There are small signs that Sony’s A99 price is falling down. Redcoon Spain (Click here) now sells it for 2499 Euro which is a 300 Euro price drop compared to the initial regular price. Also The German store Technikdirekt (Click here) now sells the A99 for 2666 Euro. In US the lowest price now is $2610 at [shoplink 16531 ebay]BigValue (Click here)[/shoplink]. And My guess is that more price drops will follow soon. Canon and Nikon forces them to do so (and that’s good for us).

One more news…DigitalPhotographySchool posted their A99 review.

P.S.: The RX100 sells for less than 500 Euro at Amazon France!

Image courtesy: Engadget.

As you know Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai is trying to restructure the company by focusing on profitable businesses. Engadget now reports that “Sony has announced that it has agreed to sell its New York headquarters building to a consortium led by The Chetrit Group. After settling its debts on the building, the $1.1 billion sale will net Sony about $685 million in operating income, potentially giving it the extra cashflow it needs to avoid a negative Q3 earnings report.”

I repeat it again, all that doens’t affect Sony’s commitment on digital cameras. Actually quite the opposite is happening. Sony elevated the Imaging Business on the top priority list and a lot of development is ongoing. Goals are pretty high and I expect some major breakthrough tech to come in 2014 (as I have written in my previous post).

If your RX1 will break in thousand pieces than just watch the video on top left of the frame to see how to rebuild it in 5 minutes :)

The RX1 is in Stock almost everywhere now (See [shopcountry 15824]). But the optical and electronic viewfinder are still available in Japan only (here on eBay).

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Reminder: RX1 Gariz accessories:
1) They made a new half leather case in Black and Brown ([shoplink 16437 ebay]Click here to see them on eBay[/shoplink]).
2) The new lens cap ([shoplink 16439 ebay]Click here to see them on eBay[/shoplink]).
3) The new entry is the anti loose button(!) ([shoplink 16438 ebay]Click here to see them on eBay[/shoplink]). Don’t know if that will be really useful for you RX1 owners. Someone has it and call it how it works? Thanks!
4) And this is the really first time I see that. A special Leather skin hood! ([shoplink 16441 ebay]Click here to see them on eBay[/shoplink]).

BCN Inc., has released the final market shares percentages of the 2012 sales in Japana. These are the results of the digital video and camera market:

Digital camera (integrated lens)
Canon 17.6
Sony Corporation 16.5
Nikon Corporation 14.1
Digital camera (SLR)
Canon 52.7
Nikon Corporation 35.1
Sony Corporation 7.1
Digital camera (SLR mirror-less)
Olympus 29.8
Panasonic 23.3
Sony Corporation 20.1
Digital video camera
Sony Corporation 40.2
Panasonic 24.8
JVC Kenwood 18.2

As you can see Sony made it into the top three of each category. The maybe disappointing news is the DSLR market share which is insignificant compared to the Canon-Nikon duo. So neither the A77 nor the A99 had a significant impact. Sony is doing much better in the mirrorless segment which (in Japan) is exactly as big as the DSLR market.

Amazon ranking (just ro see what’s hot in EU and US):
US ranking (Click here).
DE ranking (Click here).
UK ranking (Click here).
FR ranking (Click here).

This isn’t really a surprise…The RX100 is the Compact Camera of the Year 2012 at Photographyblog. And I guess quite many here on SAR bought that little jewel. One more thing: In these days I also got a weird rumors from an unknown source saying that Sony would launch a new RX100 model. Let me know if you got something about it.

That said the cheapest price I found in US is at [shoplink 16489 ebay]BigValue (Click here)[/shoplink] and as super kit for $648 at Amazon (Click here). And to noble your RX100 you may look at the Italian Leather Gariz case.

Image on top: Alpa 35mm f/4.0 MC PC-Curtagon

A short update about the new Metabones Speed Booster adapter. There will be three of them for sale in February:
ALPA to NEX ([shoplink 16469 ebay]check Alpa lenses here on eBay[/shoplink]).
Canon EF to NEX
Contarex to NEX ([shoplink 16478 ebay]check Contarex lenses here on eBay[/shoplink]).
Contax C/Y to NEX
Nikon F to NEX
Leica R to NEX ([shoplink 16471 ebay]check Leica R lenses here on eBay[/shoplink]).

Source: metabones.
And again…it’s Alpa and not Alpha! I didn’t make a spelling error :)

Like you I am surprised they added support for the Alpa lenses!

As you know MXcamera will sell the new Contax G to Sony E-mount adapter starting from February. The “special” feature is that it supports full auto aperture and auto focus control. Only the 16mm and 21mm Contax  G lenses will not be compatible on a NEX camera. Anyway, the news today is that there are two more videos published by the store selling those adapters, MXcamera. One video you can watch on top and the second video can be found here on youtube. Yep, looks like the af works :)

MXcamera already sells the Canon EF autofocus adapter on [shoplink 16463 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

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Reminder: list of great G lenses with links to eBay price:
Hologon 16mm; 1:8 on [shoplink 16235 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] -> (will not work on the DEO TECHART adapter).
Biogon T* 21 mm; 1:2,8 on [shoplink 16236 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] -> (will not work on the DEO TECHART adapter).
Biogon T* 28 mm; 1:2,8 on [shoplink 16237 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Planar T* 35 mm; 1:2,0 on [shoplink 16238 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Planar T* 45 mm; 1:2,0 on [shoplink 16239 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Sonnar T* 90 mm; 1:2,8 on [shoplink 16240 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Vario-Sonnar T* 35 – 70 mm; 1:3,5-5,6 on [shoplink 16241 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].