Silly Season at Nikon Rumors

My goodness but Nikon Rumors is terribly desperate for a Z8 to be officially announced.

Nikon must be doing a pretty good job of keeping a lid on Z-mount camera bodies in development. There hasn't be a legitimate, really juicy rumor in at least nine months. It's clearly getting to the NR admin.

NR is so desperate for something - anything - with Z9 tech lineage to be announced that they've played up several incredibly thin rumors the last couple of months. The first was the mysterious meeting in March that was going to be the Z8 introduction
Nothing burger.

Just a week or so ago, it was a reference to official Nikon communication about exciting new tech in development. This supposed veiled reference to the Z8 ended up being corporate communication about a product in development in ikon's biomedical division.

This week's breaking story is leaked Z8 photos and specs from a backwater Nikon site. The photo was a mock up some random dude made and released 2+ years ago. The website snafu was a whole lotta nothing.

It's actually a bit entertaining watching as rumor after rumor ends up being nothing but hot air. Is there a Z8 in development? Probably? When will it be introduced? Nobody knows; least of all the admins at the rumor sites...including NR.

My $0.02 is that Nikon is waiting for the Red patent infringement case to be resolved before introducing any new bodies that would be impacted by a ruling/agreement on licensing fees. If that's the case, we're looking at late 2023 for the next major camera body intro.

With my luck, Nikon will make the intro next Wednesday just to embarrass me. If that happens, I'm takin' credit :)

There lies the problem if they bring out a z8, it will be that good it will be a 10 year life span camera. same as when sony announced the a74 it was the first camera i have bought in the release year. and it will my camera for 10 years now. Nikon has no where else to go but top of the line mid camera.

ymcinema.com/2022/08/09/the-patent-war-for-raw/

PS: just in case, like me: You don't knows what that's referred to.

If the Z6/7 series updates were given there Expeed7 processor, might that facilitate improved AF or other desirable features?

You're hypothesis concerning the RED lawsuit makes plenty of sense. It would be difficult to finalize specifications and firmware with the litigation.

To me, as a software developer, it does not make sense to interrupt firmware development because a patent dispute about a tiny option. It is common practice to have flags in the development to in-/exclude some options. No reason to stop or interrupt anything. Develop the firmware with all planned features and include a flag to disable the feature that is in dispute. Depending of the outcome of the dispute there are different options for future updates:
- RED wins and no licensing: let it disabled
- RED wins with a license agreement: enable it and pay the license for all cameras, or make it a payed option
- NIKON wins: simple enable the option

For the specification it should be possible to include it with reservation and a hint to the ongoing dispute.

The admin is fully on the Z8 warpath:
nikonrumors.com/2023/04/23/the-latest-nikon-z8-rumors-teaser-campaign-rumored-to-start-in-a-few-days.aspx/
Here's a couple of nice testable predictions:

That schedule might allow for the first petapixelTV episode to cover the Z8 preview, depending on how much detail is teased (it might just be videos of men in speedos like the Z9 teasers) and whether the NR admin is right

I hope he's right.

I agree Bill, NR is desperate. They even posted one a couple months ago announcing Nikon would be doing firmware updates on some of their existing cameras in the future. Um...what? Was that ever in doubt?

The leak of the low-res brochure today certainly makes Nikon Rumors predictions look pretty accurate.

youtu.be/aQFUHjhwVe8

This guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

A new camera that they're apparently comparing to the Z9, in the brochure. So sure, it's not confirmed to be a Z8, but it sure is looking increasingly likely that it will be.

All this reminds me of the Nikon D400 saga of some years ago. I never did get my hands on one.