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Author Topic: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?  (Read 58235 times)

razrblck

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #200 on: November 10, 2015, 11:40:07 am »

I confess that I have looked longingly at the RX100 series for an always-in-my-pocket camera for casual and street photography.

A friend of mine wanted something small, yet very capable (and had the money), so I suggested her to grab a RX100m3. She's been using it a lot lately, learning all the functions, and I have to say I am very impressed with that camera. Especially the night shots, it manages noise very well and the fast lens make it possible to keep a shallow dof even with the tiny sensor. If I had the money I would totally get it as a third body!
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Theodoros

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #201 on: November 10, 2015, 12:57:22 pm »

I believe that you guys continue a pointless conversation... The success of Sony, has nothing to do with ....Sony (or its sensors), it has purely to do with Sony camera being the first FF sensor mirrorless and the (up to now) solutions that FF mirrorless provides that where absent (although demanded) up to the FF mirrorless introduction... In other words, who ever would have made an FF mirrorless before, with whatever maker sensor on it, he would enjoy the same level of success... Just my two cents.....
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AlterEgo

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #202 on: November 10, 2015, 01:08:06 pm »

In other words, who ever would have made an FF mirrorless before, with whatever maker sensor on it, he would enjoy the same level of success... Just my two cents.....

by the same logic - who did the first FF dSLR... neither Nikon nor Canon.
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Theodoros

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #203 on: November 10, 2015, 01:09:44 pm »

by the same logic - who did the first FF dSLR... neither Nikon nor Canon.

Exactly! ...Nikon & Canon had the advantage for Dslrs than the rest...
« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 01:14:42 pm by Theodoros »
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #204 on: November 10, 2015, 01:42:48 pm »

Hi,

Just some kind of general comment…

I would say, in general, that it makes sense to use the smallest sensor that fulfils all your needs. Anything larger just brings complications. That optimal format may vary a lot, depending on perceived needs.

Going up in format mean higher cost, larger size and more weight. With larger size also come more pixels, unless you are happy with artefacts.

If we limit us to small prints like 16"x23" (or so), a 20+ MP 1" sensor may make a lot of sense. It can be a small camera with a capable lens, like the Sony RX10 or even the RX100.

Going next step up yields some modest improvements in print quality but at great cost in weight and possibly Dollars. A 24-200/2.8 for APS-C is nothing easy to come by.

You can make great images with any decent camera. Moving upscale has a penalty. If it is worth it or not depends on the photographers needs and perceptions.

Best regards
Erik

hjulenissen mentions the tiny 1" sensor Sony RX100 series. These have been incredibly popular among those long-distance hikers (especially through-hikers doing greater than 1 week long hikes) who can afford them. When ounces / grams are counted, and when the hiker wants more than a phone or tablet, the Sony RX100 is mentioned. That being said, the phone or tablet is also a map display device, ebook, alarm clock, naturalist ID manual (I have a North American bird app and a star map on my phone), low-level GPS device (only for areas with cell service - the true GPS devices operate from satellite signals), yep - phone and internet when in cell service range, and camera. So I expect a lot of people are going to just use their  phone/tablet with the now-much-improved on-board cameras.

I confess that I have looked longingly at the RX100 series for an always-in-my-pocket camera for casual and street photography. And of course I have looked longingly at the A7Rii  -  but first I have to upgrade my computer and storage to deal with the much bigger files. I keep hanging on hoping for news of the next MacBookPro with the Skylake or Kaby Lake microprocessor (cooler running, uses less energy than current Haswell and way less than my i7 Nehalem-generation processor laptop with non-retina matte screen). That's OK, I enjoy using Canon 6D currently. Ergonomics are Just Right For Me. I don't need no stinkin' 61 AF points, I manual focus a lot. I am not through-hiking any time soon, that's a retirement gig.
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MarkL

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #205 on: November 10, 2015, 05:46:04 pm »

I just think it's interesting.

We have these tiny little cameras but huge F4 zoom lenses.

I can see tricking out a medium sized camera with lenses to match, but if your gonna stik a 2.3 lb lens on a one pound camera it seems sort of a mismatch, considering a camera that small has tiny dials and grips and at the end of the day your still limited to F4.

IMO

BC

Because of this and modern sensor performance I think Fuji have made a smart move sticking with aps-c and building a lens line for it.

Conversely I think we'll also see top end full frame mirrorless bodies getting bigger once their advantages over dslrs really start to be realised, right now they need to stay small to be a compelling alternative.
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Torbjörn Tapani

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #206 on: November 10, 2015, 06:25:19 pm »

Because of this and modern sensor performance I think Fuji have made a smart move sticking with aps-c and building a lens line for it.

Conversely I think we'll also see top end full frame mirrorless bodies getting bigger once their advantages over dslrs really start to be realised, right now they need to stay small to be a compelling alternative.

I would not be surprised if Sony comes out with a bigger pro body once the lens line is somewhat complete. They are still expanding it and if we are to believe the rumors f/2.8 zooms are coming. Zeiss has said they are working on more specialty lenses as well, that could be tilt-shifts or macros.
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shadowblade

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #207 on: November 11, 2015, 01:28:04 am »

I believe that you guys continue a pointless conversation... The success of Sony, has nothing to do with ....Sony (or its sensors), it has purely to do with Sony camera being the first FF sensor mirrorless and the (up to now) solutions that FF mirrorless provides that where absent (although demanded) up to the FF mirrorless introduction... In other words, who ever would have made an FF mirrorless before, with whatever maker sensor on it, he would enjoy the same level of success... Just my two cents.....

It has everything to do with the performance of the sensor. After all, a good proportion of A7r adopters were ex-Canon non-action shooters who liked their Canon glass but were desperately in need of a better sensor (both in terms of resolution and DR). So much so that Metabones made a killing from selling EF-to-E-mount adapters, and that Sony was giving them away in a package deal with the A7r for a few months after the initial launch. Nikon-to-E mount and A-to-E mount hasn't seen the same level of demand, since they're already backed by high-performance sensors.
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shadowblade

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #208 on: November 11, 2015, 01:57:14 am »

I would not be surprised if Sony comes out with a bigger pro body once the lens line is somewhat complete. They are still expanding it and if we are to believe the rumors f/2.8 zooms are coming. Zeiss has said they are working on more specialty lenses as well, that could be tilt-shifts or macros.

I don't think it will be macros - the Sony 90mm is already the best macro out there, from any manufacturer.

Hoping for some tilt-shifts, since quality wide-angle ones are sorely lacking from anyone except Canon. 16, 24, 50 and 100mm tilt-shifts, with 12mm of shift, would be very nice.
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Torbjörn Tapani

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #209 on: November 11, 2015, 03:42:01 am »

I don't think it will be macros - the Sony 90mm is already the best macro out there, from any manufacturer.

Hoping for some tilt-shifts, since quality wide-angle ones are sorely lacking from anyone except Canon. 16, 24, 50 and 100mm tilt-shifts, with 12mm of shift, would be very nice.

Is it really the best? http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2015/10/sony-e-mount-lens-sharpness-bench-tests

Better than MP-E 65? Coastal Optics? Depends on what your needs are I guess.
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Paulo Bizarro

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #210 on: November 11, 2015, 04:39:27 am »

Ref. macros, there is clearly room for a 200mm or thereabouts macro lens. 90mm or 100mm is sometimes too short.

shadowblade

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #211 on: November 11, 2015, 05:18:22 am »

Is it really the best? http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2015/10/sony-e-mount-lens-sharpness-bench-tests

Better than MP-E 65? Coastal Optics? Depends on what your needs are I guess.

Unless you need >1:1 magnification, the MP-E 65 is a terrible lens. Not only can it not focus further away than 1:1, but, even over its range, it's not very sharp. Of course, there aren't many options in that magnification range, being too great for most macros and too small for microscopes.

As far as 1:1 macros go, the Sony 90mm is just about the sharpest one out there. If only eye focus worked on animals and insects... potential firmware upgrade, I guess.
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hjulenissen

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #212 on: November 11, 2015, 06:17:36 am »

I just think it's interesting.

We have these tiny little cameras but huge F4 zoom lenses.

I can see tricking out a medium sized camera with lenses to match, but if your gonna stik a 2.3 lb lens on a one pound camera it seems sort of a mismatch, considering a camera that small has tiny dials and grips and at the end of the day your still limited to F4.

IMO

BC
I think that Sony surprised everyone with the RX1 series putting a high-performance 24x36mm sensor in a tiny housing with a great wide-ish prime integrated. Of course having that kind of quality at that size comes at a price: price.

It is concievable that they might do something similar to their MF sensor. Just for the heck of it. To make a flagship to help sell compact cameras. Because such a model will probably sell several times as many Sony MF sensors as their combined current sensor customers can push. Who knows.

But judging by the RX1, such a "RX0.1" could be really compact, high quality and expensive (as compacts go).

-h
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shadowblade

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #213 on: November 11, 2015, 05:02:41 pm »

Because of this and modern sensor performance I think Fuji have made a smart move sticking with aps-c and building a lens line for it.

Conversely I think we'll also see top end full frame mirrorless bodies getting bigger once their advantages over dslrs really start to be realised, right now they need to stay small to be a compelling alternative.

Current mirrorless cameras can replace SLRs for anything except action photography, and do somewhat better than SLRs in many situations where the subject is nonmoving and the photographer has time to carefully set up and fine-tune the shot. Full-frame is what really makes it attractive - without full-frame, mirrorless bodies wouldn't be competitive with top-end SLRs (or Leicas) at all, and would only be able to compete for the lower-end amateur market.

At the moment, the larger SLR form factor buys you two things that mirrorless does not, which make them capable of action photography:

1: Fast AF for tracking moving targets
2: A lag-free viewfinder for accurate composition

Sure, there are other useful things that come out of the larger body (dual cards, larger battery, etc.) but those of themselves don't make the larger body capable of shooting action, nor the smaller body incapable.

At the same time, EVFs have a number of features which could be immensely useful in action photography, should the two aforementioned issues be overcome:

1: Real-time exposure simulation - no more wondering 'is this too dark' or 'is this too bright' and relying on automatic metering, which can be a crapshoot in some difficult lighting situations
2: For those shooting JPEG (for news, some journalistic use and other situations requiring immediate publication with minimal time for postprocessing) real-time WB simulation
3: Better visibility in very dark situations and/or with slow lenses. The brightness of an OVF is entirely limited by the optics. The brightness of an EVF, on the other hand, improves with every improvement in high-ISO capability. Optics haven't gotten any brighter in decades, and physically can't (at least not without drastically increasing the size of the viewfinder) but ISO capability has been making leaps and bounds.
4: Continuous recording - having a buffer that saves the last 0.5-1 second of footage every time you press the shutter button could save a lot of missed shots in action photography. Not that you can't shoot action without it, but it could do wonders for the keeper rate.

Therefore, having an action-capable mirrorless camera would be a very desirable thing.

To overcome these two issues, a number of things need to happen.

AF speed is the easy part - fundamentally, mirrorless and SLR cameras use the same method (PDAF) to achieve fast, reasonably-accurate focus, except that the on-sensor method eliminates microadjustment-correctable back/front focus, and mirrorless cameras (and Live View) also have the option of supplementary methods of AF (CDAF, AI-driven means such as eye focus) to achieve greater accuracy when time permits. The current slowness of mirrorless AF speed has nothing to do with the method used, but the AF processing and lens drive speed of mirrorless vs SLR cameras - with dedicated AF processors and more powerful batteries, current SLRs can track targets and move glass far faster than current mirrorless offerings (and the 1Dx, at least, can drive lenses even faster, due to its higher-voltage, higher-wattage battery). Boost the battery power of a mirrorless camera and add in a dedicated AF chip, to put the hardware on equal footing with SLRs, and there's no reason mirrorless focus speed and tracking ability should be any less than a top-end SLR. After all, the AF systems use identical technology.

A lag-free viewfinder is trickier, but hardly insurmountable. No EVF, of course, can be completely lag-free. But, by reducing viewfinder lag to 30ms or less, it can be rendered so fast as to be imperceptible to the human eye/brain (it takes longer than that for the brain to even register that the eye has seen something) and insignificant in comparison to human reaction time (which is in the order of hundreds of milliseconds, although anticipation can mitigate this if you're already looking at/tracking a subject) and, in the case of SLRs, mirror lag. Such viewfinders exist - you couldn't perform laparoscopic or robot-assisted surgery without them. In fact, some surgical procedures, chiefly in neurosurgery, which used to be performed under direct visualisation only became laparoscopic after viewfinders/cameras became fast enough to mitigate viewfinder lag - prior to that, they were just too delicate and precise to be performed with laggy cameras. (obviously, an appendicectomy is far more forgiving, hence could be performed laparoscopically much earlier). They're also driven by powerful, power-hungry processors.

Of course, all these features take space, so I wouldn't expect an action-capable mirrorless camera to be any smaller in length and width (although possibly lighter and thinner) than an SLR - at least not until denser power sources or lower-energy chips and EVFs become available. But, due to the features possible with through-the-sensor acquisition and EVFs but not possible with mirrors, it could be far more capable.
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Some Guy

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #214 on: November 11, 2015, 06:35:24 pm »

So now Sony reports their camera sales are worse than Canon's slide of 24%.  Sony sales demand down 27% Nikon 11%.

Sony reports camera sales slump of 27%

Canon sat a long time, but maybe people are holding onto them, Nikon too, and not moving their system over to Sony that quickly.  Surprised that Sony's cellphone dropped by 3 million units in third quarter too since they seem to the be sensor king for now.

SG
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NancyP

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #215 on: November 11, 2015, 07:08:57 pm »

Well of course the MP-E 65 is a terrible macro lens for under life-size photography. It only has focus between 1x and 5x. And the (your favorite macro lens, Sony 90 or Coastal Optics 60 or ...) is a terrible lens for the greater than 1x photography - too many extension rings needed, and soon your subject focal plane is inside the front element.  ;D

But there's a reason why the MP-E is favored by field biologists - it is relatively compact and sturdy, and gets as good image quality as reasonable for the price. No one wants to take a bellows and low-power microscope-style objective (AKA "lens") into the rainforest. The MP-E is a field-use lens used by every insect photographer out there that can afford to own it.
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peterottaway

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #216 on: November 11, 2015, 09:07:29 pm »

It's interesting how those who consider themselves threatened somehow by Sony report on their financials.Unit sales down but operating income up by 5.8 %.

Funny how that seems to have escaped being reported. Less junk more quality ?
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shadowblade

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #217 on: November 11, 2015, 09:10:54 pm »

So now Sony reports their camera sales are worse than Canon's slide of 24%.  Sony sales demand down 27% Nikon 11%.

Sony reports camera sales slump of 27%

Canon sat a long time, but maybe people are holding onto them, Nikon too, and not moving their system over to Sony that quickly.  Surprised that Sony's cellphone dropped by 3 million units in third quarter too since they seem to the be sensor king for now.

SG

All these figures cover every type of camera - not just the mirrorless and SLR bodies we're most interested in - and, therefore, are so broad as to be meaningless without further breakdown of the figures.

We all know that the camera market is shrinking in terms of unit volume, since point-and-shoots (previously the most numerous body type) have all but disappeared, being displaced by phone cameras. And phones are also being replaced less often, since they have largely reached the point of being 'good enough' for the apps, software and bandwidth available at the moment. Finally, almost every point-and-shooter who wants something better than a phone camera or  a Gopro now also has an entry-level SLR. So the sales are becoming more concentrated at the top end of the market - less volume, higher value.

I'd be interested to see what the breakdown looks like when just restricted to mirrorless and SLR cameras, especially broken down model-by-model. I'd be very surprised if Sony's dropped by 27% in that category, since Q3 2014 contained nothing for them body-wise, while Q3 15 saw the release of the A7rII (and the 5Ds for Canon, although that seems to have created far less excitement), or that Nikon's sales in that category didn't drop more in that period, since they've released essentially nothing in the past year.
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zlatko-b

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #218 on: November 12, 2015, 01:01:25 am »

Is it really the best? http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2015/10/sony-e-mount-lens-sharpness-bench-tests

Better than MP-E 65? Coastal Optics? Depends on what your needs are I guess.

It's not the best.  The Sony 90 macro only looks like the best because DxO ties its lens rankings to sensor resolution.  LensRentals shows the Canon 100L is sharper, at least at infinity (they didn't test close-up) and has considerably less sample variation.  And right now the better Canon is $300 cheaper.

shadowblade

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Re: Is Sony taking over our corner of the world?
« Reply #219 on: November 12, 2015, 02:47:28 am »

It's not the best.  The Sony 90 macro only looks like the best because DxO ties its lens rankings to sensor resolution.  LensRentals shows the Canon 100L is sharper, at least at infinity (they didn't test close-up) and has considerably less sample variation.  And right now the better Canon is $300 cheaper.

How do they compare when both are mounted on an A7r/A7rII?
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