Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

Unread post by johnstra »

It would not have been viable to take the A700 and 're-vamp' it. If you put a tilting screen in and a new sensor with live view and video (all modern SLRs have these so Sony would not be able to leave them out), the body would have to be changed, the sensor mounting and steadyshot mechanism and the electronics too. So you then have a totally new camera needing totally new tooling (ok, you could probably keep the same shutter). The A700 OVF was amongst the best in APSC land. However, all APSC OVFs are small and dim. The A700 was a lot brighter and bigger than most because it used a real pentaprism but the A77 EVF beats it hands down. I own both so I am not talking theoretically. Sony have decided to compete by being different. I believe that they would be selling less cameras than they are now if they had elected to go with the crowd. Having said that it may well have been a mistake to put an EVF in the A99, as full frame OVFs are generally wonderful, but there again it is mostly us oldies that are biased against EVFs and I don't believe that they are much interested in oldies. I recently filled in a questionnaire about the A77 that they had sent me, and the drop-down for the year of birth only went back to 1950. I was born in 1949. They have proclaimed that they are going to make a big investment in their imaging division. Of course they are concentrating on NEX. They were pioneers and NEX are the best of their type on the market and selling well. They would have to be mad not to be concentrating on them. That however does not mean that they will be dropping Alpha and I don't believe that they will. What they might possibly drop eventually is APSC Alphas.
As for the idea that they put the wrong sensor into the A77 I don't entirely agree. I make large prints and the jump to 24MP means that I can now make a 30 x 40cm print or bigger at 360 dpi with room for cropping. That is without having to interpolate. I would not have been interested in upgrading to 16MP, it simply is not a big enough jump from 12MP. I agree though that the camera would have been even more desirable if its noise performance was better, but I find that I rarely need those high ISOs, probably because I was brought up on film.
Finally, what is the big beef about the A99s hotshoe? Sony have been moaned at and condemned for years about the hotshoe that they inherited from Minolta. Now they change it to a clever hotshoe that is compatible with the standard type like everyone said they wanted, but has extra contacts too and they give you an adapter for your old flash. What is the problem?
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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

Unread post by bakubo »

johnstra wrote:It would not have been viable to take the A700 and 're-vamp' it. If you put a tilting screen in and a new sensor with live view and video (all modern SLRs have these so Sony would not be able to leave them out), the body would have to be changed, the sensor mounting and steadyshot mechanism and the electronics too. So you then have a totally new camera needing totally new tooling (ok, you could probably keep the same shutter).
Actually, the Nikon D7000, D700, D800, Canon 7D, 6D, 5DIII, Pentax K5II, and many others don't have a tilting screen.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

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Couple of points evidently the new "hot shoe" is not quite as standard as some would make you believe, with users suggesting you can't properly fit radio triggers and similar devices as the front contacts prevent you pushing them home fully. Such a move was never likely to go down well with current users, new users might not care as much but it's a departure from the industry standard of doing an ISO hot shoe (is sync point in the middle with 3/4 contacts for the flash around that as per Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Pentax, Samsung, Olympus, etc etc) Sony just had to put their own proprietary touch where it was not wanted or needed.

I think an A700 mk II and A900 mk II would have been easy to do, some tweaks to the bodies, use the rear LCD for live view/focus peaking can be done here too and away you go. Things did move up a bit with higher end APS-C DSLR's getting 100% OVF's so that could have been done too. Both bodies had too much potential to just throw on the scrap heap (but that's exactly what's happened)

I'm still not convinced the SLT only approach has done Sony any favours, esp not high end APS-C and FF. Even less appealing is there is no price incentive to look at them v traditional DSLR's (And we were led to believe SLT would be better value for the consumer due to less parts easier to make etc) A99 proves that was not the case and Sony will be struggling to sell that model v it's rivals.

I've no problems with having some SLT models, but one is enough for me (useful for some work such as macro and manual focus) I can't say I'd be willing to spend big on SLT cameras. So we hope Sony had a change of heart. But I suspect their SLT sales are not going as well as planned, so again I strongly disagree with the idea they had no choice (you always have choices but you need consistency and regular updates not changing things all the time)

I'm convinced Sony will abandon A mount in a few years, simply because they've shown scant regard for A mount users and changed just about everything else but the mount (so far). I can't say I will be that shocked if it does happen
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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

johnstra wrote:It would not have been viable to take the A700 and 're-vamp' it. If you put a tilting screen in and a new sensor with live view and video (all modern SLRs have these so Sony would not be able to leave them out), the body would have to be changed, the sensor mounting and steadyshot mechanism and the electronics too. So you then have a totally new camera needing totally new tooling (ok, you could probably keep the same shutter).

It depends how much you want to modify the existing body to provide an update, l think quite a few liked the A700 control layout the way it was with the on/off switch where it was (including me) the exposure mode switch left alone, the SSS switch left on the exterior of the body instead of replacing it with some DUMB (?) button, no movie button needed, in short leave everything where it was just update the sensor and make sure the mirror STAYS WHERE YOU PUT IT IF YOU TAKE A SHOT IN LV MODE.
johnstra wrote:The A700 OVF was amongst the best in APSC land. However, all APSC OVFs are small and dim. The A700 was a lot brighter and bigger than most because it used a real pentaprism but the A77 EVF beats it hands down. I own both so I am not talking theoretically. Sony have decided to compete by being different. I believe that they would be selling less cameras than they are now if they had elected to go with the crowd.

Nobody is suggesting that Sony shouldn't have made SLT's but where is my DSLR?
johnstra wrote:Having said that it may well have been a mistake to put an EVF in the A99, as full frame OVFs are generally wonderful, but there again it is mostly us oldies that are biased against EVFs and I don't believe that they are much interested in oldies. I recently filled in a questionnaire about the A77 that they had sent me, and the drop-down for the year of birth only went back to 1950. I was born in 1949. They have proclaimed that they are going to make a big investment in their imaging division. Of course they are concentrating on NEX. They were pioneers and NEX are the best of their type on the market and selling well. They would have to be mad not to be concentrating on them. That however does not mean that they will be dropping Alpha and I don't believe that they will. What they might possibly drop eventually is APSC Alphas.
Sony have a humorous add campaign at the moment 'DSLR owners-no clue' guess what it should have been 'DSLR maker-no clue'
johnstra wrote:As for the idea that they put the wrong sensor into the A77 I don't entirely agree. I make large prints and the jump to 24MP means that I can now make a 30 x 40cm print or bigger at 360 dpi with room for cropping. That is without having to interpolate. I would not have been interested in upgrading to 16MP, it simply is not a big enough jump from 12MP. I agree though that the camera would have been even more desirable if its noise performance was better, but I find that I rarely need those high ISOs, probably because I was brought up on film.
Horses for courses, ideally if you are doing large prints you probably should consider using FF instead, APS-C is (or was) more suited to sporty endeavours, I don't remember lots of people clamouring for 24MP to be shoved into the APS-C format.
johnstra wrote:Finally, what is the big beef about the A99s hotshoe? Sony have been moaned at and condemned for years about the hotshoe that they inherited from Minolta. Now they change it to a clever hotshoe that is compatible with the standard type like everyone said they wanted, but has extra contacts too and they give you an adapter for your old flash. What is the problem?
As long as you can put standard ISO accessories onto the A99 hotshoe there probably isn't much objection to it, but if as Barry says there is compatibility problems even with doing that then it was a waste of time, and also like I said before how long will it be before there is no hotshoe adapter included with a new camera model and you have to buy it at some ripoff price.
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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

Unread post by bakubo »

Today I pulled out my A700 which has been in my camera bag and unused since the trip to Guatemala during the summer of 2011. I just have the body and 3 lenses with me (Minolta 50mm f1.7, Sigma 24mm f2.8, Sigma 90mm f2.8 macro -- other lenses are all back in Austin), but I am not using it. I have a couple of Sony batteries for it so I charged one up today and put it in the camera a few minutes ago. I haven't held it in my hands for months and it sure seems big and heavy after using the Olympus E-M5 for almost 9 months. :lol: It does feel good though and I am reminded how much I liked my A700 (except for the parts and/or manufacturing and/or design defect of the control wheels). I found the Canon 60D to be better (later tech, after all) in just about every way except it had no IBIS and I love IBIS. It gives so much flexibility because all lenses get stabilized. Fortunately, my E-M5 has it too.

Now as I am considering what the contours of 2013 will look like and I am wondering about whether I will continue to carry it around. I guess if I was in Austin I would just leave it there, but I am not. Maybe I should try to sell it on craigslist... I don't know what prices are, but even for a perfect used one it is probably just $300 or so. Hardly worth all the trouble to sell maybe.
Last edited by bakubo on Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

I'd hold onto it. A700's are fairly cheap to buy now.
I had the same situation with the KM5d's I have they are not really worth that much to sell, might as well keep them as working cameras.

I have some friends with Canon 20/30d's in the same situation still decent cameras, dated maybe but not really worth much to sell.
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Re: Nikon, Olympus, Sony reported their 3rd quarter results

Unread post by bakubo »

bfitzgerald wrote:I'd hold onto it. A700's are fairly cheap to buy now.
I had the same situation with the KM5d's I have they are not really worth that much to sell, might as well keep them as working cameras.
Yeah, that is sort of what I think too. I sort of hate to get rid of it since I still like it and have lenses for it -- except for the intermittent control wheel problem. The price is so low on them now anyway there isn't much point in selling it. The biggest issue is that it is just one more thing to haul around. Probably in a month or so we will be leaving Hawaii since spring is coming and go somewhere else for awhile. Actually, if my A700 didn't have that control wheel problem then I would have been quite happy to have skipped the Canon 60D since I had to get lenses for it and without IBIS I never was as satisfied with the lenses I had to choose from. The E-M5, because of the smaller size/weight, probably would have been enough for me to set the A700 aside, but who knows? The A700 and lenses I had with it for travel satisfied me pretty well. The E-M5 is better in many ways, not just size/weight, but I was and still am pretty satisfied with the A700. After having LV and tilt LCD on the 60D, G3, and E-M5 I know that I don't care about that feature. Probably including all 3 of those cameras I have used it for a total of about 5 photos. :lol:
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