Nikon’s EVIL camera may have DX size
sensor - Nikon 1 V1 and
Nikon 1 J1
  The past year has seen both Sony and Samsung announce tiny interchangeable lens cameras designed to compete with the Micro Four Thirds units from Panasonic and Olympus, and now Nikon's getting in the game as well -- company president Makoto Kimura told Bloomberg Nikon will introduce a "new concept" mirrorless cameras with enhanced video
functions as early as this year. (That sort of sounds like the Canon G11 competitor with DSLR tech Nikon was hinting at earlier this year, but we can't tell if they're the same.) Kimura says that Nikon is "intensively" focused on developing the new mirrorless product as part of a plan to increase SLR revenue
Nikon's goal is to increase interchangeable lens camera sales a whopping 80 percent over the next three years. That's ambitious, but if Nikon can produce a tiny shooter with some of the D3S's low-light capabilities and the ability to accept even a subset of its modern family of lenses, we don't think it's out of the question. We'll see what happens.
A mirrorless interchangeable lens camera or electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens (EVIL), Micro, or Digital Interchangeable Lens system camera is an emerging class of digital cameras, intermediate between Digital Camera Review by Gene Wrights and digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs). They are characterized by large sensors (the same size as entry-level DSLRs), no mirror, and interchangeable lenses, as the name suggests, and provide DSLR-quality pictures in a significantly smaller camera.
Published:July 30, 2010
Based on previous Nikon’s patent applications, the
initial estimation of the sensor in the upcoming EVIL
camera was 17mm in diagonal (image circle).
For comparison the m4/3 sensor is 21.6 mm. This news was
a bit disappointing, but now there is hope. Few weeks
ago
Thom Hogan suggested that the
Nikon may be obfuscating their designs in some of their
patent applications. For example: look at figure 35
(page 36) from patent
application 20090257125 (filed in the US) for the
14mm f/2.8 EVIL lens:
If you compare the above lens design with drawing 19 from patent 2010-072276 below (filed in Japan, no direct link available) you will notice that they are identical:
The interesting part is that the Japanese patent is for a 23.65mm DX lens (28.4mm in diagonal). It’s basically a 1.65x scaled up version of the lens patent filed in the US. Which are now the correct numbers? Is Nikon really obscuring the real calculations? I don’t know, but a DX size EVIL camera sounds much better and may explain why Nikon is taking their time on that project.
If we assume that the EVIL sensor will be DX, we have to revisit also all
previously discussed EVIL lenses and re-calculate the focal length
Based again on previous patent applications, the Nikon EVIL camera is not expected to have a F-mount, but I am sure there will be adapters that will allow the use of F-mount lenses.
Read more on sensor sizes here
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