Before my month-long break, I responded to a number of email queries with essentially the following: there would be a minor announcement while I was gone (which turned out to be the 12-28mm DX lens, semi-coincident with the NAB convention, since it’s video related), followed by something major probably in May. It seems I was right.
Nikon tends to follow patterns. Their fiscal year financial results meeting is scheduled for May 11th this year. Because Nikon is meeting with the business press during the days prior to that, it’s likely that they’ll be starting to reveal their next major release(s) under NDA during that run-up period. Japan doesn’t have the same “silent period” requirements that the US does, so we’ve seen product announcements peppered around the fiscal year meeting before. If I had to guess at dates, the actual announcement date of Major Product(s) would be May 9 or May 16. Nikon’s also likely wanting to deliver some of those prior to the end of their first quarter on May 30th, so it could be a quick announce and ship.
Everyone’s expecting the Z8 to be the major announcement, but my question has always been what, if anything, will be introduced with it? There was a new Speedlight system that was prototyped and tested; will we see that, too? Will we get a new lens or two and a new lens road map? Will the Z9 get a firmware update to include things like HEIF, which I expect the next model to get?
The Thailand plant is assembling new products as I write this, I know that from a source that won’t tell me what. How many and what we’ll see from the plant I don’t know. But as Jerry Pournelle used to write: Real Soon Now.
