Sony posted the full Q3 financial results (PDF file here). Here are a couple of key info:

1) The overall Sony Net income increased 21%
2) In the imaging segment Sony reports a 5% decrease in sales. But the profit had a 4.0 bln yen increase. The profit has been achieved thanks to cost cuts and “improvement in the product mix of digital cameras”
3) Q4 Forecast for the imaging segment: Sales estimation is 10 bln yen less than expected. This because of “Lower than expected sales of broadcast- and professional-use products”. But Sony also increased the operative income forecast (5 bln yen upward revision) because of “a shift to high value-added models”
4) For the first time after many years Sony reports a decrease in Image Sensor Sales (-12% sales). This reflects the current “crisis” of the smartphone market.

Overall the news is good for Sony. Like any other company the digital camera business sales are shrinking. But Sony shift towards high-end products with higher net margin is paying off.

Sony a7 Series Eyecup Comparison Part 1

Long Exposure Photography with Sony a7ii (SonyAlphaForum)
Sony To Use FD-SOI in Stacked Image Sensors (eetimes).
Thibault Roland on how he creates his images (Imagingambassadors.sony.net).
Comedy Sketch – Sony A7S II & 3DR Solo Drone (SonyAlphaForum).
High ISO noise – Sony A99 vs Pentax K3 – first impressions, and software NR (SonyAlphaForum).
Test Zeiss: Otus vs Loxia vs Sony-Zeiss (Thecinephotographer).

Bernie Aniciete: “Music video filmed using Sony a6000, LX100 and DJI Phantom 3 Pro. Used Nebula 4000 for stabilization: https://www.facebook.com/BnEPhotography/videos/10208666761053581/?l=6260241802673447734
www.BnEPhotography.com
www.Facebook.com/BnEMediA
www.YouTube.com/BnEMediA
@TheRealBnE – IG/Twitter“

This is somehow unexpected and SAR readers can try to figure out why this happened: According to the just posted new BCNranking 2015 Japanese market sales report Sony lost almost 10% of the mirrorless market share. The big winner was Olympus that went up 12%.

I am no sales expert but probably Sony’s focus on high-end cameras didn’t pay back in terms of market share. Not everyone has $3000+ to spend on cameras. Sony should probably focus more on the entry-level market to attract the “mass” of photographers. Those figures may suggest that non releasing a new A6100 and maybe an entry level A5 FF camera did come at some costs. Or maybe people feels Sony is not “serious” enough with their APS-C system. As Sony seems to be very focused on making FE lenses (big and expensive) instead of properly designed APS-C E-mount lenses.

What are your thoughts on this?

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via Mirrorlessrumors

Adobe added full support for the Sony ILCA-68 and many lens profiles for Samyang/Rokinon A and E-mount lenses. They also added a new feature. Here is the presentation text:

Introducing Boundary Warp

Stitched panoramas often have non-rectangular boundaries. There are several ways to handle irregular boundaries. The most common approach is to apply a rectangular crop. This is straightforward, but important image details near the boundary may be lost due to cropping. Another approach is to use Content Aware Fill (in Photoshop) to fill in the transparent areas outside the boundary. This can be effective, but may require multiple attempts to obtain a satisfying (smooth, artifact-free) result. It can also be expensive and requires rendering out the panorama to an output-referred(non-raw) format. Boundary Warp is a feature that provides another approach to handling the irregular boundary of panoramas. The feature analyzes the boundary and warps the image so that its edges fit a rectangular frame.  Here’s a visual example of the feature: