What is Nikon planning for July 30 and August 4? D3s? D300s? D60s? Lenses?

Now that the E-P1 mania has cooled off a little bit, our Forum Patrol noticed some excitement on the Nikonian front: This must-read dpreview forums thread is discussing what to expect from Nikon. What to expect? Yes, expect, because Swedish website Kamerabild.se says there are two events scheduled by Nikon on July 30 and August 4.

And this should not be a surprise, as August is typically a Coolpix burst-mode month. If you look at 2008, there was a six-pack of Coolpix models headlined by the scandalous quasi-RAWsumer P6000. And in 2007, there was an eight-pack of Coolpix models. So we know there will be plenty of Coolpix models. And we can hope that they can come up with something more advanced and more RAW-friendly than the P6000 [reviews]. Maybe that's why the announcements are spaced apart, so they can give the Coolpixies some breathing room. Which could then perhaps suggest that the Coolpix annies happen on July 30.

But that's not what's generating the excitement in the forums! The excitement is about the potential of new DSLRs. August 2008 saw the ground-breaking Nikon D90. It's highly unlikely we'll see anything D90-related. Where the excitement may come is August 2007. That was when Nikon punched Canon in the mouth with the D3 and D300 power-duo.

Nikon has the habit of producing small letter updates of their DSLRs, like the D70/D70s, D2X/D2Xs, D40/D40x, and so on. So it is possible that one or both of the D3/D300 power-duo may get refreshed, with DSLR-Video of course being the elephant in the room. We already saw an alleged french D300s office leak. Needless to say, a D300s is more likely than a D3s for a number of reasons. But at the same time, one could point out that neither one is actually under pressure from any particular camera - with the exception perhaps of the Pentax K7 expectations-cloud.

On the consumer-tier, considering that the D5000 just came out, and that the D40 has been around since the beginning of time and the D60 is its natural replacement, I doubt they are going to come up with a new camera, unless they have decided to keep the D60 specs/design around for a couple of more years. In which case, they may do a D60s (or D60x if they go with 12mp sensor), which would start a new product lifecycle and buy them additional retail time (eg D70/D70s).

So with that as a long-winded preface, it is time to check the forum discussion, which includes a lot of commentary by Nikon SuperGuru Thom Hogan, and a lot of lens-expectations-talk.