So Nikon has announced their entry into the compact interchangeable lens camera market, I posted about it yesterday. Apparently the, “what the hell is this shit” reaction has been strong enough that DPReview felt they needed to come to Nikon’s defense on sensor size. Having slept on it, the more I have to wonder what Nikon was thinking when they were designing this.

The question that should always be asked when breaking the status quo is, “what problem are we solving and is it the right problem to solve?”

Clearly there is a problem, for the past year or so Nikon and Canon have been steadily losing market share in Japan to the likes of Olympus, Sony, and Samsung and their compact mirror-less cameras. There’s clearly a market demand for these cameras, so much so that Olympus has completely left the SLR business, and is focusing entirely on mirror-less cameras. The writing has been on the wall for a while, have a compact interchangeable lens camera, or risk being left behind.

The real question though, is what is prompting consumers to buy these cameras and how do you address that need better than the competition.

Compact interchangeable lens cameras are a compromise, not that any camera isn’t. The question is where do you make that compromise and who do you aim towards? I think the answer is the higher the better. You can always pair back a higher end platform to make a lower end camera, but going the other way is difficult if not impossible. Moreover, the choices you make now bind you for the foreseeable future. This is especially true with cameras where the investment in a platform can last decades or more. Undershoot what the market wants in a couple of years, and you may be forced to reinvent the wheel again—segmenting your market when the competition has avoided doing that to theirs.

This brings us back to the Nikon 1. The small sensor means the camera will always be behind Sony and Olympus IQ wise. Now you might argue that it’s not going to be a serious photographers main camera. To which I’d point out the problem is the Sony NEX, and Olympus PENs are aiming to be a serious photographers main camera. Both of those systems target everyone from casual photographer to serious photographer; the Nikon 1 by virtue of the sensor size is only effectively able to target the casual market. Why would you limit the ability to include a whole market segment by design?

More over, Nikon has done a good job in shooting themselves in the foot right out of the gate. Making a larger sensor mirror-less body would likely require a different mount; meaning a fractured, at best, or quickly obsoleted, at worst, product line.

I’ve said it before, but if you’re trying to make a high end compact, a fixed lens over a large sensor will always be capable of being more compact than an interchangeable one. Moreover, the integrated package keeps dust off the sensor, cuts the costs, and allows the lens and sensor to be optimized for the best image quality. Conversely if you’re aiming for serious photographers, who want the ability to change lenses; small sensors, ultra tiny hard to hold bodies, and no controls simply doesn’t hack it and wont sell well. The interchangeable lens mount just adds costs and means that there are more compromises in the design. Whether the Nikon 1 proves to be a success or not remains to be seen, hopefully for Nikon it will be.