Nikon Rumored To Stop Making SLR Cameras - Here's What It Had To Say

Huge news broke out recently, thanks to Nikkei Asia — allegedly, Nikon has decided to stop producing SLR cameras entirely. If the rumor was to be proven true, it would certainly be a big deal. Nikon has been making cameras for decades. The company, first founded in 1917, started out by making various optical products, but by 1946 it made its first camera. In the years that followed, the company managed to build a lasting brand that continues to win the hearts of photography enthusiasts to this day. Although Nikon's market share pales in comparison to Canon, it's still one of the key players on the global scene. As such, for the brand to ditch SLR and to supposedly shift focus to mirrorless cameras would be a massive change and the end of an era. 

Nikkei Asia published a rather lengthy report on the matter that reads a bit like an obituary of Nikon's SLR cameras. The publication noted that since the release of the Nikon D6 SLR, no new SLR models have been launched. That's two years of silence from Nikon on the SLR camera front, so it makes sense that speculation would begin to bubble up — especially when you look at the state of photography as a whole. Mirrorless cameras are slowly becoming the norm, while digital SLRs (DLSR) are slipping away year by year. In 2021, 3.1 million mirrorless cameras shipped, and that's a million more than DSLR (via 1kCreatives.)

With all of the above taken into consideration, it wouldn't even be that odd for Nikon to throw in the towel and focus its efforts on mirrorless cameras instead of clinging to an aging DSLR technology. What does Nikon have to say about the matter, though? This is where it gets interesting. 

Following such a lengthy farewell to the Nikon DSLR, you'd expect that the company would either say nothing or, if it was ready, it would eventually issue a press release confirming the rumors. That often happens — rumors and leaks very frequently precede an official confirmation from a brand, and this applies both to new product releases and retiring older products, such as this rumor about Apple. However, in the case of Nikon, Nikkei Asia seems to have been mistaken.

The brand wrote a quick news post in regards to the rumor, and in a short paragraph, it proceeded to fully debunk the theory. The company said: "This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regard. Nikon is continuing the production, sales, and service of digital SLR." Although it didn't touch on why there have been no new DSLR camera releases since 2020, Nikon still made things perfectly clear — it's not planning to retire the technology just yet. On the other hand, a keen eye might notice that while Nikon still promises to produce, sell, and service digital SLR cameras, it made no mention as to whether new models are going to be developed.

Let this be a lesson for us all when it comes to trusting rumors. Sometimes, they're just that — rumors and speculations with no guarantee of confirmation. There's no telling what Nikon might choose to do in the future, but for now, it seems that the publication may have jumped the gun by waving goodbye to Nikon's DSLR technology. It seems safe to assume that for the time being, Nikon will continue to produce and sell some of the best DSLR cameras on the market.