I keep getting asked about whether Nikon will "make just one more" DSLR or not. They are, after all, a company of habit, and the Nikon F6 was an unexpected launch using the D2h components at a time when it was clear that film SLR sales were running on darkroom fumes. That F6 went on to have an illustrious 10-year career, basically becoming the hero camera for those clinging onto their cassette cartridges of spooled film. To this day, the F6 is probably the best SLR for anyone really wanting to use film.
I see three possible answers to the question of whether Nikon will make a hero camera for the DSLR funeral procession:
- No. The "new Nikon" likes what they're achieving with the Z System and is all in on mirrorless now.
- Yes, and it's already available: the D780 is the combo DSLR/mirrorless camera that mates the D tech with Z tech.
- Maybe, but we don't know what and when.
Things are a little different than they were at the start of the DSLR era. Nikon went from having about half the market share of Canon at the tail end of the film usage to nipping at their decimal points with digital sales, and growing rapidly. It was easy enough to dedicate a small team to bring some of the new ideas over from digital to create one last film SLR, and that produced the F6 from D2h technology. It was even a bit of a slap in Canon’s face: “not only have we caught you by making DSLRs, but we can still make viable film SLRs.”
Today, however, Nikon is in a distant third position, carefully trying to maintain that place while somehow growing profits, and that doesn't seem to bode well for a new DSLR hero body to emerge. It's not that a hero camera wouldn't sell in modest quantities and at prices that preserve profit margin. It's that Nikon has downsized the number of product teams they have available to create new, sophisticated cameras. Those teams are already behind the guns in keeping the Z System up to date and competitive, let alone a potential full frame video/vlogging camera, new RED video models, and anything else a Z System might need.
Based upon evidence we can see with the (almost) cessation of F-mount lens production, my best guess given also the reduction in manufacturing resources available is that the handful of DSLR lenses still being produced are being made using a round robin, almost handbuilt approach (e.g. a small staff makes Lens A for a few weeks, then Lens B, etc.). Even lenses that should still have some demand in the F-mount seem to be showing up as back-ordered more often. No new F-mount lens was introduced after the 120-300mm f/2.8E FL VR in 2020, and the Distortion Control Data (which has to be in the Z System cameras, by the way), appears to have frozen at version 2.018 in 2020, as well. Read together: no new DSLR lenses from Nikon, and greatly reduced production is an indicator that the Nikon DSLR train is coming to a stop.
I used to lean towards an answer of "yes, we'll get one more DSLR," but in the past year I kept seeing and hearing things that would suggest to me that we won’t. Strong evidence indicates that Nikon has moved on.
DSLR: Endgame has come and gone. Stark has left the building.
