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Amen !

(And I was able to believe these are your own thoughts ... whereas if you’d said “glass” instead of “lenses” I woulda quit reading, cuz certain vocabulary such as “glass” or “nifty fifty” warns me that the material is most likely nothing more than mindless regurgitation.)

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Why are you going to choose failure when a mirrorless camera is an option?

petrochemist Loc: UK

No I did mean 4000mm it's arround 450mm long and about 70mm od, only f/64 at this end of the zoom so not much use. At the wide end it's a 1000mm f/16 which can give semi acceptable results but to be honest I'd generally rather crop a 500mm or 600mm.
500mm is longest I carry routinely.

The Nikon mount might have technical advantages but that does not mean Sony's is doomed to failure. Despite the Z mounts technical advantages I'd currently much rather use e-mount perhaps this will change when z-mount has been around for 5 years & 3rd party adapters proliferate.

baron_silverton Loc: Los Angeles, CA

First, thank you for the clarification on the lens - that is pretty incredible - I did not know there was a 4000mm lens out there that works on an SLR/mirrorless style camera - pretty cool even though it seems to be very impractical as you have pointed out.

Secondly, I did not mean to imply that Sony was doomed to failure.

To the contrary, they seem to be making excellent products. They had a huge lead which is now narrowing significantly, but I do not expect them to go away by any means.

First, Sony is the wealthiest company of the three big boys (Sony, Canon and Nikon - Nikon being by far the smallest and perhaps not even an 'big boy' in comparison). Thus, Sony can continue to produce cameras and lenses for as long as they want as they do not rely on revenue from this small part of their business to survive. Sony will be around for as long as they choose to be in the game. And to be clear, I believe that they are good products and amazing photography can and has been created using Sony products, and will continue to be. Great photography is about photographers and knowledge of lighting - not camera systems.

My point about Nikon was simply that they are now close with autofocus (although even the Z6 II does not seem to be all the way there - but it is probably 85% of the way). The next releases next year will likely be 100% on par with Canon and Sony with respect to AF and as it sits now with the version II's its close enough for all photography with the possible exception of professional sports photographers. Next year's Z9 will take care of this issue and it will no longer be a thing that Nikon is behind in AF.

After that, there is really very little weakness in the Z line up. The camera's build quality is second to none as are the RAW files. As far as lenses go, by next year they will have everything from 14mm to 600mm with 1.4 and X2 teleconverters to extend to 1200mm - this means that there is a Nikon lens for any style of shooting that someone is into, and on top of that any other lens can be adapted to Nikon and new adapters are coming out all the time: currently the ones I know about are: Sony E to Z; Canon EF to Z, and an autofocus adaptor for Leica M (manual focus lenses) to actually autofocus on Z bodies - pretty amazing actually.

The quality of the Z glass is second to none. Canon RF is great as well, but the Z lenses compete head to head with them as well as Zeiss and just about anything else you can throw at them. The Nikon 50mm 1.8 S line lens is likely the best 50 1.8 ever made by anyone - certainly for the price - it can be had for around $500 and easily competes with lenses that are upwards of $3500. The entire line of Z S line lenses are similarly spectacular - the holy trinity (14-24 2.8, 24-70 2.8, and 70-200 2,8) is now out, and all three of them seems to be class leading and each one likely to be the best on the market. I have two of these lenses and they are spectacular.

Once Nikon gets the autofocus fully locked down (and it is now 85% of the way there) there will simply be no more significant flaws with the Nikon system.

I foresee all current Nikon DSLR users (and there are millions) migrating to the Z system - when this happens they will be comfortably number 2 in the market again, but I also foresee many from other brands making the switch when they realize the incredible value for the money Nikon is offering. The 1.8 lenses are spectacular and the bodies are more affordable than the new canon stuff and much of the Sony line up.

If you are into fast lenses as I am, the 50mm 1.2 is being released next month and the 85 1.2 next year - these lenses promise to be second to none as well. More importantly, they signal that Nikon is going to do a full line of ultra fast glass - can't wait to see what will come next.

Nikon's future is very bright as long as they can survive the next 2-3 years which is why they have laid off a lot of folks and streamlined their operation - they will not be losing money much longer and the R&D for the theoretically best mirrorless system has largely already been spent. Now they just need to crank out the most amazing optics for the physically best mount, and making great optics has never been a problem for Nikon - they started as an optics company - in fact they made all the lenses for the original Canon cameras.

All this said, I do not think that Sony is doomed or going away. They have a nice system that they have designed and we all owe eye detect AF to them as they really pioneered it and made it really work. Thanks to them my Nikon's have this feature that I use a lot.

Sony is a very successful company and will go on, and this makes me happy because in truth we all should want as many camera companies to succeed as possible - this means better prices for consumers and more innovation - both are great things for us.

So, long like Sony! Long live Canon! And yes Long Live Nikon - it appears Nikon will be back in full force very soon.

Thanks.
-B