Great News from Nikon!

...Nikon will be making smaller, lighter lenses for the Z-series cameras in the future.

But before we get to the good news, more about flange distance, a subject near and dear to your heart. (You are permitted to skip ahead.)

To review: "flange distance" is the measurement between the plate of the lensmount (where it meets the lens) and the sensor plane. It's an issue because SLRs have to leave room in that area for the flippin' mirror. "Throat diameter" is the diameter of the lensmount—the size of the hole in the camera where the lens goes. The "exit pupil," which is the lens design parameter normally limited by flange distance and throat diameter, is the virtual aperture of a lens, or, the image of the aperture in the optics that follow it. It's easier to understand this way: when you hold a lens that is stopped down to its taking aperture and look into the back of it, the image-forming light from the lens can get to your eye as long as you can see the aperture (Latin for "hole"). If you hold the lens at such an angle that you can't see the hole, then the lens can't cast an image at that angle. Obviously, the smaller the hole, the greater the angle at which it can be seen. This is why large-aperture lenses are the ones limited by the exit pupil. (And it's also why certain enlarging lenses could "cover" larger formats only when stopped down.)

A commenter on DPReview named bobn2 has given a nice explanation of the relationship between flange distance, throat diameter, and exit pupil.

Next up we have a young Nikon engineer giving an explanation of Nikon's design goals in this area, in a video entitled "Z Mount System Structure & Design." He speaks English with a heavy Japanese accent, but the video is subtitled.

Get to the news
Happily, Imaging Resource is reporting that Nikon will indeed introduce a line of cheaper—and presumably smaller and lighter—lenses to complement the all-out high-IQ S-Series lenses. Dave Etchells of Imaging Resource broke the news in an article entitled "IR Interview: A deeper dive with the Nikon Z7 engineers." He writes, "This wasn't actually part of my interview questions, but eagle-eyed IR editor Eamon Hickey noticed it in a brochure handed out at the launch event in New York City. While the focus (no pun intended) at launch was on the very high optical performance of planned S-series lenses, Nikon has publicly stated that there will be 'non-S' lenses at some point in the future. Nikon's Z-series lens roadmap extends through mid-2020, so these presumably lower-performance but cheaper lenses will only come at some later point."

Eamon says: "As I mentioned earlier, Nikon could use the flexibility provided by the new geometry of the Z mount to make smaller lenses (what most people seemed to expect) or they could use it to make what they claim to be super high quality lenses (what they have so far been talking about).

"Of course, they could actually do both, and—Eureka!—they plan to, as Imaging-Resource noted in Dave Etchells' interesting interview with Nikon engineers. Nikon just hasn't talked about the smaller, cheaper lenses (undoubtedly because they didn't want to distract from the message about the high quality of the S-Line lenses for the Z mount).

"But they did reveal their plans in a little-noticed section of a brochure titled 'A New Era in Optics' that seems to have slipped mostly under the radar. There will be a second group of lenses for the Z mount, which will not be part of the 'S-Line.' (As of now, the best name Nikon has for them is 'other lenses,' which amuses me.) These 'other lenses' will put a greater emphasis on 'compactness and value for money' in Nikon's words.

Page 10 of "A New Era in Optics," showing two different categories of
Z-mount lenses: S-Line and "Other lenses."

 "They didn't show any of these lenses on their official lens roadmap, but the roadmap is clearly limited to the S-Line optics. (I did see a different version of the roadmap, which I didn't think to photograph, that carried additional hints, though no specifics or hard dates.) From what Dave and the rest of us were able to learn, I wouldn't expect to see them any time in the next 12 months, quite possibly longer. And, of course, it's not hard to guess that they will probably be introduced alongside at least one cheaper, likely smaller Z mount body to match."

Dave Etchells concurs, in IR's interview: "I wouldn't be surprised if Nikon announces a lower-cost body in that time frame as well—but Nikon of course makes no statements about future products; even the note that there would be non-S lenses at some point is a little unusual for them.)"

Mike
(Thanks to Eamon)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Gerard Geradts: "A lot of Americans speak English with a heavy accent."

Mike replies: Well, the Nikon engineer speaks English with a heavy accent no matter where you learned your English. But speaking of accents, I was listening to a video of the Scottish snooker player John Higgins the other day, and I could barely understand him! It was the weirdest thing...I'd catch a word and be able to follow along for a sentence or two, and then I'd lose it and suddenly he'd morph into speaking he same garble of unintelligible sounds we hear when listening to a language with which we're not familiar. Something about a thick Scottish accent is just very difficult for me to get a handle on.

Here's a fella from Kentucky who speaks very plain.

One of my favorite stories about accents was that I once met a guy from Evansville, which is right across the Ohio River from Kentucky at the extreme Southern tip of Indiana. He spoke with a lovely, soft Southern accent, and I complimented him on it. He replied, "Oh, no, I don't speak with any accent." Then he paused contemplatively for a minute and added, "But them folks across the river in Kentucky do speak with a little bit of a twang, now that you mention it." I'm sure he had used that line many times before, and I also suspect he was one of those Americans who cultivate their regional accent on purpose (I love meeting those folks).

Comments

[MikeR]

I LOVE flange distance! Nothing excites me more.

I skipped ahead to the comments. I'll read the entire article later.

[Do I detect a whiff of insincerity? --Mike]

[Dennis]

Re: "Other Lenses" ... Just thinking that Nikon might want to lay claim to a letter of the alphabet sooner rather than later. Sony has A mount and E mount (but muddies that up with "FE"). (And, of course, they're all Alphas and use 'A' in their camera model names). Canon uses EOS, but has EOS-M and their new mirrorless system is rumored to be called EOS R. Nikon, itself, has F mount (in DX and FX) and the old Nikon 1 mount (in CX) and uses 'D' on DSLR names (and Z, now). Olympus uses E extensively for various camera models and Panasonic likes 'G'. Sony also uses G for high end lens designations (the old Minolta 'G' lens updated to be GM or "G-Master") while Canon uses 'L' (and Nikon just puts gold rings on theirs). Pentax has K (and has used Q - they've probably ruined Q for anyone else). Fuji is all about the X. I'm not even going to go look up all the letters Sigma, Tamron and Tokina use. I suppose, though, that Nikon will simply not give the "other lenses" a designation (reserving the designation 'S' for its higher end lenses). That would be a lot easier than trying to pick a letter from what's left.
Maybe they should take a page from Zeiss' book and come up with seemingly meaningless names, like Touit, Batis and Otus.

[s.wolters]

But the bad news for Nikon is that there is going to be more mirrorless FF competition:
https://www.43rumors.com/ft5-panasonic-will-announce-its-first-full-frame-system-camera-on-september-25/

[SteveW]

Perfect. In about 5 years or so I can retire the D750 and go for the middle of the road Nikon Z camera and some compact primes. I'll need IBIS by then I'm sure. A nice compact 28/50/85 combo and life is good.

[PacNW]

Perhaps it is possible that some of those "other lenses" will have an image circle that only covers APS-C, and that there will be some smaller cameras with a smaller sensor and the big lens mount.

[s.wolters]

Maybe we should stop following news about the latest gear here and come back in three years or so.
https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/hot-these-are-the-lenses-for-the-canon-eos-r-full-frame-mirrorless-50mm-f-1-2-28-70mm-f-2-0-terrific/

[c.d.embrey]

Ho-hum! I'm sick of tedium inducing Nikon news. I'm waiting for Canon's Full Frame Mirroress to be announced. Now that would feed my G.A.S. fire 8-)

[Robert Pillow]

So not all Z lenses will be massive; some will be for the masses. This is good news.

[Mike Plews]

Nikon needs to send a contingent of engineers to Sam Amato's Italian Deli in Omaha. It is the home of the finest pancakes on the planet and if there's anything these cameras scream out for it's some nice pancakes.
By the way I recommend one of their ricotta, blueberry cakes with a side of home made Italian sausage. Sounds strange but it's ambrosia.

[MikeR]

[Do I detect a whiff of insincerity? --Mike]

Just a bit of puckishness this morning.

The reduction in flange distance in micro 4/3rds cameras enabled me to play with old lenses. REALLY love old lenses. Not an easy fascination to explain, especially to spouse-type people. At the same time, my pragmatic side sometimes takes over, forcing me to ask, "Why the hell do I have all these old lenses? (And cameras?)"

We humans often don't make sense, do we?

[Truth]

I wouldn't listen to Bobn2, he's a well known troll on dpr forums infamous for his equivalence "entertainment".

[hugh crawford]

Of course Nikon will make some low cost lenses. Samyang, Tamron, Sigma, Tokina et. al. will be jumping in soon. As soon as they do you will hear about Nikon's plans.

Re: flange distance and throat diameter. Sony actual got it sort of wrong for some extreme edge conditions*. The flange distance is a little too short and the throat diameter is a little too small. If the exit pupil is too big or far away the flange will actually cast a shadow on the sensor.

For example if you are making a $1 500mm tilt shift lens out of dollar store reading glasses, or other less esoteric but harder to describe scenarios treating the a7 as the back of a view camera you may encounter this problem.

Of course the a7 sensor and micro-lens package itself is pretty constrained by its design to a limited range of exit pupil sizes and locations that is actually more limiting than the flange design.

The Nikon flange design looks like it might be less sensitive to exit pupil size and location. If Nikon is really going to get all the performance out of it's 58mm f/0.95 S Noct the sensor design will be less optimized for a specific exit pupil.

All products are defined by compromises, trade offs, and optimizations. Nikon has made some interesting choices apparently giving up for example small size and optimum sensor sensitivity with slow lenses of a specific design for the ability to take advantage of really fast lenses. Other flexibility may be a side benefit.

* I live for extreme edge conditions, just ask the programmers that used to work for me.

[Oskar Ojala]

All the years following the computer industry have made me think is that what matters is the gear I have now and the gear I can buy more or less immediately. Everything else is uncertain and doesn't help me getting results.

[Eolake]

I for one read the entire post. Good description of the flange distance thingie.

I too am pleased about this. And I have decided that it has been my frequent bitching over the last few years about lens sizes which swayed them.

[Kodachromeguy]

If that advertising picture of the new Z lenses is to scale, that f/0.95 Noct lens will be big bruiser. Wow. The Leitz Noctilux was big, but this thing will be the Bismarck of lenses.

[Arg]

Like Sony, who released the original A7 with a set of 3 'Zony' lenses, 35mm, 55mm, and 24-70/4, that were $800-1200, then 3 years later released a couple (now 3) of FE budget lenses.

[John Robison]

Nikon needs to re-release their ‘amusing lens’ three lens combo that had a too short a run about 2 or 3 decades ago.

[Richard Parkin]

The “fella from Kentucky” speaks very clearly and easily understood by this Englishman who has no accent himself (haha!) but I have no idea what you mean by he “speaks very plain”, plain speaking being quite a different thing in proper English ;-).

[I mean he speaks with directness, expressing himself frankly and without apparent artifice. --Mike]

[Len Salem]

As a 14 year old English boy on holiday with his parents at an English seaside, many, many, years ago, I remember getting a huge crush on a beautiful girl about my age who was also staying there.
I never spoke a word to her partly because of my innate shyness but also because she clearly didn’t speak English.
After she left, I mentioned to my parents that the German girl had seemed very nice.
Not German, they corrected me, Scottish!
Aagh….

[Stephen Scharf]

I really enjoyed that video and found him easy to understand despite his accent. That gentleman is a very bright guy. Also impressed with his ability to write backwards! ;-)

[Richard Parkin]

[I mean he speaks with directness, expressing himself frankly and without apparent artifice. --Mike]
He does indeed. Having looked it up I see that is the US usage whereas for us plain speaking implies bluntness bordering on rudeness.
Just for the record, I was not picking away at your description — I find it tiresome when occasionally commentards do that and anyway I like the many, many peculiarities of English, both native [ ;-) ] and international.

[MikeK]

Speaking as a Scot, I have to say that John Higgins doesn't have a thick accent. Try to find an old Aberdeenshire farmer speaking doric and you'll find the true meaning of unintelligible...

[Rick Popham]

The video of the Nikon engineer was pretty informative. Over the years I‘ve heard talk about the limitations of the F mount (mostly in the context of adapting lenses), but this piece illustrated it nicely.

And that guy speaks English WAY better than I speak Japanese! Also noticed that he pronounced “Nikon” as we do in The US, with the long I — N”eye”kon.

[PacNW]

Comedy skit about Scottish accents and a voice-controlled elevator:

https://youtu.be/sAz_UvnUeuU