Nikon Japan officially posted pricing on their site this week for the FT1 lens adapter: 23310 yen including 5% consumption tax (US$301). Curiously, a lower price then appeared on the Nikon Direct store site: 19810 yen (US$256). But it still can't be ordered; a notation says "available in the near future."
I notice also that Nikon is now showing a Nikon HN-101 lens hood for the 10mm f/2.8, as well, which hasn't been announced to my knowledge. This is a screw-in filter, very slim, and requires a different Nikon lens cap (!%$^@).
/RANT ON
I fail to see how the camera companies continue to screw up accessories. First, they don't always have a complete set of accessories available on initial product shipment. Second, the ones they do announce often aren't available for quite some time after the product they're to be used on ships. Third, sometimes we never get a simple accessory that users want and have to wait for a third-party manufacturer to figure out that there's demand for it.
These are systems cameras. That means that it is incumbent upon the manufacturer to make them a reasonably complete system from the get go. It doesn't take a Harvard MBA to predict what a camera system needs: lenses, lens hoods, lens adapters, and lens extenders, for example, just in the lens category. If you're not going to make all the things that constitute a complete system, then you need to find third parties to help you fill out the system from day one.
Two, three, six month delays in high-interest accessories is not acceptable, and completely missing a needed accessory is just bad business when you're trying to sell a product. I repeat what I've written for some time: if you want to sell someone a new system, you not only have to announce what you've got on day one, but you need to show a serious and dedicated path to the complete system, which means that you need to publish a roadmap that describes what will eventually be available. Consumers are (reasonably) patient and will tolerate a road map to show how the holes will be filled, but we're not clairvoyant, nor--given previous lapses--are we tolerant of lack of information, either.
/RANT OFF
Okay, that was a bit much for a missing lens hood that apparently won't go missing for long. Still, one wonders how it is that four years into the project Nikon is still not fully ready to deliver a simple lens hood.
