nikon invented that type of coating for their ultra-high-resolution lenses used in the steppers that help to make sensors...Nanocoating is a really,really helpful way to knock out the flare and ghosting that comes from glancing light rays that strike the front element of a lens at steep angles, and will be incorporated in the two new pro-level lenses (the 85/1.4 and the 24-120 f/4), but not on the two consumer-level zooms.
 
Looks like Nikon is pumping more megapixels in their cameras.

As I said in an earlier thread, I wouldn't be surprised if Nikon is forced to keep up with Canon in the high MP race just for marketing reasons. Damn Canon for starting this pointless and counter-productive race to increase pixel counts :greenpbl:

BTW, I see this as being not unlike the GHz race in computers that lasted until a few years ago when Intel and AMD quietly admitted it was hurting more than helping and scaled back their clock frequency targets.

Really? 650 euros = $834 US? that would be quite an MSRP increase. It would be above the D5000 MSRP. But better specs than the D90. One would think they would try to keep the same price points, at least within reason.

Camera pricing doesn't seem to go by exchange rates. Wouldn't surprise me if MSRP in the US ended up pretty close to $650. We also don't know if that price is for body only or for a kit.
 
As I said in an earlier thread, I wouldn't be surprised if Nikon is forced to keep up with Canon in the high MP race just for marketing reasons.

Marketing has it's place. I wouldn't be surprised if it was only the consumer cameras that get this boost where the prosumer and professional cameras may get split in 2. One camera for the megapixel hunters, and the other for those who like to be able to take photos of the night sky handheld on horseback.

Afterall marketing reasons and reputations is also what defines customers. I don't think anyone would disagree that someone who comes into the business wanting the absolute best low noise performance would think Canon straight off the mark without weighing in a whole lot of other points, and visa versa with megapixels

BTW, I see this as being not unlike the GHz race in computers that lasted until a few years ago when Intel and AMD quietly admitted it was hurting more than helping and scaled back their clock frequency targets.

Yes / No. There were other reasons that clock race went the way it did. At the time clock increases by Intel were achieved by massively extending the execution pipeline. This had a great cost if the branch prediction went the wrong way as it would cause the loss of every instruction in the pipeline. This introduced another bottleneck in a system completely based on bottlenecks. At the time it made much more sense to attack the bottlenecks with technologies such as hyperthreading, improving branching, adding x64 instructions to eliminate the memory address ceiling, and adding an extra core so a single thread doesn't bring down a system.

Now we're at the stage where we have several cores in consumer computers running applications that simply don't scale well on a parallel basis, and those that do scale in a parallel fashion often run much faster on the GPU. At the height of the GHz war P4s were around 3.8GHz with a bottleneck of a 1Ghz front side bus. The latest Core i7 has a clock speed of 3.3GHz and while it draws about as much heat as the fast processors of yesteryear, it does so over 6 cores, and with far better thermal management. Only the other week PCPro demonstrated an Intel rig that ran at 5GHz which I think was the same record as the old P4 had at the time.


The GHz race wasn't hurting, the designs just didn't have the capability to deal with the faster speeds, nor did the rest of the system have the bandwidth to gain any usable benefit. The GHz race is very much still here, and still alive. I bet we'll see a few more GHz squeezed out of the next few chips before we see another architecture change.

The megapixel race on the other hand IS pointless. You eventually end up in a place where the design of the lenses and camera body limits the resolution of the system and some people say that limit is around the 15-20mpx mark on a full frame DSLR. Actually now that you mention it, it does sound like bolting stupidly long pipelines on inefficient processors :)
 
As I said in an earlier thread, I wouldn't be surprised if Nikon is forced to keep up with Canon in the high MP race just for marketing reasons.

Marketing has it's place. I wouldn't be surprised if it was only the consumer cameras that get this boost where the prosumer and professional cameras may get split in 2. One camera for the megapixel hunters, and the other for those who like to be able to take photos of the night sky handheld on horseback.

Afterall marketing reasons and reputations is also what defines customers. I don't think anyone would disagree that someone who comes into the business wanting the absolute best low noise performance would think Canon straight off the mark without weighing in a whole lot of other points, and visa versa with megapixels

I think you are giving the average consumer, especially those upgrading from their high-megapixel P&S cameras, too much credit. Most of those folks think more megapixels = better. Just look at the posts we get on here saying the same from time to time. Whether we like it or not, marketing does change consumer perception, which in turn drives demand and affects what gets manufactured.

BTW, I see this as being not unlike the GHz race in computers that lasted until a few years ago when Intel and AMD quietly admitted it was hurting more than helping and scaled back their clock frequency targets.

Yes / No. There were other reasons that clock race went the way it did. At the time clock increases by Intel were achieved by massively extending the execution pipeline. This had a great cost if the branch prediction went the wrong way as it would cause the loss of every instruction in the pipeline. This introduced another bottleneck in a system completely based on bottlenecks. At the time it made much more sense to attack the bottlenecks with technologies such as hyperthreading, improving branching, adding x64 instructions to eliminate the memory address ceiling, and adding an extra core so a single thread doesn't bring down a system.

Now we're at the stage where we have several cores in consumer computers running applications that simply don't scale well on a parallel basis, and those that do scale in a parallel fashion often run much faster on the GPU. At the height of the GHz war P4s were around 3.8GHz with a bottleneck of a 1Ghz front side bus. The latest Core i7 has a clock speed of 3.3GHz and while it draws about as much heat as the fast processors of yesteryear, it does so over 6 cores, and with far better thermal management. Only the other week PCPro demonstrated an Intel rig that ran at 5GHz which I think was the same record as the old P4 had at the time.


The GHz race wasn't hurting, the designs just didn't have the capability to deal with the faster speeds, nor did the rest of the system have the bandwidth to gain any usable benefit. The GHz race is very much still here, and still alive. I bet we'll see a few more GHz squeezed out of the next few chips before we see another architecture change.

The megapixel race on the other hand IS pointless. You eventually end up in a place where the design of the lenses and camera body limits the resolution of the system and some people say that limit is around the 15-20mpx mark on a full frame DSLR. Actually now that you mention it, it does sound like bolting stupidly long pipelines on inefficient processors :)

The GHz race was hurting. Branch mispredicts and memory latencies were preventing increases in GHz from translating to real application performance gains. All the GHz increases did was increase power consumption. If you don't think the rush to higher GHz hasn't stopped, I'll simply point you to the 1st session ("Processor Pipelines") of the 2002 International Symposium on Computer Architecture (program). This is the premier conference in processor design and 2002 was about the height of the GHz race. I don't want to go too far off on this tangent and derail the camera discussion, but I'll simply point out that the types of super-deep pipelines people were talking about in that conference session never materialized.
 
WHY does everybody assume that the megapixel "race" is purely a marketing ploy? I'm no dummy and I would consider upgrading my D90 if there was a new camera from Nikon with a higher megapixel count. I do a lot of macro shooting and it would help enormously to have some extra breathing room for cropping. THere is a reason that the 5dmk2 blows away the D700 for serious macro use (read 1:1 and beyond)....because a 5dmk2 can crop an image to give the relative (apparent) magnification of probably 1.5:1 while retaining the same resolution as the D700 at 1:1. (I.E. a 5dmk2 1:1 shot cropped to the same resolution as a D700 file will give the effect of more magnification with the same quality as the D700).

Same plays a role in crop sensored bodies....a higher megapixel will let you crop in a little closer before losing too much quality/resolution. Personally, Nikon had better step up the megapixel count or they will start losing some customers...myself probably being one of them. I mean, Canon is producing substantially more megapixels than the Nikon counterpart and Canon isn't losing a ton of high ISO detail. The 7d has great high ISo performance and the 5Dmk2, while not as good as the D700 on high iso,....is not far behind at all for having double the resolution.

...and before you say "oh, well your just one of those odd Macro guys"....same holds true to all the nature guys shooting birds and other wildlife. Can't afford that 600mm lens...now you can get a 400-500 and crop in to get the same quality as an older body did with the 600mm lens (assuming your 400-500mm lens is as good a quality).
 
I think you are giving the average consumer, especially those upgrading from their high-megapixel P&S cameras, too much credit.

Actually I wasn't giving them any. Consumers are idiots and I fully expect a 100mpx camera with a $5 lens by the end of 2020 :), however your average prosumer who these higher end DSLRs are targetted at is clued into what determines quality. My prediction that cameras will split into two distinct directions is targeted purely at them.

You'll get a PM about the GHz race, if you want to take the discussion further :)

WHY does everybody assume that the megapixel "race" is purely a marketing ploy? I'm no dummy and I would consider upgrading my D90 if there was a new camera from Nikon with a higher megapixel count. I do a lot of macro shooting and it would help enormously to have some extra breathing room for cropping.

Ahh but you're looking only at the sensor and not at the system. The megapixel race is a marketing ploy for the same reason that a Nikon D2h produces sharper images than the higher resolution iPhone. A lot of discussions right now are directed at where do we go in the future? How many lenses do you own that can actually resolve each individual pixel in a 21mpx frame? Let me re-phrase, how many lenses actually exist? You're hitting all sorts of fundamental limits of diffraction as well as squeezing the very last bit of lens design out of a system that is limited by the dimensions of the glass and its distance from the sensor.

Sure you can continue raising the megapixels, but at some point if you do you'll have to abandon the 35mm DSLR format in order for it to have any affect. In the meantime I'm comfortable in the knowledge that my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 would look identical on a Nikon D70 as it would on my D200 since at f/1.4 despite taking probably the most beautiful pictures I have every pulled out of my camera (mmm creeeeeeamy bokeh) it's not all that sharp.
 
Really? 650 euros = $834 US? that would be quite an MSRP increase. It would be above the D5000 MSRP. But better specs than the D90. One would think they would try to keep the same price points, at least within reason.

Camera stuff is more expensive in Europe. You can't just go by exchange rates.
 

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