Image on top. The bad news reported by Amazon US (Click here).

Bad news guys! I just got this via one of my readers (Thanks!): “Warehouse express UK say they will not be filling the pre-order lsit and have been told by Sony they will not be getting NEX-7 until begining March 2012. I spoke to Sony UK today and politley pushed for any information they could tell me. What I got was that there are no NEX-7’s in the UK. Sony hoping to make a statement ‘at some point soon’ and customers on their pre-order list are to be contacted and offered a refund.
It appears that companies differ some take the money upfront some do not until item ships. Does not really clear up the information some people in the USA are being given that early pre-orders are still likely to be shipped soon??”

Another reader sent me this: “I spoke with a US Sony rep who told me they have received the NEX-7 body & NEX-7 w/18-55mm lens into their warehouse. They said they have enough to fulfill current preorders on them but can no longer take preorders for the NEX-7 body option. They said there are still able to add more preorders for the one with the lens. Their website seems to suggest this also as the NEX-7 now says coming soon instead an availability date: http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666375235”

Damn, it is so bad that Sony will miss the Christmas sales. They made a very nice camera almost everybody likes and they cannot be awarded for that. And the competition will now have more time to copy the NEX-7.

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NEX cameras and lens preorder links (Click on shopname to check price and availability):
Sony NEX-7 [shopcountry 8454].
Sony NEX-5n [shopcountry 8452].
Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 [shopcountry 8450].
Sony 50mm f/1.8 [shopcountry 8448].
Sony 55-210mm [shopcountry 8444].
NEX-5n viewfinder [shopcountry 9110].

Since yesterday the A77 is in Stock at Amazon (Click here). And it is climbing the Amazon rankings (Click here to it). It now is on Position 9! Why is that interesting? For years now Canon or Nikon cameras are holding the first position. Only the [shoplink 8454]Sony NEX-7[/shoplink] came close to the first position (on Pos. 3). I am really curious to see how close the A77 will come on top. To bad the NEX-7 will be delayed (until February?). That was that camera that could have reached position one!

More rankings: Amazon DE, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon JP.

UPDATE: The A77 is now in Stock in most stores and already a hotseller at Amazon US (Click here to see the top 20 most requested cameras). Good news for Sony! And the A77 is doing even better in at Amazon Deutschland (Click here). Here (at the time of writing) it is on position 4th!

Other bestseller lists:
Amazon UK, , Amazon FR, Amazon JP.

A couple of days ago I told you that soon the A77 stocks would be gone. And because of the Thai flood new stocks of A77 will be available next year only. But I didn’t think that It would be THAT soon! Sony Canada already has no more A77 left. As you can see on their website (Click here) the new estimated ship date is January 17!

One reason more to buy it now if you want the camera. Check the availability status at [shopcountry 8461].

Dear readers!

While you are reading this post I am sitting into the airplane flying from Munich to New York. I will have an extremely important and busy week in NYC full of meetings where I will show my latest project I am working for three years now. But I am not here to talk about my private project. What matters is that you may will excuse me if I will be less “present” on SonyAlphaRumors this week. I will do my best to keep an eye on the big news and rumors. But if for some reason I will disappear for a while you now know why it is so.

Now let’s hope the snowstorm over the east coast will be over before I will arrive! :(

Kind regards,
Andrea

P.S.: I scheduled some news for the next hours. It will not be to boring here :)

Amanda Schmidt: City Moments: Sony Nex 5n from Mike Kobal on Vimeo.

The NEX-5n has been reviewed by Cnet UK (Click here): “That rather leaves us wondering why you’d choose a conventional dSLR over the NEX-5N, assuming you haven’t already bought into one manufacturer’s body and lens system. It’s smaller, more convenient and much more fun to use. In many cases it’s cheaper, too, which in our book makes it very highly recommended indeed.”

Ricoh GXR Mount Sony Nex 5N comparison (Dpreview forum).

Sony NEX-5n Addendum – By Sean Reid on Luminous Landscape (Click here / scroll down to the bottom of the article).

A reader sent me this: “I’ve posted a video on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/29216506. It is a BTS video of an AHA Image Studios shoot for Sbyke. I’m using nothing but his lighting, 2 HMIs and one gelled 650 tungsten. NEX 5n with a 16mm f2.8 lens. The entire video was shot on the Program setting. The sound is from the built in stereo mics. The lack of volume control is a big problem. I spent a lot of time in post trying to match levels with less than complete success. I’ll be using double system sound for the rest of my projects. Hope you enjoy, and maybe learn something. I find real world videos more informative than the typical bug and flower test videos.”

The good news for Sony is that the NEX-5n is selling very well in USA. Actually it is the only non-Canon and non-Nikon cameras that made it into the Amazon top-20 cameras (Clcik here to see the full ranking). And that success is also pushing the lens sales (Click here to see the full camera/lens mirrorless ranking). I guess the NEX-7 would have reached an even better ranking. But I guess we will have to wait ealry 2012 until we can see that camera in Stock.

The NEX-5n sells extremely well at Amazon UK too where it is on position one of the mirrorless chart (Click here to see the ranking).

The NEX-5n is on third position of the Amazon De ranking (Click here). The surprise here is that the NEX-7 is on top! Amazon de is still accepting preorders (Click here)!

And here are the rankings for Japan (Click here), France (Click here), Italy (Click here) and Spain (Click here).

Our reader “QX” sent me a link to an article he posted on Dpreview Forum: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1037&message=39655557.

UPDATE: The test caused heavy discussions on dpreview forum and on Sonyalpharumors. Many questioned the conclusion and quality of the test. QX sent me an email that explains better the test and resutls of his test:

“Andrea,
My apologies for getting you into that shitstorm.

I have posted a summary of my findings in the comments section, maybe that will help.
I was just trying to put the information out there, and maybe my Original Post in the forums was too strongly worded.
I was alarmed because my A700 did not exhibit this kind of behavior in RAW.

1) If you’re shooting JPEG, choose whatever ISO you want. For High ISO try NR Weak, Clear -2,+2,-2 settings. Those worked for me at 6400 in 6MP mode. 24MP JPG high iso isn’t really… acceptable. You’ll see what I mean.
2) If you’re shooting RAW, stick to ISO 1000, and underexpose by whatever you need to get the equivalent ISO. For example, ISO 1600 means ISO 1000 and -2/3EV compensation. You can bring exposure up later .
3) If you are shooting in good light, don’t bother exposing to the right, as it seems that the RAW file stores almost the same number of levels per stop, so there is no nett gain by exposing to the right. This was my beef in claim 2 in my original post – there is no way to buy yourself any more processing headroom by ETTR (stuff like increasing clarity and contrast will increase noise, and if you tried to boost a properly exposed, low contrast subject, you will get more noise. Traditionally, if you ETTR, reduced exposure in ACR and then boosted contrast, you’d get better results).
4) Make sure you tune the focus correctly for your lenses. The A77 is really high res – it will make you pay for any small front/back focus. I had to tune my 16-50 kit to +3 to make it spot on, and it’s been behaving ever since.

It seems that there are many who just looked at the first post in that thread and jumped to conclusions. There was a lively discussion in that thread punctuated by trolls.
I don’t claim to be perfect, but as in Science, any hypothesis will be tested rigorously, and I am happy that happened in DPReview forum. I also learned a lot from the other posters.

Once again, I’m sorry for the trouble that I caused you.”

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One more thing: Every RAW file has some form of compression (also Nikon NEF files!). Our reader Oneguy sent me this: “ In the DPR thread that you linked, one of the poster is ejmartin (Real Name:  Emil Martinec, Professor of Physics at  the University of Chicago and a member of the particle theory group. He is also creator of Amaze, Raw demosaicer algorithm). See his article on noise: http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/noise-p3.html
Scroll down to “An aside on “lossy” NEF compression” section and read the conclusion:”Bottom line: The “lossy” form of NEF compression is a clever use of information theory to save space by eliminating redundant raw levels. The noise which is unavoidably present in light effectively dithers tonal transitions so that the compression is lossless in that the image is still encoded without loss of visual information. In this sense, “lossy” compression is perhaps an inappropriate appelation.”