A700 Replacement Rumor + FF Price Rumor

[KevinBarrett]

I'm guessing that the a500 will be like an a100 with a 12 MP CMOS sensor; a similar unit to the one in the a700 and most of Nikon's entry-level line-up. I'm hoping that it will have front and rear control wheels, but there's no precedent for such controls in a "5" series A-mount camera. Ideally it would be a bargain a700 in a less expensive composite body.

The new a500/a550 combo seems as likely to support SD as they are to support CF, considering the a380 below it and the a850 above it. They will definitely have MS support, for Sony has announced already their next generation of the format with up to 2 TB capacity and read/write speeds in the hundreds of megabytes per second. It seems to me that the format would be ideally suited to a high definition video camera, perhaps a V-DSLR? One can daydream, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Dulaney Ward]

Everyone persistently compares every new Sony to the Nikons, and designs new dream cameras to match the Nikons. I understand why: Nikon has long been the standard of excellence in the DSLR world. But we must not forget that Nikon and Sony are actually partners in their joint war against Canon, which, not very long ago, totally dominated the DSLR market. Sony has been carefully avoiding direct challenges to its partner, and will continue to do so for now. But I believe we'll begin to see that change with the 550, and definitely next year, when I forecast a super APS-C and a super FF, along with a shower of new lenses, brought on by a hot-selling 850 Of course I may be wrong, but Sony's deliberate leaking of the 850, the tight secrecy about the 500/550, and the tantalizing suggestions about September 22 make me very suspicious we are in for some fireworks that evening (in a manner of speaking).

Dulaney