The Digital Photography (R)evolution

If you, like me, are in the process of getting a new camera this year, consider yourself lucky because we are being bombarded with a plethora of new digital photography products. Last year's models, coupled with the products already released this year and cameras which will be released in the coming months, we have almost a hundred cameras to choose from.

But if you are, like me, very picky with your equipment, and have saved up enough money to buy whichever camera your heart desires (save for the Leica M9 Titanium Edition, the SP and SP-2 and other medium format cameras), then you are probably also experiencing confusion and headache.

We are not even halfway through the 2nd quarter of 2012 and already the fight for the consumer's cash is neck-and-neck. The banter between camps is fierce: the Canon versus Nikon fanboys, DSLR "traditionalists" versus the mirrorless crowd, full frame versus crop, the battlefield is metaphorically littered with the blood and carcasses of the unknowing, hapless first-time buyer who has been drowned with arguments and rebuttals between these camps.

I try to keep a cool head in all of this, and just focus on choosing the camera which I am most familiar with. But I have to admit that my imagination has wandered in the past few weeks while waiting for my preferred camera to ship. And during the course of those three weeks Nikon has managed to surprise us yet again, with an entry-level DSLR that I predict will be such an astounding success that it will steal market shares from even the enthusiast/professional camera market, and change digital photography as we know it.

While not a very appealing color (it is luckily also available in black, and some countries seem to ditch the red color altogether), its what's inside the new Nikon D3200 that is probably giving Canon the chills: a 24(!) megapixel sensor with an ISO sensitivity of up to 6400 (calibrated), in a camera that is aimed at the beginner market! At the time of this writing there is no Canon DLSR available with that resolution, not even the Canon EOS 5D Mark III which "only" has 22 megapixels. But having released the 36 megapixel Nikon D800 a few months back, the direction Nikon wants to go should come as no surprise. And with the Nikon D800 topping DxO Mark's sensor tests despite the packed sensor, it is clear that they have somehow uncovered the technology to boost pixel count while keeping noise to a minimum.

Looking at the samples from Nikon's website the claim to fame does seem to be true. And if indeed the image quality is so exceptionally great (we still need to wait for real world tests to confirm this), what, then, will the discernible difference between entry level and professional DSLR's be? Is the extra weight, magnesium body and faster burst mode enough to justify, for example the Nikon D4 or the Canon 1D-X costing 10 times more than the D3200?

(And why is it that my camera dealer claims to have the D3200 in stock already next week, just one week after its release? Has Nikon deliberately slowed the production of the D800 in favor of the D3200, because they know that the D3200 will be more lucrative? I think so!)

It looks like an attractive proposition, and can ALMOST make a convert out of me. Think of the money you will be saving if you get this instead of the D800. It might make a lot of converts, but I don't think Nikon will mind this one bit. Sure the Nikon D800 is very much sought after, but the pro/enthusiast market is still just a tiny fraction of the entire DSLR market as a whole.

Another proposition that I have been looking at all weekend (yes, I have been lazy and not taking photos, what with the bad weather and the extreme pollen saturation outdoors, so sue me!) is the Fujifilm X-Pro 1, another mirrorless camera. It sports an APS-C sensor, but  radically modified that it ditches the antialiasing filter which most cameras have, and need, nowadays. And the images this camera produces are mind-boggling to say the least! And the noise, or rather the lack of it, trumps even that of the 3-year old EOS 5D Mark II. It does however come with some caveats: the AF is rather slow, and as of the moment there are only 3 lenses available for this system, and all three are primes, so no zooming, and definitely no BIF. I can imagine this to be a good camera for street photography, and it is really quite tempting with its back-to-basics approach. But with all its shortcomings, the weight penalty of DSLR's might be easier to swallow. As attractive as this camera is, it irritates me to think that I will have to totally adjust the way I shoot to fit the camera, instead of the other way around.

 I really with the cameras I preordered will arrive soon, before I get bombarded with so many new options that I completely loose my head! As fun as it is to read and do research (I am that type of guy), I am starting to get overwhelmed. Until then the waiting game continues. And another work week is up ahead, and the hectic days at the office does succeed in taking my mind off photography for a short while. And as passionate as I am about cameras and photography, a break from it can sometimes be a welcome relief.