I love rumors. They drive speculation and specsmanship in weird and odd ways. People seem to love talking about things that may never ever be true. I must be one of them.
There's a rumor concerning Sony's yet to be announced full frame (FF) NEX costing more than 3000USD when it comes out (sometime in 2014?). It's gotten tongues wagging.
I love the idea of moving away from my current Canon FF DSLR. The camera body is heavy and the lenses are quite large. The system retains it's world class image quality and overall system performance. My cameras and lenses still crank out work that is the equal of just about anything Phase One makes in medium format sensored systems (Mamiya and Fujiblad come to mind).
Yet, projecting into the future, I can see I would have more than a few questions about a new Sony FF mirrorless camera. Yes, it could be small. Yes, it could be light. But...
If a Sony FF NEX mirrorless camera is introduced costing more than 3000USD, it had better have a LOT of compelling features to get me to switch. I have a lot of money invested in the current system. So the important question will be, what differentiates a FF NEX from non-mirrorless? Something that neither Canon nor Nikon FF DSLR already have years of product development behind? It's difficult to see that happening from this point of view.
If, OTOH, Sony took a huge leap and dropped the Android OS onto their FF mirrorless with full WiFi, then they'd have my attention. I have blogged a little about the impact of portability and the availability of image processing software for iPhones and Android-based mobiles. I continue to feel the opportunity to edit and upload work onto the 'net straight off the camera is ripe and appropriate for high-end excellent image quality photographic systems.
Given any reservations I might have about a Sony FF mirrorless, what I see is that they could help FF DSLR users transition away from Canon/Nikon if they offered a small interchangeable lens FF NEX that undercut the cost of the 6D/D600 cameras. That way people could throw a Sony FF NEX into their bag and not take such a huge hit in transition costs to a new system all at once.
AND, this is extremely important to me, any new FF mirrorless would have to perform at least as good as my current systems in a studio. This includes being able to easily trigger lighting systems as well as being able to focus accurately in low light (the typical background light intensity that I use so as to no contribute to the effect of the light setup).
As I said at the outset, this is all speculation. Sony is known to be in the process of roto-tilling it's imaging system roadmap. The success of their NEX and RX1 cameras and the sagging sales of their DLSRs seem to be the prompt. We shall see what we shall see, eh?
Side note: The images posted along with this blog entry were made using one of my two Sony NEX5 APS-C sized sensored cameras. I mounted large aperture Nikon manual focus lenses (pre-AiS) to the NEX and wandered the Louvre. In this setting, the image quality is truly outstanding as I have the time to focus accurately and there is enough light to allow low ISO to be used, even at these wide aperture settings.
There's a rumor concerning Sony's yet to be announced full frame (FF) NEX costing more than 3000USD when it comes out (sometime in 2014?). It's gotten tongues wagging.
I love the idea of moving away from my current Canon FF DSLR. The camera body is heavy and the lenses are quite large. The system retains it's world class image quality and overall system performance. My cameras and lenses still crank out work that is the equal of just about anything Phase One makes in medium format sensored systems (Mamiya and Fujiblad come to mind).
Yet, projecting into the future, I can see I would have more than a few questions about a new Sony FF mirrorless camera. Yes, it could be small. Yes, it could be light. But...
If a Sony FF NEX mirrorless camera is introduced costing more than 3000USD, it had better have a LOT of compelling features to get me to switch. I have a lot of money invested in the current system. So the important question will be, what differentiates a FF NEX from non-mirrorless? Something that neither Canon nor Nikon FF DSLR already have years of product development behind? It's difficult to see that happening from this point of view.
If, OTOH, Sony took a huge leap and dropped the Android OS onto their FF mirrorless with full WiFi, then they'd have my attention. I have blogged a little about the impact of portability and the availability of image processing software for iPhones and Android-based mobiles. I continue to feel the opportunity to edit and upload work onto the 'net straight off the camera is ripe and appropriate for high-end excellent image quality photographic systems.
Given any reservations I might have about a Sony FF mirrorless, what I see is that they could help FF DSLR users transition away from Canon/Nikon if they offered a small interchangeable lens FF NEX that undercut the cost of the 6D/D600 cameras. That way people could throw a Sony FF NEX into their bag and not take such a huge hit in transition costs to a new system all at once.
AND, this is extremely important to me, any new FF mirrorless would have to perform at least as good as my current systems in a studio. This includes being able to easily trigger lighting systems as well as being able to focus accurately in low light (the typical background light intensity that I use so as to no contribute to the effect of the light setup).
As I said at the outset, this is all speculation. Sony is known to be in the process of roto-tilling it's imaging system roadmap. The success of their NEX and RX1 cameras and the sagging sales of their DLSRs seem to be the prompt. We shall see what we shall see, eh?
Side note: The images posted along with this blog entry were made using one of my two Sony NEX5 APS-C sized sensored cameras. I mounted large aperture Nikon manual focus lenses (pre-AiS) to the NEX and wandered the Louvre. In this setting, the image quality is truly outstanding as I have the time to focus accurately and there is enough light to allow low ISO to be used, even at these wide aperture settings.
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