Dear Sony

WJJ3

WJJ3

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Please make a 'legacy lens' A7!
  1. Optimize your sensor for lenses designed for film, i.e. make a thin glass cover like Leica has.
  2. Simplify your mount and related electronics that aren't needed for legacy lenses.
  3. Make an M mount adapter (like Ricoh did) so you are officially supporting the use of some legacy lenses, and then let Novoflex and Rayqual do their thing.
  4. Make it reasonably priced!
I know you can do it! With all the profits your Alpha cameras already made you, you have nothing to loose!
 
Dear Will,

Why would we offer a camera that promotes other company's lenses? Or, more likely, sells used lenses? Instead, we suggest your write Leica and request them to build lenses that sell our bodies.

Sincerely,
Sony
 
johnwolf said:
Dear Will,

Why would we offer a camera that promotes other company's lenses? Or, more likely, sells used lenses? Instead, we suggest your write Leica and request them to build lenses that sell our bodies.

Sincerely,
Sony
Click to expand...

Because you are clueless in making glass? All this time, and how many A7 choices are at Leica Level?

The few decent ones, 55/1.8; 35/2.8 etc; have terrible quality control, with many decentered lenses in the wild.

Get a grip, giant, gasping Sony!!!
 
They're not clueless in making lenses. What you call a few, is a thorough line-up of decent lenses:
28/2; 35/2.8; 35/1.4; 55/1.8; 90mm macro; 16-35/4; 24-70/4; 70-200/4. QA (and QC) is indeed a weakness.

But if you want something different from Sony, Zeiss is selling several nice lenses you can mount natively on your A7.

People asked for IBIS for their legacy lenses and they got it with A7 II. Maybe Sony will reduce the glass thickness too.

I don't know why you want a crippled mount, it doesn't distract from the use with legacy glass. Also, it allows Sony A-mount and Canon EF-mount lenses full functionality - why wouldn't you want that :confused:

And regarding the price, I think the A7's are reasonably priced: Nikon wants €3200,- for their D810, Sony asks just €1650,- for the A7r (source: Kamera-Express).
 
I suspect whatever profits Sony is generating from photography and sensors, it's going towards the losses in other parts of the company.

Besides, is there any real profit for a mega-corp like Sony in producing a niche product like this, which requires changes in manufacture in order to strip out certain parts and/or change others, and that the OP implies should be at a lower price? Sony can sell the same number of cameras in standard configuration with no production hassles and let 3rd parties, such as Kolari Vision, provide the mods required to meet the needs of niche photographers.

Of course in our niche interests, it would have been ideal for Sony to design the system from the start with ~0.8-1mm thick sensor toppings. Why they didn't has been discussed many times before, but none of us really know why. I doubt ~2mm was an accidental decision, and instead the result of taking many practical factors into consideration (possibly durability and IR contamination, to name two). Just not the consideration of 3rd party lenses with short exit pupil distances!
 
I was going to say not in the cards until I noticed this latest patent from Sony. Whether it sees light of day is anyone's guess. I wonder w/ such an odd design if this could help w/ legacy lenses.

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/for-tech-freaks-latest-sony-sensor-patents/

On the other hand, legacy slr lens, for the most part behave well.

On the lens front, I agree in terms of Sony manufactured lenses w/ or w/o the Zeiss label. But now that Zeiss has jumped into w/ two full frame lens lines (Batia and Loxia) plus there are rumors of sigma thinking about making a ff csc for them, it does look better then what was going on before w/ all those zooms and very little in primes.

The big issue is Sony is still a electronic consumer brand in terms of mindset. I wish they had more of the Fuji mindset in terms of fw updates, good lenses and customer support. I have had to use their east coast support for a defective 27f2.8 lens and was very pleased w/ the help I received.

Gary
 
Huss said:
They are not making a profit selling Alpha cameras.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of a recent press release where Sony said their still imaging business is thriving because of their Alpha cameras. Did you have information that indicates they aren't in the black?

johnwolf said:
Dear Will,

Why would we offer a camera that promotes other company's lenses? Or, more likely, sells used lenses? Instead, we suggest your write Leica and request them to build lenses that sell our bodies.

Sincerely,
Sony
Click to expand...

Sony! you responded so quickly! I will let Leica know you need their help designing lenses. But I don't think Zeiss will be happy...

Addy101 said:
They're not clueless in making lenses. What you call a few, is a thorough line-up of decent lenses:
28/2; 35/2.8; 35/1.4; 55/1.8; 90mm macro; 16-35/4; 24-70/4; 70-200/4. QA (and QC) is indeed a weakness.

But if you want something different from Sony, Zeiss is selling several nice lenses you can mount natively on your A7.

People asked for IBIS for their legacy lenses and they got it with A7 II. Maybe Sony will reduce the glass thickness too.

I don't know why you want a crippled mount, it doesn't distract from the use with legacy glass. Also, it allows Sony A-mount and Canon EF-mount lenses full functionality - why wouldn't you want that :confused:

And regarding the price, I think the A7's are reasonably priced: Nikon wants €3200,- for their D810, Sony asks just €1650,- for the A7r (source: Kamera-Express).
Click to expand...

Good point! If it won't reduce the cost, leave the mount the way it is!

rscheffler said:
I suspect whatever profits Sony is generating from photography and sensors, it's going towards the losses in other parts of the company.

Besides, is there any real profit for a mega-corp like Sony in producing a niche product like this, which requires changes in manufacture in order to strip out certain parts and/or change others, and that the OP implies should be at a lower price? Sony can sell the same number of cameras in standard configuration with no production hassles and let 3rd parties, such as Kolari Vision, provide the mods required to meet the needs of niche photographers.

Of course in our niche interests, it would have been ideal for Sony to design the system from the start with ~0.8-1mm thick sensor toppings. Why they didn't has been discussed many times before, but none of us really know why. I doubt ~2mm was an accidental decision, and instead the result of taking many practical factors into consideration (possibly durability and IR contamination, to name two). Just not the consideration of 3rd party lenses with short exit pupil distances!
Click to expand...

I wonder how durable the Kolarivision sensor stack mod is?
Also, I really don't think high performance from a lens with a short lens-to-sensor distance is for niche photographers.

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I love how positive this forum is. Especially when it comes to a little tongue-in-cheek day dreaming.
 
WJJ3 said:
I was thinking of a recent press release where Sony said their still imaging business is thriving because of their Alpha cameras. Did you have information that indicates they aren't in the black?.
Click to expand...

That 'press release' that Sony provided is just marketing spin. The clue is that Sony didn't talk in hard numbers but used percentages and charts..


1/ What is the total size in units/cameras of the IL (DSLRs and mirrorless) camera market?
2/ What percentage of the total IL market (DSLRs and mirrorless) does Sony own?

I am not doubting that Sony is the #1 seller of IL mirrorless cameras, but they are not close to the #1 seller of mirrorless cameras. That would be smartphones.
But what are Sony’s unit sales compared to those of the DSLRs? Sony may have had a sales increase of 66%, but if that 66% is only of a fraction of the market, their total IL sales may still be dwarfed by that of DLSRs.

Provide the actual sales numbers of cameras sold. That is what matters.

Thom Hogan wrote this about Sony's release:

"1. Last year, 3.3m mirrorless, 10.5m DSLR. But those are worldwide shipping numbers. The NPD data referred to by Sony is US retail sales numbers from places monitored by NPD. For last year, the corresponding unit volume numbers for the US were 482k mirrorless, 2.7m DSLR. NPD’s full data set shows Canon/Nikon at over 90% of those DSLRs, and Sony in low single digits with the A-mount SLTs. Even if Sony sold EVERY mirrorless camera in the US, they couldn’t reach close to the Canon/Nikon market share in ILCs in the US.
2. The generally agreed upon number amongst analysts is 15-20% worldwide in ILC, mostly due to strong mirrorless numbers. Nikon is 34%, Canon over 40%, and both those are mostly DSLRs. (This is all based on unit volume and CIPA-derived numbers.) The good news for Sony is that things are once again back to a triopoly in ILCs: the Big Three could be shipping 90% of the ILC units.

Note that the first chart Sony presented is three-month moving average of dollars growth to Sony. It’s high for 2014/2015 because 2012/2013 were low in the US as SLT sales declined and NEX didn’t really take off here as it did in Asia. Then Sony did A7/FE cameras, at higher prices than NEX, so of course the dollar amounts started rising rapidly. There’s certainly good news in there for Sony. They had declining dollar value per sale, declining sales, and high costs. The A7/FE fixed two of those three for sure.

Note also that NPD tracks actual cash register slips in the US. Some of the “declines/increases” in that second chart are certainly due to liquidation of older product (mostly previous generation DSLRs) as opposed to higher prices of new mirrorless product (E-M1, X-T1, A7 series).

I’m a little surprised that Sony’s marketing department went this route, especially since they probably had to pay for the ability to reveal NPD/InfoTrends data. I suspect that this press release is more targeted at dealer efforts than anyone else. Still, if they want to quote NPD, some can quote right back that NPD’s numbers also show SLT to be a total bust. Sony should really be trumpeting two things: (1) most mirrorless unit volume with growth in the US market, which tends to be comparatively mirrorless-averse; and (2) ONLY full frame mirrorless cameras of note, and equal in image quality performance to full frame DSLRs. (Well, okay, not quite. 11-bit lossy compressed doesn’t compare to 14-bit no compression at base ISO. Still, 99% of the user base isn’t going to notice the difference.)
I’ve been made aware of a statement by Sony themselves in the Japanese business press. They state that their achieved ILC market share in 2014 was 11%, though I didn’t see whether that number was actual sales or shipments. I guess the analysts were over-optimistic about the A7 success. Still, that would mean 11+34+40 = 85% of the worldwide ILC market goes to Canikony, and the point remains: Sony is #3 in a triopoly.

Another thing I didn’t point out but did in an article on one of my sites is that Sony’s still camera business is lumped in with their video business. When you look at the numbers that Sony has broken out for that, the pro video side is driving most of the profit for the group."
 
Huss said:
That 'press release' that Sony provided is just marketing spin. The clue is that Sony didn't talk in hard numbers but used percentages and charts..


1/ What is the total size in units/cameras of the IL (DSLRs and mirrorless) camera market?
2/ What percentage of the total IL market (DSLRs and mirrorless) does Sony own?

I am not doubting that Sony is the #1 seller of IL mirrorless cameras, but they are not close to the #1 seller of mirrorless cameras. That would be smartphones.
But what are Sony’s unit sales compared to those of the DSLRs? Sony may have had a sales increase of 66%, but if that 66% is only of a fraction of the market, their total IL sales may still be dwarfed by that of DLSRs.

Provide the actual sales numbers of cameras sold. That is what matters.

Thom Hogan wrote this about Sony's release:

"1. Last year, 3.3m mirrorless, 10.5m DSLR. But those are worldwide shipping numbers. The NPD data referred to by Sony is US retail sales numbers from places monitored by NPD. For last year, the corresponding unit volume numbers for the US were 482k mirrorless, 2.7m DSLR. NPD’s full data set shows Canon/Nikon at over 90% of those DSLRs, and Sony in low single digits with the A-mount SLTs. Even if Sony sold EVERY mirrorless camera in the US, they couldn’t reach close to the Canon/Nikon market share in ILCs in the US.
2. The generally agreed upon number amongst analysts is 15-20% worldwide in ILC, mostly due to strong mirrorless numbers. Nikon is 34%, Canon over 40%, and both those are mostly DSLRs. (This is all based on unit volume and CIPA-derived numbers.) The good news for Sony is that things are once again back to a triopoly in ILCs: the Big Three could be shipping 90% of the ILC units.

Note that the first chart Sony presented is three-month moving average of dollars growth to Sony. It’s high for 2014/2015 because 2012/2013 were low in the US as SLT sales declined and NEX didn’t really take off here as it did in Asia. Then Sony did A7/FE cameras, at higher prices than NEX, so of course the dollar amounts started rising rapidly. There’s certainly good news in there for Sony. They had declining dollar value per sale, declining sales, and high costs. The A7/FE fixed two of those three for sure.

Note also that NPD tracks actual cash register slips in the US. Some of the “declines/increases” in that second chart are certainly due to liquidation of older product (mostly previous generation DSLRs) as opposed to higher prices of new mirrorless product (E-M1, X-T1, A7 series).

I’m a little surprised that Sony’s marketing department went this route, especially since they probably had to pay for the ability to reveal NPD/InfoTrends data. I suspect that this press release is more targeted at dealer efforts than anyone else. Still, if they want to quote NPD, some can quote right back that NPD’s numbers also show SLT to be a total bust. Sony should really be trumpeting two things: (1) most mirrorless unit volume with growth in the US market, which tends to be comparatively mirrorless-averse; and (2) ONLY full frame mirrorless cameras of note, and equal in image quality performance to full frame DSLRs. (Well, okay, not quite. 11-bit lossy compressed doesn’t compare to 14-bit no compression at base ISO. Still, 99% of the user base isn’t going to notice the difference.)
I’ve been made aware of a statement by Sony themselves in the Japanese business press. They state that their achieved ILC market share in 2014 was 11%, though I didn’t see whether that number was actual sales or shipments. I guess the analysts were over-optimistic about the A7 success. Still, that would mean 11+34+40 = 85% of the worldwide ILC market goes to Canikony, and the point remains: Sony is #3 in a triopoly.

Another thing I didn’t point out but did in an article on one of my sites is that Sony’s still camera business is lumped in with their video business. When you look at the numbers that Sony has broken out for that, the pro video side is driving most of the profit for the group."
Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for replying. Seems like you are following this pretty closely. More closely than wishful thinking me anyway! I found your explanation kinda hard to follow, but I guess the takeaway is that despite Sony saying their cameras are successful, you think they are not actually making money from them?
 
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