A rumour dropped this week that Nikon was no longer going to be making F-Mount products. The initial story appeared on Nikon Rumors and spread quickly around the interwebs.
Nikon Rumors claimed that a source had confirmed that the camera brand would be ceasing all their F-Mount-related lenses and camera bodies in favour of their newer mirrorless lineup. However, Nikon has since denied this claim.
“All Nikon F-mount products are already out of production,” says the original post on Nikon Rumors. “This means that once the current inventory is depleted, the F-mount cameras and lenses will simply be discontinued and never produced again.”
However, according to Petapixel, Nikon has denied this and has stated that this is, in fact, untrue. “We cannot comment on rumors written on external websites. Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of F-mount products,” the company told PetaPixel yesterday.
Petapixel seems to believe Nikon’s statement, citing several examples from sales websites where F-Mount products are readily available. However, those could just be part of existing stocks. As the rumour says, if production has indeed stopped, then once those existing stocks are gone, they won’t be replaced.
On the other hand, Nikon’s statement says pretty clearly that they are continuing production of F-Mount products. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the rumour isn’t correct (yes, I know, it’s confusing!). Just last year, Nikon announced that they were killing off another seven F-Mount lenses. That’s on top of the DSLRs that they already stopped producing.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a camera brand has declared that they aren’t killing off a particular system only to do a complete 180 then and announce that they are discontinuing it soon after. Oftentimes, there is a thread of truth behind these rumours.
Canon denied for a long time that they weren’t killing off either their EF-mount DSLRs and lenses or their M-mount products. Shortly after came an announcement that they were indeed stopping the manufacturing of those products. It happens.
If you’re a die-hard F-Mount user and need more gear, then my advice would be to get your ducks in a row sooner rather than later. Because it could go either way.
[via petapixel]
