Nikon Mirrorless Camera with Interchangeable Lenses: March of 2011?

[davelew]

F lenses with plastic barrels. The optical elements were glass, and
and the bayonet was metal. Parts of the barrel were metal, at
least on the 50 f/1.8 that's serving as a body cap on one of my
N90s bodies.

Chuck

Chuck, are you sure it's an f/1.8? I have an old Nikon E 50mm f/1.4 that gets some occasional use because it has a very "film like" bokeh. I wonder if Nikon made both f/1.8 and f/1.4 versions of Nikon E 50mm lenses.

 

[Chuck Tribolet]

Chuck, are you sure it's an f/1.8? I have an old Nikon E 50mm f/1.4 that gets some occasional use because it has a very "film like" bokeh. I wonder if Nikon made both f/1.8 and f/1.4 versions of Nikon E 50mm lenses.

Absolutely. This was likely the highest volume Series E lens. My
lens says:

Nikon LENS SERIES E 50mm 1:1.8 2147361

I didn't know they made a 50mm f/1.4 Series E. That wouldn't be
consistent with the Series E low price point. And I was unable to
Google up anything about it.

Chuck

 

[davelew]

Absolutely. This was likely the highest volume Series E lens. My
lens says:

Nikon LENS SERIES E 50mm 1:1.8 2147361

I didn't know they made a 50mm f/1.4 Series E. That wouldn't be
consistent with the Series E low price point. And I was unable to
Google up anything about it.

Chuck

I just checked my old 50mm f/1.4, and I was wrong, it actually is a Nikkor, just from 1982. That's old enough that it just says "Nikon Nikkor 50mm 1:1.4" without the "AF-S DX G VR ED SIC SW" gobbledigook on the lens name. It turns out my only "Series E" lens is the 70-210mm zoom, which is an amazingly good lens, even more so for being from a budget series.

 

[GXRuser]

It's fun but risky to speculate about this. We won't know for sure until release. But here I go.

This market expects a smaller body and lens. I don't think they will use the standard Nikon F mount this time, because getting rid of the mirror is one key to making the body a lot smaller. They will probably have no mirror and shorten the registration distance to make the system more compact. They may have an adapter like the Olympus MF-1 to allow mounting F mount lenses though.
Olympus MF-1 OM Adapter 260231 B&H Photo Video
I suspect they will keep the sensor size the same. It saves development time and money. But I do hope they release soon, or risk really falling behind the market.

As an aside, consider what Nikon did the last time they shrunk the SLR. During the film era in about 1997-2000, Nikon made a smaller SLR family called the Pronea line. It had a mirror, but the mirror was smaller due to the smaller APS frame size. See:
Nikon Pronea S

Pronea is long gone now, but the APS film size became the standard DX sensor size for Nikon and the lens mount was the standard Nikon autofocus F mount, but with some extra plastic to make the IX Nikkor lenses not fit on standard Nikon film bodies. Some IX zooms would hit the mirror of a standard film body. Standard Nikon AF lenses did fit the APS bodies -- you could even mount the 18-200mm DX lens, but it drained the battery too fast for practical use. The electrical interface was the same. For fun, I have converted a few IX lenses by cutting off the interfering bumps and they do work on all Nikon bodies, although they sometimes hit the mirror (the 60-180, for instance). The lenses were tiny, all plastic, but petty good optically. I still use them from time to time as a stunt.

But this early example shows how Nikon leveraged a lot from their standard F mount cameras to gen up a smaller camera family. Will history repeat?

I have acquired two ix lenses, the 20-60 and the 60-180. I bought a Nikon G to Leica M adapter that has a control ring that operates the aperture cam in the ix (AIS/G) lens. These lenses work superbly (in manual mode) on any digital camera with a leica adapter. (Ricoh GXR with M Mount, Olympus and Panasonic micro-fourthirds, Sony NEX, and Pentax Q). I have the GXR and a Panasonic G1 and they are very easy to focus.

I have read that IX lenses modified as you described work on most Nikon DSLRs just like a G lens including autofocus and autoexposure.

Since the flange distance of the Nikon CX mount is much shorter than the F mount (and it's variants) there is room between the rear of the ix lens and the shutter of the V1. A pure mechanical Nikon G mount to CX (V!) mount adapter should allow the IX lens to physically mount on the V1. There would be no metering or autofocus.

I know that Nikon has published that the FT to CX mount adapter is not compatible with the IX lens series. There is no mirror that can be damaged in adapter and the V1 camera.

Is there room in the FT adapter to allow the IX lens to be mounted? Has anyone tried this?

The IX lens should electrically communicate with the V1 allowing metering and autofocus if it would fit on Nikon's mount adapter. Has anyone attempted this?

Thanks