DSLRBodies

A long-time site reader (thanks Martin) who follows inventories closely suggested that I add some information to my previous article, and provided a database lookup of what he found, which you'll see used below with some annotations. Note that this isn't a live inventory list, but was what we found last night when checking the data. Some items may change status by the time you read this article.

Some shorthands are used in the following tables:

• Bold = Listed as a current lens by the NikonUSA site
• IS = in stock (US version)
• GM = in stock (gray market version)
• OS = out of stock (US version)
• BO = back-ordered
• D = discontinued
• Active = still on Nikon Japan's active lens list

So let's go through the Nikon lenses Amateur Photographer (UK) said were discontinued once again and observe more closely at what's going on here in the US.

DX Lenses

With the DX lenses, you'll notice that one of the lenses Amateur Photography says is discontinued is not yet listed as such on the Nikon Japan site (18-300mm). Of the remaining ones, B&H has stock of five, NikonUSA has stock of three. If you ordered today you should be able to get a grand total of six of the fifteen "discontinued" DX lenses here in the US. How long those will remain available is unpredictable. Note that B&H is more aggressive than NikonUSA in labeling a lens discontinued. 

D-type Lenses

With the D-type lenses, NikonUSA is much more optimistic than B&H: B&H lists seven of the eleven lenses as discontinued, while NikonUSA has dropped only two from their site. Note that I didn't catch that the 20mm lens in my previous list was not the D version, so I've updated this table accordingly.

G-type Lenses

One thing to note: B&H still has new 70-200mm f/4G lenses available, but NikonUSA is labeling them as discontinued. If you want one of those, now is the time to buy it if you want a new copy [advertiser link]. Other than that, once again B&H is clearly more pessimistic than NikonUSA in terms of what's still available.

The NikonUSA site lists a total of 90 F-mount lenses (which includes the TC800 unavailable for sale separately, plus a pair of two-lens kits).  Of those 90, 20 are out-of-stock and have been listed as discontinued by Japan and B&H (although there’s two that B&H has grey market inventory of, plus that 70-200mm f/4G).  That leaves 70 lenses, and of those, 29 have been declared discontinued in Japan, leaving just 41 (and no recent Micro-Nikkor, which I find troublesome).

One conclusion you can draw from the above is that the new F-mount lens availability could very well drop to about half that which NikonUSA suggests is available. I and others are betting that a number of those out-of-stock listings will simply convert to discontinued at some point in the not-too-distant future. 

Yes, this site is US-centric. The vast majority of the site readership is located here in the US, plus there's far too many subsidiaries and distributors worldwide to do the list justice for every country. Moreover, as I've pointed out before, the US is probably the last canary in the coal mine. If something from Nikon gets discontinued here, it is just no longer available via official sources pretty much anywhere (though sometimes a dealer or two may have some lingering inventory).