The Japanese camera manufacturer Nikon is closing a chapter in camera history after more than 60 years.

The company is currently no longer developing single-lens reflex cameras (SLR), said a spokeswoman for the FAZ. At least in perspective, Nikon is drawing the line under a technology that has defined the market for cameras for decades and that the company once made the breakthrough with the models of the F series .

The last new SLR camera Nikon introduced in 2020 was the top-of-the-line digital D6.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan based in Tokyo.

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For Nikon, this does not mean saying goodbye to the camera and lens business.

The company is increasingly aligning its activities in the photo business with so-called mirrorless cameras, which are gaining market share.

Nikon is halting SLR development to focus resources on mirrorless cameras, the company said.

Production, sales and after-sales service for digital SLR cameras also continued, Nikon said in a press release.

The Japanese business newspaper "Nikkei" had previously reported that Nikon wanted to withdraw from the SLR camera business.

Nikon called the report speculative.

"Currently we have stopped the development of SLR, but we have not announced any withdrawal," said the spokeswoman.

In theory, Nikon is thus keeping the door open for new models in classic technology.

But the end of the SLR cameras has been on the shrinking photo market for years.

Sony, which has worked its way into the trio of largest vendors alongside market leader Canon and Nikon, has been popularizing mirrorless cameras for many years.

Canon and Nikon followed the trend belatedly and are now pushing the expansion of corresponding camera systems.

Contributing to this is the fact that companies in the declining market are increasingly turning to higher-priced, higher-margin cameras for upscale amateur and professional photographers, now that mass-market photo needs have been covered by ubiquitous smartphones.

Business mainly with mirrorless technology

Nikon's own forecasts show the perspective farewell to single-lens reflex technology.

In the past fiscal year, business with mirrorless cameras and their lenses contributed a little more than half of Nikon's sales in the photo area, while single-lens reflex technology only accounted for around a quarter.

For 2022, the company expects mirrorless technology to account for more than three quarters and SLR only a small fraction.

Overall, Nikon generated a third of its sales and 38 percent of its operating profit last year with products in the imaging sector.

The company does not expect any major growth prospects in this area and stagnating sales until 2025. Nikon has long been oriented towards new business areas such as medical technology or robotics.

Nikon was not the first company to develop an SLR camera.

Precursors are German developments as early as the 1930s.

VEB-Zeiss Ikon Dresden, which was nationalized in the former GDR, brought the Contax S onto the market in 1949.

The Contax S and the Italian Rectaflex, introduced in 1948, are considered the ancestors of today's digital single-lens reflex cameras.

Companies like Asahi (Pentax) introduced the first SLR cameras in Japan in the early 50's.

With the Model F introduced in April 1959, Nikon then established single-lens reflex technology as the standard for professional photographers and amateurs alike.

In SLR cameras, the light coming through the lens is directed to the viewfinder with a mirror and a pentaprism.

The photographer looks through the lens.

The mirror only folds up just before the picture is taken, so that the negative can be exposed earlier and the digital sensor today.

The flipping up and down of the mirror leads to the loud background noise that press photographers have been spreading for decades.

In today's increasingly common mirrorless cameras, the light falls directly onto the sensor, where it is read out and digitally processed.

The photographer no longer looks through the lens, but in a search at a small electronic screen.

The mirrorless cameras are quieter than the traditional SLR cameras.

A disadvantage of this technology is that the electronic processing of the light signals and the display on the screen takes time.

The image that the photographer sees in the viewfinder before the shutter release is already history.

However, modern chips have accelerated the technology to such an extent that the time delay of fractions of a second is no longer a problem.