Sony to quit making DSLR's? am I late?

Sony's lenses are fine....

If anything canon could play catchup in some areas...

Face it. All of the high end z/g:Sony lenses look amazing. The 16-35 is a wonderful peice of industrial design.

Pros use : what ever works for them.

Consumers: think they know what pros use.

If anyone was going to make a digital X-Pan I'd assume it would be Fuji or Hasselblad, but it was always a niche camera anyway so the money in it probably wouldn't justify the cost to develop. Knowing Sony their idea of a digital X-pan would be telling you there is a panorama sweep mode on the NEX-7, and it would do 99.99% of their customers. The main problem with Sony for me is they could drop DSLRs or SLTs or the NEX tomorrow and not care a jot. They'd just go on and concentrate on the manufacture of the Playstation 4 or some other proprietary gadget. Leica or PhaseOne or Hasselblad etc couldn't do that.

As for sensors and cropping to match other cameras you'll see the Pentax K5 has the highest dynamic range tested at DxO (even higher than the IQ180), but that mark doesn't tell the whole story. I'd reckon with Nikon launching a 36MP camera then why bother entering MF? If I ran Sony I'd get more NEX lenses out and a nice full frame camera or look at a full frame NEX.

pyrojim wrote in post #14078873
you are driving a race spec car on the road?

no, I was taking the picture

Shadowblade wrote in post #14076299
If Sony play their cards right, they could effectively take over the entire landscape photography market

you thats true with Sony as a corporation as a whole. sony always created opportunities for itself but it blew up many times in its face. piss poor management, poor understanding of their customers, allowed them to destroy their own market share OVER AND OVER again in many of their product lines. theres too many products to list here. we havnt seen many blockbuster products in awhile from Sony.

sony is trying the classic strategy of differentiation when compared to Nikon or Canon. I just dont think the way they differentiate themselves is ENOUGH for most photographers to take notice to buy.

I didn't realize Sony was going in the direction of fixed translucent mirrors. So does Canon respond by bringing back the Pellix? I have one in my closet.

Shadowblade wrote in post #14059384
Sony's biggest role in photography is making and designing sensors. They're an electronics company, not a photographic one - they produce fantastic sensors and crap bodies. They should stick to doing what they do best, and Canon should outsource their sensors to Sony. That'd be an instant, overnight 2-stop DR improvement!

Canon actually does outsource some of its sensors to Sony. A couple point and shoots I dissected this year confirmed that.

klr.b wrote in post #14094897
I didn't realize Sony was going in the direction of fixed translucent mirrors. So does Canon respond by bringing back the Pellix? I have one in my closet.

It's one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.

Fixed translucent mirror means you get a darker viewfinder than a normal mirror, and poorer IQ than either a normal reflex mirror or a mirrorless/electronic viewfinder system. The only advantage it has is for fast-action photography when IQ isn't so critical.

Bananapie wrote in post #14095684
Canon actually does outsource some of its sensors to Sony. A couple point and shoots I dissected this year confirmed that.

IMO what Canon should do is buy the latest Sony sensor (maybe a NEX-7 sensor scaled up to full frame and 54MP), pair it up with a 16-bit A/D converter and stick it in a fully-sealed 5D3 body. Sell it for around $4k. This will let them retain the high-resolution, high-DR crowd for the next three years, as a stop-gap measure. Then, work hard on the next generation, to close the DR and MP gap.

Without a direct response this year to the D800 and a high-resolution update to the 1Ds3 and 5D2, Canon will lose a lot of customers.

As I am still a Sony user (currently moving to Canon) I guess I should say a few words about Sonys lineup.

First of all, the sensors produced by Sony are great. The only issue is that used in Sonys bodies the noise performance is pure crap. If you compare high ISO performance of any Sony camera with the counterpart of Nikon, you will see how miserable NR is. The newly released A57 however seems to be changing that quite amazingly.

As far DSLTs and the A77 are concerned - yes, what you mentioned here is absolutely true. You basically have a camera which is designed for fast action, but the EVF with its lag simply kills this advantage. Another one is that due to the translucent mirror you get 30% of light to the AF and EVF and 70% to the CMOS sensor. This has IMHO two main disadvantages - less light on the sensor means reduced IQ and less light to the AF sensor means poorer AF accuracy, especially in low light conditions.

Last not least - what is the main issue for Sony is their pricing policy. They outprice themself in the market. Tha 500mm f4 is just the latest example, where it would be cheaper to buy a D800E with the Nikon 500mm and still would save you a few grand. There are quite some holes in the lens lineup, but Sony keeps releasing bodies way too quickly and is very slow in releasing lenses.

Misleading thread title is misleading.

Jeremy Bryant wrote in post #14131736
It never were their forte really. They should stick to what they're good at and that is phones and other electronics.

And sensors.

Keep on selling DSLR sensors, and scale up the D800e sensor to make 98MP 645-format (56x42mm), 131MP 6x6 format (56x56mm) and 262MP 612-format (112x56mm) digital backs in the $10k-$20k range to compete with the Phase One/Mamiya/Hasselblad.

Jahled wrote in post #14057818
Sony have shown about as much interest in attracting serious photographers to their mount as Syria is currently an attractive holiday destination.

Hey, I actually wanna' go to Syria someday. Don't know about buying a Sony though.

Numenorean wrote in post #14131794
Misleading thread title is misleading.

trololololol

professorman wrote in post #14076235
I dont know if I will ever take Sony seriously in the line of DSLRs.

but the NEX series seems to be serially serious

lettuce be cereal though...