Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

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alphaomega
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by alphaomega »

bfitzgerald 4 March
Sony's cycles are a bit iffy to say the least, it remains to be seen what they produce for 2014 for A mount. I've read enough light leak, sensor streaking issues on the A7 to be convinced Sony view their customers as beta testers who pay for products!
They'd better have more than an A77 mkII for this year though, one model isn't going to cut it in the market.
SAR 8 March
Our friends at Dicahub found that official Sony Korea note where they say that the LIght Leak issue isn’t a “general problem”. But they will investigate further and then notify their more detail action in March. But now we have to report a quite interesting and surprising report:
Imaging Resource tested the light leak and said it’s actually present in Nikon and Canon cameras too and the Canon 5dmarkIII actually shows an even greater leak! They write:
Drawing it together, is a light leak of the sort seen in the A7 in any way unusual? Absolutely not. The best Canon and Nikon models exhibit similar behavior. While a perfect camera might block every last photon, the tolerances required of lens and flange make this exceedingly difficult. To our minds, based on what we’ve seen with our A7 and the best competing models, this is really a non-issue.
Well, I guess this will quiet down some of the noise around the A7-A7r light leak issue
But then bfitzgerald does not think highly of CAN/NIK either.
peterottaway
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by peterottaway »

Leaving aside any only partially valid conspiracy theories it is interesting to note that the Canon and Nikon cameras have been on the market longer than the Sony A7 cameras. And no one bother to check, but Sony has to prove themselves every which way and every time.

It does reinforce the belief that Sony can't win in anything like a straight fight with Canon or Nikon and does have to create a different market.
classiccameras
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by classiccameras »

Canon and Nikon have got the DSLR market sewn up, no contest. They have an enormous global fan base which Sony will never 'ever' get near, so yes, agreed, create a new format like the A7 but alas, its not been fully perfected yet, but I'm sure they will get there. In order for Sony to survive and sell cameras, their products need to be better spec for spec, price for price than their rivals. To a certain extent, Sony were/are achieving that with A mount.
The 35, 37, 55, 57, 65, 77 were all getting gold awards from several review sites and the A7/R are also starting to get high marks.
Sony just seem incapable of captilising on any success that comes their way.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

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The old "Sony have to sidestep Canikon to compete" cuts no water around here I'm afraid. That's a one liner a DPR reviewer came up with and I don't buy it one bit. (DPR ILC fanboys don't cut it for me)
Sony have had every opportunity to develop and expand A mount, but they've fallen down every time they had a chance to make an impact.

The announcement years back that they grabbed 20% odd of the EU market has been silent ever since.
Sony did quite well with the A200-350 range (that's when they said they grabbed market share) and I've seen quite a lot of those models around least A200's in pretty large numbers so I assume it did pretty well.

Not content with building on the evident success of the A200 (ie making a better CMOS camera on the same body and putting back a few bits we wanted like MLU etc etc) they decided to land us with the lame, even more cut down A230 and other models. Epic fail..
Then they came out with the A500/550 which were basic entry models and nothing to offer anyone bar a CMOS sensor and high FPS..but nothing else at all (nowhere near where a 5 series should be)

The A900 wasn't a bad move but they failed to update the model properly (ignoring video and live view) The A850 should have been a fast 16mp CMOS FF camera that could have hit the spot for PJ's, low light shooters and action photographers, but Sony just made a 3fps A900 and jacked the A900 price up.

In SLT land the only good bang per buck model they had was the A57, yet not content with having made a fairly decent camera that wasn't too cut down and was mostly well liked, they had to tear up all the good work and land us with the plastic fantastic, tiny buffer even more culled A58

Whilst leaving 2 2011 dated model on the market to disappear into thin air (I can't imagine either the A65 or A77 are selling well) oops another missed update cycle (added to the missed A900 and A700 updates which took too long)

Then to top it all off Sony gave us the A99 which some hoped would actually be reasonably priced..oops let's charge more for an SLT than Canikon users pay for a normal FF. Even right now the A99 is £1750 it's come down but nowhere near to where it should be.

Sony's product update cycles suck (long gaps when they should have a new product), their firmware support is non existent (no need to detail this), whenever Sony have had a decent model out they've pulled it prematurely and replaced it with a model that's worse in every way. You don't have to be Sir Isaac Newton to understand where things have been going wrong.

Canikon have the market sewn up because Sony messed up and pretty badly too often. Since 2006 they were still in with a chance they could have fleshed out the lens range (and been better priced too) and been consistent with models. They might not have got no. 2 spot, but they would be snapping at the heels of them no question.

Poor leadership and a lack of persistence are to blame.
Every market is tough, if you're a quitter then don't start off at all. Changing direction all the time is unlikely to be a successful strategy for any company
If only Sony had someone competent in charge during this time we'd all be much happier.
peterottaway
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by peterottaway »

Barry as I recall you were criticizing Sony for too many models updated too often and now it is too few and not often enough ?

Would the idea that we are in a transition phase and Sony are re-aligning their product range be a factor ?
classiccameras
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by classiccameras »

A bit like the
Olympus transition from 4/3 to M/4/3, but here they forced the issue much to the annoyance of the 4/3 users. They lost a lot of fans to other brands because of that.
peterottaway
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by peterottaway »

Well I am settling in quite nicely with the A7r and for any replacement for the A77 or A99 will have to be a very big lot of camera to look that way again. I will continue using the 70-400 zoom and may even consider a 200mm macro or 300 / 4.0 tele if they are offered but that is the limits to my telephoto ambitions and I rarely venture wider than 18=20 mm.

To each of us, our own.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

peterottaway wrote:Barry as I recall you were criticizing Sony for too many models updated too often and now it is too few and not often enough ?

Would the idea that we are in a transition phase and Sony are re-aligning their product range be a factor ?
Don't remember saying Sony were updating models too often!
I do remember saying that they had too many models with only minor differences (like the A300/A350) and A500/A550, A560/A580
One of each is all that was needed.

I've no idea what Sony have planned or if there is a "transition phase" in the works.
As the E mount bodies have no IBIS and don't offer me what I'm looking for (in terms of design of value for money) There is a danger that any game plan will involve the loss of some users.

No doubts in my mind that if Sony are planning a phased A mount wind down, pushing people to E mount, they could lose a substantial number of their current users. Looking at the prices of their lenses on E mount, I can't see a huge native adoption of that system.

The long update cycles of the A700 and A900 probably lost Sony quite a few users, add to that the SLT angle they probably lost a good few more with that.
Every interview I've read from Sony is all about the next party trick, and nothing about looking after their current customers. If you can't keep people onboard you're wasting your time longer term. Listening isn't something Sony are good at, sadly.

No doubt Olympus lost quite a few users with the 4/3 disaster, adaptors won't convince everyone. I saw years ago that 4/3 was doomed to fail. Micro 4/3 will never be in a position to challenge the top makers, the company is too risky to invest in their products, second mount dump after the OM mount was killed off. 2 dead mounts doesn't convince me an awful lot. If Sony follow the same path, quite a few A mount users will run into the "safe" arms of Canikon.
classiccameras
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Re: Sony marketing...DSLR GEAR NO IDEA

Unread post by classiccameras »

And that Barry, kinda sums it up.
Thankfully, I don't have a huge investment in Sony/Minolta products, so changing brands would stretch the wallet a bit, it wouldn't be to painful.
So far, I still enjoy using my SLT and remain impressed with the picture quality and camera performance. I have mixed feelings re EVF especially after using a Pentax K5 with 100% OVF for a day.
Being a member of the 4/3 forum I witnessed many members leaving for other brands and some running another brand along side their existing 4/3, I.E Canikon/Sony/Pentax/Fuji. just in case.
It has been said several times by prominent people in the Photo industry that 4/3 was dead the day it was launched. Could SLT be in the same boat.
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