It is now nearly a certainty that Sony and Nikon will introduce new camera models on the 24 August. Sonyalpharumors has more or less the spec of the next model. Which span from the Nex 77 to the alpha A77. On paper they seem to be very good spec. 1080p at 24 to 60fps, avchd 2 (bitrate up to 28mbits), apsc size sensor etc. It is rumored that they have worked a lot to reduce the moire/aliasing/rolling shutter. I am a little puzzled by the specs, I was more or less sure that Sony would omit 24p for example so as to protect the FS-100. I guess that the devil will be in the small details that will be seen on launch. I see more 1080p 24fps at 17mbit and 60fps at 28mbit and a crippled hdmi output. As you can see, I am not too much a Sony believer. Seen so many time how they can cripple their product, that I don't have any faith in them. I need to see to believe.

The Second announcement is from Nikon (Nikonrumors). What started as a new line of camera to replace the d300 and d3, has now change to two full frame cameras. A d800 and D4 to replace the d700 and D3. Details are a bit more sketchy here. It is more of a 18megapixel $ 5000 D4 (low light, sport pg camera) and a $ 2500 24megapixel D800. On the video side, some are speculating of very strong video performance. As a Nikon professional photographer, I have been repeatably disappointed by Nikon, they are the still company that have everything to gain to put some ground breaking technology to take market share in the large sensor camera. The dslr revolution has brought a total new market that they could not have dreamed before. For now the market is not mature and people can change brand very rapidly. I hope that this time they will not miss the boat. Either one of these would be a basic minimum for me. A 10bit 422 high bitrate codec (or/and) An uncompressed 10bit 422 hdmi output that can be recorded by external recorders (or/and) At least a limited (time/buffer) HD raw output.