The release day might be near. A new wave of rumors are cropping up about the new Nikon top-end professional-grade digital SLR, the D3, with some asserting that a new camera will be announced this month and ship in August.

Many of the reports are cropping up on the Nikon SLR message boards. One May posting cited French photo publication Reponses Photo as saying the Nikon D3 would have an 18.7-megapixel built by Sony and, in what would be a significant departure for Nikon, an image sensor nearly the size of a full frame of 35mm film.

A posting on Thursday cited a “Nikon insider” saying the new Nikon SLR likely would arrive in August and would have a full-frame sensor that would better match top-end Canon models. A follow-up post added that the new camera would handle low-light conditions better. Meanwhile, Thom Hogan, editor of the Nikon DSLR Report, advised a forum reader who had expected a February announcement, “Expect a late June announcement with ship in August/September instead, and you might be less disappointed.”

Nikon didn’t respond to requests for comment. And it should be noted that rumors are not reliable: one report of a Nikon D3 with similar specifications predicted that Nikon would announce the D3 at the Photo Marketing Show in March, which came and went without a peep. June is here already, we might be hearing the official announcement in a matter of weeks!