Sony just released a new E-mount camcorder named NEX-EA50. It’s very similar to the NEX-FS100 but has a “more affordable price point than ever before” – about £2,700. The other very interetsing news is that for the first time Sony released an E-mount 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 OSS Power Zoom!!! It has continuous variable iris and Optical Steady Shot image stabilisation with Active Mode, which should give a more stable shot. lens is electronically controlled via either the zoom rocker lever on the camcorder grip or the top handle, offering either a constant zoom speed or smooth, slow zoom.

Features of the NEX-EA50:
– Exmor APS-C/Super35mm HD CMOS sensor is claimed to offer low noise and high sensitivity in low light conditions. It also enables 1080 progressive and interlace recording with 50/60Hz selection at 50p/25p/50i or 60p/30p/24p/60i. It records AVCHD 4:2:0 at up to 28Mbps.
– It will capture 16.1 megapixel still pictures with RAW format support.
– two-channel XLR audio (an ECM-XM1 Shotgun microphone is included with the NEX-EA50H); Linear PCM audio; time code; user bit; and built-in GPS.
– Sony’s HXR-FMU128 (128GB) flash memory unit can dock directly to the camcorder for simultaneous backup recording. The camcorder is also compatible with Sony’s new Mirroring Memory Stick (MS-PX64/32/16), the world’s first memory card with mirroring. This enables the card to deliver higher reliability and data security through a dual recording (mirroring) function. The PX Series cards will be available from September, in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions.

via HDwarrior and Urbanfox.

EISA (Click here) released the name of the EISA award winners. Sony won three prices in the following categories:
Best European SLR Camera: Sony A57
Best European Advanced Compact Camera: Sony RX100.
Best European Travel Camera: Sony HX20v

P.S.: RX100 still sells like hotcakes at Amazon US (ranking here) and Amazon DE (ranking here).

The Hacker “someone” released the first Sony A55 hack! More info at EosHD forum: “The patcher app is able to overcome the [shoplink 3617]A55[/shoplink] firmware encryption and is the basis for adding bitrate patches and new menu options later on. The [shoplink 3003]NEX 5[/shoplink] patcher I also believe is coming later.”

If the hacker managed to hack the [shoplink 3617]A55[/shoplink] than I am sure he will soon do it with the A65 and A77 too. And maybe also with the future A99!

UPDATE: EosHD is collecting the donations for the hacker at http://www.nex-hack.com/index.php/forum/12-hacking-project-general/

Sony NEX hack by Someone 1.00 from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.

EosHD posted the video you see here on top to explain the possible future NEX camera hack. The author (and not the hacker!) of EosHD speculates that “46Mbit on the older NEX 5 without too much trouble and it is still early days yet, so we could see stuff like intra-frame recording and improvements to HDMI out, or even 4:2:2 colour in MP4 mode and higher resolutions.”

Please don’t get too exited about this now. It’s all speculation and imagination now. Let’s see if the hacker group will succeed in releasing a real hacked firmware with lots of new features. I would be certainly happy because this means we would not have to wait for Sony to improve our NEX (and maybe SLT) cameras. And don’t forget that APP support is coming wih the next NEX camera…this is also a good news :)

RX100 review by John Sison

Pimping out the RX100 at Luminous Landscape.
RX100 review at DPS.
New RX100 video by Outbackphoto.
Gizmodo: “This is a camera that 90% of the population can pull out of a pocket on a whim to fire off a few beautiful shots without much trouble. Still, this is not a camera for everyone.”
Special Sony RX100 Tahoe photo gallery posted at DCresource.
Rx100 experience part on at Soundimagesplus.
A “protein” based sensor patent at Egami (Translation here).
Sony NEX-7 for street photography at TheF8blog.

RX100 rankings at Amazon US (Click here to see the ranking), Amazon UK and Amazon Germany.

You can buy the lens by clicking those direct search links: RX100 at [shopcountry 13014].

And don’t forget that the super sexy RX100 Gariz case is already available in [shoplink 13071 ebay]Black on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and in [shoplink 13073 ebay]Brown on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]!

For some unknown reason Sony has slowed down the work on the firmware updates of cameras like the NEX-7 and A77. It’s just my guess but I think that Sony engineers were now focused on the development of the new NEX-5R and NEX-6 cameras. But this is not the way to go Sony! We all trusted you when buying our Sony SLT or NEX that you would keep fixing and improving our (sometimes very expensive) cameras. If you make us happy you will earn trust and we will spend even more money into the system!

The recent [shoplink 13183 ebay]Canon 7D[/shoplink] firmware upgrade shows how Canon did take care of the user requests. A nice article about the Canon lesson has been posted by David Kilpatrick. It’s a must read for all Sony managers! I hope the good SLT and NEX sales success will now convince the Sony managers that we need a long time customer support.