Thom Hogan

Lenses are easy: we'll get eight new ones (plus or minus one). Which lenses will be coming is a little more difficult to predict, but let's study the current lineup:

What I see (from bottom up) is:

• f/1.8 primes are missing a few candidates: 14mm, 18mm, 28mm, 105mm, and maybe even 180mm. 
• f/4 zooms have been dormant for a couple of years and are missing the obvious 70-200mm and F-mount 180-400mm crossover.
• f/2.8 zooms were an early pro trio, followed by a later consumer trio, but subsequent "fast zooms" by Canon, Sigma, Sony, and Tamron suggest that some other f/2 or f/2.8 focal lengths should be explored besides the traditional ones.
• The variable aperture convenience lenses (24-50mm, 24-200mm) are lonely, and could use a companion or two.
• DX is back to its usual "not enough lenses."
• Macro stalled with just two lenses, leaving longer macro lenses missing.
• Tele zooms is missing a 70-300mm type lens. Some might argue for a return of the 200-500mm.
• Compact primes are narrowly aligned between 26mm and 40mm, so extensions outside of that would be welcomed.
• The Exotic Tele line is missing the 800mm (and technically the 200/300mm position).
• Phase Fresnel nicely extends the F-mount ones (300/500) with 600/800mm, with the small, light 400mm f/4.5 filling the other gap.
• The f/1.2 primes are missing the Road Map's 35mm f/1.2. 

Thus there's a lot of ground for Nikon to still explore. Moreover, we haven't yet seen a tilt/shift lens in the Z-mount. 

A wild guess at 2024 might include these eight lenses:

1. 35mm f/1.2 S finally sees the light of day.
2. 14mm f/1.8.
3. One of the F-mount tele zooms (120-300mm f/2.8, 180-400mm f/4) or a Phase Fresnel zoom in that range.
4. A new fast zoom (e.g. 16-35mm, 20-40mm, 24-105mm).
5. A tilt/shift lens.
6. A telephoto macro.
7. Another variable aperture convenience zoom.
8. Another DX lens.

However, Nikon has a lot of spots in the chart to fill still, and I note that the Zf really could use something like a 18-35mm variable aperture zoom that's small, and a prime lens or two with aperture rings. Plus, with Nikon promoting video so much in the recent cameras, I can't help but think a video lens lineup has to arrive at some point.

For cameras, I'm going to surprise you: my current expectations are Z50 II, Zh, and Z6 III, as all seem to be far enough along in prototyping progress to elicit specification rumors. Sticking an EXPEED7 chip in a Z50 is low-hanging fruit, and Nikon needs to move that camera to USB-C soon, anyway. A Zh—yes, no number (see this article)—would be Nikon's answer to the Sony A9 Mark III: global shutter, lower pixel count, speed is the primary focus. Finally, a Z6 III really needs to show up to shore up the middle of the lineup. If it comes with a 30mp+ image sensor and pixel shift, it straddles the Z6/Z7 position enough to let the Z7 update wait for a megapixel boost; if it comes with a 24mp image sensor, as is more likely, it needs to somehow straddle the Zf and eventual Zh. 

The good news is simple: the ILC market has come out of its pandemic slump and is once selling over 6m units a year. We appear to have bounced off the bottom and have started attracting new buyers again. On top of that, Nikon beat their expectations in 2023, and by a fair margin. I expect both those things will have Nikon pushing a little harder in 2024 than we saw them do in 2021 and 2022. Note that if I'm right about cameras in 2024, that also means at least two new image sensors being added, though one (Z6 III) might be speed tweaking.