by Anura Guruge

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Having owned a Sony a7 II for two months and a Sony a6500 for close to a month, both of them mirrorless and near the top of Sony’s product line, I have to say that I am in AWE of both these cameras — in particular the Sony a7 II. As some of you know I am no stranger to cameras and have owned for rented over 17 cameras in the last 3 years including a Nikon D500, Fuji XT-1, Fuji X-E2S, Sony 6000, Samsung NX500, Canon T3i etc. etc. I have to say I have never enjoyed using a camera as much as I do the a7 II. It is by no means perfect (and to be fair no camera is) BUT the a7 II goes a long way towards being user-friendly, responsive and pretty damn good. Having got used to the a7 II my main grip with the a6500 is the lack of a dedicated exposure value (EV) compensation dial.

For the record I have also owned a superzoom Nikon P900 for nearly a year and am very fond of it — though I will confess that I have hardly used it since getting my latest two Sonys. Though the P900 is justly noted for its amazing zoom one should not overlook that it is a MIRRORLESS — though with a tiny 1/2.3″ sensor.

And I was seriously thinking of getting one or more of the Nikon 1″ DL-series cameras BEFORE they dastardly decided to scrap that product line one-year after they announced it!

So that is the backdrop against which I am weighing the insistent rumor that Nikon plans to announce an APS-C or Full-Frame mirrorless — their first venture into ‘large sensor’ mirrorless cameras.

I am curious as to how they intend to better Sony in terms of technology and the all-crucial Image Quality (IQ) — particularly because Nikon gets many (but not all) of their sensors from Sony.

Yes, I know that 100-year old Nikon is legendary and has a HUGE, devoted army of followers around the world — and they would, of course, be a captive audience for a halfway decent mirrorless IF it offers a clear size/weight differential over a heavy Nikon DSLR.

IF all that Nikon does is offer a higher resolution that would not interest me one iota.

20MP to 24MP is fine for I and I am not going chasing after higher-res. cameras — which is why I refrained from looking at the a7R II or the a99 II.

Where Nikon can change the whole mirrorless landscape is IF it can find a way where the thousands of currently available Nikon lenses can be used on their mirrorless WITHOUT the need for adapters. That would be a game changer. IF that is the case — or even if one could only use 50% of the Nikon lenses — I would seriously give it a look. Lenses are Sony’s Achilles’ heel and Nikon and everybody else, worth their salt, know that.

So, that is where I am right now.

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by Anura Guruge