Canon to sell mirrorless cameras with no optical viewfinder

Canon has said it would sell its first mirrorless camera from mid-September in a bid to tap a growing market for small, interchangeable-lens cameras that rival Nikon Corp entered last year.

Canon will manufacture 100,000 of the cameras a month, the company said in a statement.

Mirrorless models have large sensors, providing good picture quality, but no optical viewfinders. That enables manufacturers to keep the camera body smaller and lighter.

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In Japan, where consumers tend to value easily portable products, mirrorless cameras account for around a third of all interchangeable lens models. In the United States, their market share is closer to a tenth.

Canon’s move will ratchet up competition with Nikon, its main rival for hefty single-lens reflex cameras used by professional photographers and enthusiasts.

Shares of Canon were down 3 percent and Nikon was 2.6 percent lower on Monday afternoon, underperforming Tokyo’s broad Topix index, which lost 0.9 percent.