We’ve seen some incredible aerial photos shot by French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet this year, including the blue aurora seen from space. But have you ever wondered how he captured these images?
Nikon D5, D850 and D500 will finally get CFexpress support by end of 2020
It’s been a LONG time since Nikon first announced that they would be creating firmware updates to add CFexpress support to the Nikon D5, D850 and D500 DSLRs to allow users to make use of the new format in their XQD card slots. Well, now, Nikon Rumors (not Nikon) is “confirming” that the firmware will be coming before the end of 2020.
The new CFexpress cards were first confirmed to be coming by ProGrade in March 2018 and by February 2019, Nikon had announced that they were going to support the new format through firmware updates for all of their XQD cameras (except the D4/D4s). In December 2019, that firmware update came for the Nikon Z6 & Z7 mirrorless cameras, but DSLR shooters have been kept waiting ever since.
Nikon finally gives up on film – discontinues the F6 SLR and other products
It seems that Nikon dealers in Europe (or at least Germany) have received notification that the Nikon F6 has now officially been laid to rest, along with the Nikon D5 DSLR, the Nikon SB-300 speedlight, the Nikkor Ai-S 50mm f/1.2 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 lens. It seems that a lot of manual Ai-S and AF-S DX Nikkor lenses are also now listed as discontinued on the Nikon Japan website. Interestingly, though, the F6 isn’t listed as discontinued there.
B&H has knocked $1,000 off the price of the Nikon D5, ahead of the D6 release
There’s no word on exactly when Nikon will officially announce that the D6 is done, dusted and going to be shipping, although it’s expected sometime in early 2020, possibly around February. They have so far made a “development announcement” stating that they’re working on it, and that it’s going to be coming at some point, but that’s about it.
Ahead of an official release announcement, though, it looks like B&H are already trying to clear their shelves of Nikon D5 bodies. Now you can pick one up for $5,495, a sizeable $1,000 discount off the regular price.
“Nikon’s dropping 5 lines of SLRs” says DPReview’s Chris Nichols
During the recent first look video for the Canon EOS 90D and Canon EOS M6 Mark II over on DPReview, Chris Nichols let slip at around 6:45 in the video that Nikon is “dropping 5 lines of [D]SLRs”. This seems to suggest that Nikon believes that DSLRs are, for the most part, well and truly dead.
We already knew at the beginning of July that there were rumours Nikon was possibly planning to drop the D3x00 series, the D50xx series and that there would be no follow up to the D500. But now it appears two more lines of Nikon DSLRs are to be cancelled.
Nikon is killing off some of their DSLR product lines, rumour claims
A post has popped up on Nikon Rumors suggesting that Nikon is killing off some of their most popular DSLR lines. Specifically, the D3x00 and D5x00 series along with their “Pro” line of DX bodies, currently the Nikon D500. They say that they will “most likely” be replaced by mirrorless models.
It’s a bit of a bummer, although not entirely unexpected, really, and this transition seems mostly limited to their crop DSLRs at the moment. What does surprise me, though, is that they’re not killing off the D7x00 product line.
12-Bit raw video is coming to the Z6 & Z7 and Nikon DSLRs to get CFexpress support
First teased last month at CES with the launch of the Nikon Z6 Filmmaker kit, Nikon has now officially announced that new firmware updates are coming for the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7 mirrorless cameras. One of the things this firmware update will introduce is RAW output via HDMI. Atomos has also now announced that the Atomos Ninja V will be able to record the 12-bit output to Apple ProRes Raw.
Another update mentioned before was that the Z6 and Z7 would also be getting CFexpress support. Well, Nikon has also now confirmed that their DSLRs containing XQD memory card slots (the Nikon D5, D850 and D500) will also receive CFexpress support in a new firmware update.
It costs over $130,000 to deliver this $23,000 Nikon kit to the ISS
The International Space Station holds a whole lot of camera gear. Especially Nikon camera gear, as a recent tweet from astronaut Alexander Gerst illustrates while cutting the hair of fellow astronaut Sergey Prokopyev. Behind them are two walls filled with various camera equipment. But have you ever wondered how much it costs to actually send it up there?
When the tweet was posted to Reddit, user ultrahello mentioned that it costs around $10,000 per pound to deliver items to the International Space Station. This means that the kit in the photo above, a Nikon D5 and 800mm f/5.6E lens with 1.4x teleconverter, weighing a little over 13lbs will have cost at least $130K to send up.
NASA launches 10 Nikon D5 cameras on their first space mission
Back in August, we reported that NASA had ordered 53 unmodified Nikon D5 cameras. Some of them were meant to be used in the astronaut training facilities, while the others were intended to go to the International Space Station. And now it’s official: the first set of Nikon D5 cameras is sent to their first space mission.
The Nikon D850 has the same autofocus system as the D5 but it’s not as good
We know that the Nikon D850 autofocus system isn’t that great for video. This wasn’t really going to be much of a surprise. But it seems that it’s not as quite good as it could be when it comes to stills, either. The Nikon D850 autofocus is the same as that found in the flagship Nikon D5. And while the D850 does seem to outperform just about every other Nikon out there, it can’t keep up with its big brother.
Matt Granger felt that he was missing more shots with the D850 than he was with his D5. So, he puts the two to the test, side by side in this video. With the assistance of a 4th dan taekwondo black belt subject, Matt sets to work pairing the two off against each other.
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