Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Mirrorless Cameras => Topic started by: Steve H. on January 30, 2014, 04:42:02 pm
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For anyone interested, the folks at LensRentals opened & documented the guts of the a7r. :) Rather nice piece of engineering. Here's a link to the article: http://petapixel.com/2014/01/30/lensrentals-cracks-open-sony-a7r-gives-us-peak-electronic-goods/
Steve
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"...This is rather amazing. The completely disassembled Sony A7R consists of about a dozen major pieces, held together with 29 screws of just three different sizes. A typical DSLR has around 120 screws of 11 different sizes.
You might not care less about that, but do you know what I thought about? How much easier it will be to fix this camera when it breaks. How much simpler it must be to perform all the calibration that must be done during assembly. And how much simpler it must be to assemble the A7R in the first place. In other words, how much cheaper it must be to make this camera, than to make a DSLR."
The future of Pro camera making has started and this litte thing paves the way.
Very impressive mindset showing in this piece of engineering !
Greetings from Germany
Stefan
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Yes, it really is a well-crafted & thought-out piece of camera engineering. Now if they can fix that shutter vibration issue... :). That aside, a great step forward.
Steve
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Hi,
Just, to say, if there is a focal plane shutter there will be some vibration. It's a law of physics called conservation of momentum. It may be a bit more on A7r.
Next generation will probably have first electronic curtain which reduces the problem a bit. I don't think it eliminates it fully. In addition it improves response time.
Best regards
Erik
Yes, it really is a well-crafted & thought-out piece of camera engineering. Now if they can fix that shutter vibration issue... :). That aside, a great step forward.
Steve
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Thanks Erik!
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Interesting, basically a sensor on a PCB with a few wires. Very quick and cost effective to make.
I'd wager the margins are good on the A7 models very good.
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With EVFs and main-sensor AF improving rapidly, one remaining question is the cost of a good EVF panel compared to a good (pentaprism, not pentamirror) SLR OVF.
Does anyone know what companies like Epson and Sony charge for EVF panels?
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Sony makes one that has a 5 inch diagonal screen, uses HDMI cable, sells for $500 with all the parts. They say it will plug into any dslr- works just fine on the A7.
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Sony makes one that has a 5 inch diagonal screen, uses HDMI cable, sells for $500 with all the parts. They say it will plug into any dslr- works just fine on the A7.
I was wondering about the component cost to a camera maker of a good quality EVF panels, to get an idea of how much an EVF adds to the retail price of a mirrorless camera. Two upper limits are the best of the external EVFs offered by Olympus and Sony, both of 1024x768 (XGA) resolution: the $279 Olympus VF-4 for Micro Four Thirds cameras (using the 0.48" Epson L3F04X-8x panel), and the $238 Sony FDA-EV1S for NEX cameras (which at a guess uses a 0.5" OLED panel from Sony.)
In comparison, there are entire low-end film SLRs which cost less than those external EVFs, so it could well be that the high-volume, low-end assemblies of mirror box plus penta-mirror VF add less to the cost of a camera than a good EVF does … for now.
Note that I am interested in the good quality panels suitable for an "SLR alternative", like the 0.48 inch XGA resolution Epson in the Olympus VF-4 and E-M1, not the smaller and lower resolution panels used in some super-zoom compacts, so looking at the lowest price for a compact with an EVF is not helpful.
P. S. If 800x600 (SVGA) as in the Olympus E-M5 is acceptable, a lower price is $160 for a Panasonic accessory EVF. Still almost as much as an entire Vivitar film SLR!
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Hi Steve,
Jim Kasson has recently measured shutter vibration on a Nikon D800 (with MLU), and it was virtually nil. The Sony Alpha 7r has significant vibrations so there is obviously much to do.
Jim's blog is a fascinating read: http://blog.kasson.com
Best regards
Erik
Thanks Erik!
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And without MLU ?