Cyber Monday Sports-Car Nikon

Cyber Monday deal, effective today: full-frame Nikon D610 with 50mm lens, mobile wireless adapter, and vertical grip / battery pack for only $896.95. That's a discount of $1,100 off the regular price.

In other words, they're giving this away today and tomorrow. And the lens isn't the old "nifty fifty." It's the new (June 2011) ƒ/1.8G lens that normally goes for $217 and is currently on sale for $177. It weighs only 6.5 oz. (185g) and thus effectively lightens the camera. It's a classic 7-element Planar type with the convex and concave surfaces between elements 4 and 5 (you count from the objective, AKA the outermost, element inwards) that I much prefer in lenses of this type—it predicts excellent bokeh, which this lens exhibits. It's not a premium lens by today's seriously over-the-top standards, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts it's better than almost any 50mm lens you could buy 40 years ago. An excellent classic lens design, and you're getting it for less than nothing. I'd prefer it, for the excellent bokeh, but then I'd use it in the traditional way: stopped down almost always, except in cases where I absolutely needed the speed. I don't like today's big, heavy, expensive primes, with their aseptic, analytical, look-at-me rendering.

I owned the bigger Nikon DSLR...an earlier version, the D800. Is it wrong that I actually preferred the D600 at the time? Lighter, handier, easier on the computer storage, and somehow it seemed more responsive to me. But then, I'm a sports car guy, not a muscle car guy.

Funny how camera prices have gone up and down. True, cameramakers are charging more for cameras these days, and it seems (pretty transparently) to be a business strategy. But then you can get really great deals—I mean real bargains—like this. Remember that equally fantastic bargain on the Fuji X-H1? Well, the X-H1 lists as "discontinued" across the board on B&H now. Gone. This D610 will likely be gone soon too. They're asking you if you'd like one of the last ones for very little money while they still have a few. It's a camera you could use for ten years for <$90 per year(!!), and for the right buyer, man, what a deal.

Mike

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

Michael J. Perini: "My daughter owns and loves this lens (she shoots weddings). A great bargain, a near giveaway here.

"By the way the space is between elements 3 and 4 (not 4 and 5) and both of those lens surfaces are concave, just oriented in opposite directions."

Mike replies: No, I said what I mean—I'm talking about the cemented surfaces in the 4/5 group. In many Planar-types both those surfaces are flat, to save money. That doesn't impact the plane of focus performance much, but it influences the look of the bokeh.

Malcolm Myers: "Interesting that they get rid of old digital stock at rock-bottom prices, yet you can still buy an F6 brand new some fifteen years after it was launched."

Mike replies: That's a completely different sales strategy. What they're doing there is regulating the outflow of the "new old stock" (NOS). NOS means new items that were manufactured a long time ago but still being warehoused. The idea is to keep the item in stock for a long as possible so it can be catalogued as being available new, and no official decision has to be made to either discontinue the product or make another production run. They're not going to do another production run of the F6. If they wanted to close it out, they could, but they'd rather keep it in the catalog. The price is raised to put a damper on the rate of sales so it doesn't sell too fast.

Pentax did this for years with the LX. The LX remained officially "in production" for many years after the last batch was made; but by the end, the price had risen to a king's ransom.

As electronic products, there are two reasons digital cameras aren't kept in stock like that.

One is that the company knows the tech and features are going to be outdated quickly. The crucial difference is that with the F6, demand will fall to a trickle, but there will still be demand. Whereas with a digital camera, demand will fall to zero. With low demand, the price per unit can go up; with no demand, it can't. Nikon will still occasionally sell an F6 (introduced 2004) for $2,550. But if it had NOS 2004 D70's in the boxes brand new, it most likely couldn't sell any for any price. (On eBay those are going for $20–40, mainly for conversion to infrared. If Pentax still had NOS LX's hanging around, it could sell a few every year, for high prices. That's because the demand has fallen very low but it has never gone to zero.

The other reason is so the company doesn't have to maintain a stock of spare parts to guarantee repairability. Nikon probably has a protocol for how long it will guarantee a stock of parts for cameras of every category—longest for professional products, shortest for low-end consumer models. But the sooner the D610 can be officially discontinued, the sooner the clock can start ticking on the period during which parts will be provided and repairability will be guaranteed, whatever that is.

I hope Ned or Eamon will correct me if I'm wrong about any of this. I'm just guessing; I don't have any firsthand knowledge of Pentax or Nikon policy.

Speaking of NOS, before they changed the tax laws, publishers could keep old books in stock as NOS and gradually raise the price as the stock sold, in order to keep the book in the catalog. Rumor had it that in the 1980s, Oxford University Press was cataloguing and selling brand new copies of books that had actually been printed in the late 1800s!

Eamon Hickey: "I think your description of Nikon's thinking re: the F6 vs. the digital models is very likely correct, but I can't say for sure from personal knowledge of that particular issue. I never heard any decision-makers talk about it. On the question of repairability, you're correct that Nikon (and everybody else) has official protocols, but I don't think they are 'guarantees' in the legal sense—i.e. an enforceable contractural obligation. I do know what Nikon's used to be: Nikon had an official plan to keep spare parts available for all cameras for five years after they were discontinued. For pro-level cameras, it was clearly longer than five years, although that was never stated explicitly in my hearing. For lenses, the plan was to stock spare parts for 10 years after the model was discontinued. In practice, when I had to day-to-day experience with these things, most cameras and lenses could be repaired by Nikon or other repair shops, with stockpiled spare parts, for significantly longer than the five- and 10-year targets.

"Important caveat: I don't know if these protocols are still in effect at Nikon. They could easily have changed in the last 10 or 15 years without me knowing about it."

Steve Rosenblum: "There are quite a few people in the review section for this camera on the B&H site complaining of sensor oil and dust problems that Nikon has failed to resolve. Perhaps that is another reason for the low price?"

Mike replies: I thought those problems were on the D600 and were solved on the D610. I thought that was the rationale for the +10 update. No?

Dogman replies to Steve and Mike: "The D610 is a very competent camera. It is the replacement for the D600 that had the shutter that splashed oil on the sensor. Nikon did (reluctantly and belatedly) replace the shutters in D600 cameras under warranty but the camera had gained a reputation by then. The D610 has a new shutter and a few new features over the D600. The vast majority of reports I've read indicate the oily sensor issue has been resolved but you still see an occasional owner's review saying their particular camera has a dirty sensor. Personally, my Fuji mirrorless cameras get more crap on their sensors than any of the DSLRs I've ever owned, including a D610. I very much like my D610, bought 'well used' and still plugging along without any issues whatsoever.

"The 50mm ƒ/1.8 Nikkor is a sweet lens that I also like a lot. I've read user reports that indicate the ƒ/1.8 lens outperforms the current ƒ/1.4 model. I only know I like what mine gives me."

Comments

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

"... aseptic, analytical, look-at-me rendering"

LOL. You do have a way wid da words.

[jseliger]

Has the A7 II been under $1K for a while now? It would seem like a better choice for most shooters, I think.

[Rodolfo Canet Castelló]

Well, this offer, together with those of Sony A7 and A7II, mean that going FF isn't really a question of having lots of money!

[Martin D]

Interesting remarks regarding NOS and digital cameras. I have a related question, addressed at the engineers and camera dealers among us.

I truly love the Fuji XPro2: I think its sensor is good enough, and I don't expect future versions to make my shooting any easier. I want continuity of use. Suppose I want to be able to keep using this particular camera model for a long time, well beyond its end of production. Suppose I am willing to keep several bodies around, with the aim of keeping at least one of them alive for, say, 16 or 20 years. Let's make that four bodies. How do I use them best?

Do I use two bodies as my regular work bodies and keep the other two in storage, until one of the active ones breaks down? Or do I use them all at equal intensity, perhaps rotating them every month? Or should I use one body most of the time but bring each of the others into the rotation occasionally, just to keep the shutter and the few other moving parts well-oiled?

If I store a camera away for a while, what do I watch out for? Presumably I keep the batteries in the body but recharge them regularly, and I keep the camera in dry conditions, and at constant temperature? If a part fails and replacement parts are no longer available from the manufacturer, can an independendt repair person use the parts from another body, or are modern bodies an all or nothing proposition?

I am aware that these are slightly crazy concerns, but such is love.

[Phil]

In reference to your answer to Malcolm's comment: I benefited greatly from Pentax having kept the LX in their catalogue for a long time. I bought one in 1983 and it was stolen in 1996. I had insured it properly ("all loss/replacement cost") and so when the camera shop gave their estimate to the insurance company, I was astonished to find that the LX was worth, as you say, a king's ransom. Among the lenses that were also taken at the same time was a SMC* (star) 300mm which was also, it turned out, generously priced in their catalogue. So my misfortune at losing my complete kit was turned into a bit of a "kid in a candy store" scenario where I could pick and choose whatever I wanted. At the time I wanted to get something with the latest auto-focus tech so I went with Minolta gear but that's a story for another day.

[roger fisher]

Hi Mike,
Camera Clinic ( a top class repair place in Melbourne) tell me that Nikon have withdrawn support for the D300 and parts will be unavailable
i was considering converting my D300 to IR, they suggest i convert my OMD EM1 instead!
meantime my IR D70 is erratic but still functioning.
kind regards

roger fisher

[Steve Rosenblum]

There are quite a few people in the review section for this camera on BH site complaining of sensor oil and dust problems that Nikon has failed to resolve. Perhaps that is another reason for the low price?

[I thought those problems were on the D600 and were solved on the D610. I thought that was the rationale for the +10 update. No? --Mike]

[Robin Dreyer]

Yeah, I got one of those fantastic deals on the XH-1--thanks to TOP, and I certainly hope you got your kickback. A lot of camera for the money, and I'm having fun with it, too.