Rumour says, A900/A850 firmware update due in February

[Javelin]

I wondered about the flashguns actualy. Seems a lot for a camera company to also try and manufacture every single piece of the system. surely there are Companies that could fo it better. I'll bet it's the same as the other makers too. is there a bunch of flashgun makers out there that we will never know the names of?

[David Kilpatrick]

National Panasonic, believe it or not - makes most of the flashguns for everyone.

Kenko bought the rights to the Minolta meters. You can get the Flashmeter V, Autometer IV and Colormeter IIIF under the Kenko brand name now.

David

[Javelin]

Is national panasonic diferent than the Matsushita panasonic?

[Greg Beetham]

As it stands David is correct, there are lots of companies that subcontract to the majors, Minolta was a leader in innovation, many inventions of theirs were eventually copied by other brands, so their strength was in conceptual design and supervisory implementation, I guess you could say. They housed the boffins and design engineers, manufactured a lot of the major things directly and sublet some others, (too third party manufactures that have the necessary qualifications and expertise), sometimes it's cheaper to do that I guess than to build your own in house plant/assembly line for a particular item. But the main point is Minolta had the intellectual property rights (except for that phase detect item they borrowed and put to good use that time), and the patents, so their photographic buisness model was probably pretty good...except for that court case they lost.
I've been wondering just how many lenses Minolta still make for Sony, and how much does that contribute to the cost? I think Sony experimented with getting lenses made elsewhere but that wasn't a great success, the CZ16-80 for example suffered lots of tolerance and assembly problems, and now Sony have moved a lot of the lensmaking back to Japan...so I heard.
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

Matsushita is Panasonic - maybe I should not have said National Panasonic, as I think that is the US division, which manufactures the Foveon sensor for example (the only US-fabricated imaging sensor currently in a DSLR).

There have been some major movements of the gear which was originally sited in Minolta plants. In 2004, it was reported that some teams were made redundant (or changed jobs) and all their equipment was packed up for shipping (under Konica). At that point no new Minolta lenses were being made. Some equipment was definitely sent to the Shanghai Optical/Minolta joint facility, a relatively new optical works. That included everything needed for making the 50mm standard lenses, and others. Any Sony AF lens from the Minolta catalogue which is labelled made in China is a result of that move.

In 2006, it seems that Sony may have re-employed key Minolta staff and started negotiation to acquire the Sakai optical factory or its remaining contents - used to build lenses like the 70-200mm SSM, 300mm. Certainly no more plant was shipped to China. Sony also experimented with using the (or another?) Chinese plant to assemble some lenses, including the CZ 16-80mm (the launch was delayed a few weeks as the Chinese examples were not good enough). Sony then seems to have set up a plant of its own working with CZ, which made all the SAL CZ lenses in Japan - the G lenses were made by the old Minolta team, who seem also to have been briefed on designing new lenses for Sony video.

Konica Minolta retained another optical works - no idea where - which made, and still makes, lenses for photocopiers, scientific instruments, digital cameras and video cameras. I'd guess Malaysia, as Sony does not appear to have any Malaysian products but KM had a full production plant in Malaysia.

In 2009, Sony announced that all the former Minolta production units and their other new Japanese workshops (presumably CZ?) would be moving to a new single facility. Staff would be relocated, I think it's 200 miles from Osaka. In 2010 all Sony Alpha glass and high end video camera system G/CZ glass should be coming from a single Sony optical factory - apart from lenses still made in China, or lenses made by Tamron (in which Minolta had a share and Sony has apparently an 11% stake).

I do not know the exact details of the old Minolta/Tamron relationship but at photokina 2004 I was able to get senior Tamron staff and KM staff involved in a really strange dialogue which involved walking between the stands, making notes of the products, and asking questions - mostly unanswered. KM did get the 11-18mm and 18-200mm lenses shown in prototype form on the Tamron stand. That was my main unanswered question. It was clear both parties already knew KM would have these lenses. It also looks as if Minolta's lens design team was used by Tamron. They were the first company to licence the Minolta hybrid aspheric technology (plastic/glass sandwich lenses) and either they bought the elements from Minolta, or Minolta sold them production systems and then bought the elements back from Tamron.

Whatever the case, both the Chinese and the Tamron optical relationships are not random examples of 'let's just buy in a lens design'. Minolta staff definitely have worked at Shanghai Optical and at Tamron; Minolta technology has been bought by both. The lenses made in China were Minolta designs and still are - the Seagull manual range consists of former Minolta MD designs including the classic 17mm f/4.

Sony has continued the use of both the Chinese and Tamron connections. I have no idea about the SAM lenses.

David

[Greg Beetham]

Fascinating stuff David.
Greg

[Winedarksea]

fascinating and important stuff. You can't begin the fathom what's going on at a company until you begin to understand its story.

Dulaney

[pakodominguez]

National Panasonic, believe it or not - makes most of the flashguns for everyone.

Kenko bought the rights to the Minolta meters. You can get the Flashmeter V, Autometer IV and Colormeter IIIF under the Kenko brand name now.

David

I heard, when Sony just took over the KM photo division, that the Flashes were made by Sanyo -at least the 3600 and 5600-i don't know about the new models.
Regarding the Minolta/kenko lightmeters, an ex-Minolta and now Sekonic guy told me that Kenko is not investing in new technology, just selling the old (and wonderfully good) Minolta stuff.

Regards

[alphaomega]

Well it could be December 2010 instead of February 2010 if you believe this

(SR4) Sony A850/A900 firmware coming soon…(oh yes Sony Santa Claus does really exist!)

on sonyalpharumors.com

There are three reasons why Sony releases the firmware:
1) To improve the autofocus performance and to give a big image quality boost! This is a major upgrade (I have been told). I hope this will bring the cameras closer to the Nikon D3X performance.
2) To push the christmas sales.
3) This is also a message to current users that Sony takes care of you and will support and soon expand the fullframe system!

Maybe David Kilpatrick should be rejoicing now since he has apparently ditched the A55 in favour of his old workhorse the A900 for travel photography. To get A900 closer to D3X performance? Does that mean improving on higher ISO performance as they should be level in performance at lower ISOs or is this just a rumour???

[David Kilpatrick]

I have to say that despite a long 3-day haul processing and keywording and uploading, it's been great to be able to use Expression Media 2's Virtual Earth when annotating my A55 GPS tagged files. And over 350 images from last week went into Alamy without a single dust spot needing to be retouched except from the NEX-5, and the entire passed QC within 24 hours. So the A55/A550/NEX-5 combo we took has done well.

What I really want is to rip the GPS out of the A55 and put that in the A900 along with full frame 1080p video....

David

[UrsaMajor]

What I really want is to rip the GPS out of the A55 and put that in the A900 along with full frame 1080p video....

If you do that, you should really change the label on the A900. I suggest that you call it the A950 . . .

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[Dusty]

Back on subject, SonyAlphaRumours now says that the firmware updates will be out before Christmas.

Dusty

[malcy]

Yes Dusty I've just read the same thing, possibly by the end of next week. I wonder what we can expect. Sony are offering major discounts on the a850/900 and on some lenses as well. Obviously a big push on their part