Implications of Sony PMW-F3 35mm Movie Camera

[peterottaway]

Pretty useless to pontificate on something just announced and not available until about April 2011. But it does imply that there will be a new generation of 35 mm DSLRs sometime next year as I can't see a financial case for a 35 mm fabrication unit just for a Y 1.5 million cinema camera.

But after the NEX and SLT cameras what they will look like is anyones guess.

[pakodominguez]

What is the pixel count of that sensor?
I don't think Sony will kill the FF cameras, but I think we won't see a new FF model every year either

[peterottaway]

Pako, like you did I went through the Sony release carefully trying to see what possible flow on to a stills camera would be. Now the absence of sensor details may simply be that those writing the press release chose to concentrate on the promise of the camera rather than too many deep technical details. Or maybe not.

Sony did signal the A900 a long time in advance of its actual release and this probably didn't help sell anymore cameras and may have forewarned Canon to improve its 5D Mark 2. Having released the first NEX cameras and then the SLT cameras with a different slant technically - and with a changes to the traditional pricing structures of the market why give the opposition a peep in through the bedroom windows ?

I liked the A 700 and the A850 / 900 cameras, to me they were a first class development of the traditional SLR. They are a comfortable size and weight for me with a decently obvious layout but they didn't move the general market in Sonys direction. So that leaves me out as a futurist and designing the next big thing.

Sony has stated that they wish to observe the reaction to the initial NEX cameras before coming out with follow up cameras and I think that they wont be rushing to a premature ( ?) production decision on upper level cameras. That is not to say that Sony will not have prototyped various future cameras, but decisions simply made on an initial reaction to the "new" Sony could cost big time.

With apologies to Van Morrison if Sony wish to be a Big Time Operator on the Camera Business Scene is just a development of the A 33 / A 55 style with a 35 mm sensor any good ? Sure take the experience in developing and production of the 2010 camera releases. But to me the new upper end / high performance models call them what you like also need to create their own market space as independent from where Canon and Nikon are today as possible.

I'll not go into such things as to whether like the old Minolta 9 models they should go for a 1/12000 shutter speed etc but what they do need to do is create a camera and accessory range that can cater for as many different types of photographers as possible. So that does mean that the cameras must be able to be used with such things are telescopes, microscopes etc by simply going to the menu. With third party studio flash and support for macro does Sony simply keep with the Minolta past or develop a brand new system without legacy issues ? There are somethings that may be considered as almost a given if Sony are serious such as a redeveloped auto focus / exposure / colour temperature sensor unit, micro focus lens adjustment and lens mapping,multiple memory card type slots and that old ISO in the viewfinder thingy.

From using the A 33, admittedly a much cheaper camera than that I'm talking about - I don't think that EVF is developed enough at this stage to be completely replace a quality OVF but in cameras that are stills orientated with video options how about offering an accessory EVF optimized for the video functions ? After all Sony is an electronics company.

[douglasf13]

Pretty useless to pontificate on something just announced and not available until about April 2011. But it does imply that there will be a new generation of 35 mm DSLRs sometime next year as I can't see a financial case for a 35 mm fabrication unit just for a Y 1.5 million cinema camera.

But after the NEX and SLT cameras what they will look like is anyones guess.

The F3 is Super 35, which is a film format that is similar in size to APS-C, but at a slightly wider aspect ratio. So, this is unrelated to 35mm DSLRs. The sensor in the F3 has a 12 micron pixel pitch, so it has relatively huge pixels and low resolution in DSLR terms.

[peterottaway]

Agreed about the 35mm movie and 35mm still are different beasts, I still have an old " half frame " Olympus somewhere. But it is likely that silicon wafers and chip sizes will be larger than the standard Sony APS - C . And so it means that Sony is retaining production capacity and even developing technologies for cameras of larger than APS combo still and video cameras such as the A33 or A55.

Those inclined to negativity made much of Thom Hogans ruminations and Sonys announcement that it was outsourcing some of their chip production to imply that Sony had accepted a place of permanent inferiority to the two ugly stepsisters.

I did use some sloppy language which could lead people to believe that I was saying that this chip in the new movie camera would be used in a FF stills camera. I used " implications " in the title but was not precise in the body of the text. Sorry.

[douglasf13]