Sony Tidbits…(Khövsgöl — To the one who taught us about nature)

Remi (video above):The reunion of two brothers – through the frozen Khövsgöl lake – to honor the memory of the man who taught them about adventure. Camera equipment (a7s, a7II and as200) provided by Sony France.

Today Sony A5100, 35mm and 8mm E-mount Gold Box deals at Amazon Germany (Click here).
Sony FS7 v3.00 firmware update delayed until January 2016 (Newsshooter).
Sony A7S II Field Test: Big improvements make their way to Sony’s low-light champ (Imaging Resource).
Summilux 50mm f1.4 ASPH owners. Care to share your thoughts? (SonyAlphaForum)
A7II and Zhong Yi Mitakon 85mm F1.2 (SonyAlphaForum).

Matthias Kühle‎:A new, smoothly cut version of my real time polar lights video. It is recorded with Sony A7s at ISO 25600 – 51200. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjQCKYJ8YoI

Bad news: Zeiss Loxia 21mm lens in Stock in mid January. Good news: First UK preorders shipping.

Loxia21mm

BHphoto (Click here) just postponed the Loxia 21mm availability date from mid December to mid January. It means if you order it now you will have to wait at least one month to get one. I do hope though that early Ocotber preorders will be shipped before Christmas.

The good news is that one: Two UK readers told me their preorder shipped this week.

Still no shipment date for Batis lenses in USA/Europe:
Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8 lens in US at Adorama, Bhphoto. In Eu at Amazon DE, WexUK. In Asia at Digitalrev.
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2.0 lens at Adorama, Bhphoto. In EU at Amazon DE, WexUK. In Asia at Digitalrev.

Sony Tidbits…


Zeiss 55mm f1.8 vs Sony 50mm f1.8

Hunter Press sent me the video above: Hi Andrea, the results are going to cause quite a controversy! But, I believe the lenses are basically equal. Don’t spoil the surprise! Thank you!”

Deal of the Day: Save Over 20% On Selected Cameras at Amazon UK.
Gold Box deal on the A6000 at Amazon France.
Sony a7S II Hands-on Review at Videomaker.
A7s vs A7S II ISO tests (bonus compressed/uncompressed test) by Alin Popescu.
Best 28mm legacy lenses (SonyAlphaForum).
AF Speed upgrade for the a7II and Metabones after firmware updates (Tysonrobichaudphotography).
RX1rII unboxing video by Tamrong.

Steve:Not sure if you have published either of these previously, or not…Not rumors, but a couple of articles written by pro photographers that I just stumbled upon, both doing reviews of Sony gear, and BOTH of them concluding “I am switching from Canon to Sony, effective immediately”…
FStoppers, Nino Batista
https://fstoppers.com/bts/trial-fire-switching-sony-commercial-shoot-overnight-100963
The Breed, Dana Pennington
https://jointhebreed.com/sony-a7rii-review/”

Interview with Sony manager Iwatsuki-san (Faster and also more compact lenses are definitely high on the priority list)


What’s the Future of the Sony A7x Series? An Exclusive Interview at Sony HQ
from cinema5D on Vimeo.

Cinema5D posted that video interview with Iwatsuki-san who is a senior manager for product planning at Sony industry consumer electronics. This are just some of the answers he gave:

1) The market is shrinking but the pro and enthusiast market is revitalizing the market
2) In the future Photography and Videography will merge into one big industry. The future is bright.
3) Mirrorless today means high quality, small size and light weight.
4) Our mirrorless business is increasing. But it’s not a success yet because we are still a challenger. We are not a champion yet. We are trying to create innovative products that didn’t exist before.
5) Small cameras and big lens issues: First we are trying to expand our lens range as quick as possible. And we carefully list to our customers voice. The first lenses were focused on high quality lenses and that’s why they are big. But in the future we will make more compact lenses. And we do recognize the need of faster lenses.

This week SAR readers photos selection.


‎David Liang‎
Shot with Sony a99 and Minolta 85mm 1.4

1) Submit your picture with a message and picture here: facebook.com/sonyalpharumors or on the SonyAlphaForum image section.
2) Like and comment the pictures from other readers here: facebook.com/sonyalpharumors/photos_stream?tab=photos and on SonyAlphaForum.
3) A selection of most liked pictures by the community and by me SAR admin will be posted weekly on SAR.

Note: When sending a pic feel free to also add a link to your site to promote yourself!

Read more

This is the world’s first “modular” pancake lens for Sony E-mount.

Bildschirmfoto 2015-12-12 um 13.11.47

The CM33 is a 33mm f/2 pancake-style prime lens that delivers stunning image quality and very close macro focus range with specialized optics. It also includes two new unique features for photographers:

  • “Mods” open up a world of powerful and modular optical effects
  • “Focus Finder” provides the greatest possible manual focus precision

The CM33 project can be supported on Kickstarter (Click here).

Bildschirmfoto 2015-12-12 um 13.22.46

Matthew:I just wanted to let you know about a Kickstarter project that my company has taken live today that your readers might take interest in. We are Modula Optical, a small group of engineers in the optical industry, and we have developed a really unique 33mm f/2 prime lens for mirrorless cameras (Fujifilm X, Sony E, and Canon M) called the CM33. We love the compactness of mirrorless cameras, so we wanted to create a nice flexible pancake style lens where we push the optical quality absolutely as far as it can go using the design techniques we’ve learned over the years in other industries. And we also wanted to bring to modern cameras some of the really wonderful feel and usability of the classic manual focus lenses we grew up.

The other cool thing about the CM33 is a range of modular upgrade options. The most unique option is what we call “Mods” — special optical elements (filters, lenses, etc.) that can be inserted into the middle of the lens near the aperture stop, rather than screwed on the front ring. This lets us create some really interesting optical effects in a completely “as needed” way, rather than requiring a specialized lens to, for example, get a bokeh apodization effect or well-controlled soft focus effect.

If you’re interested, you can take a look at our Kickstarter campaign page, as well as a press release we’ve put out today and our new webpage. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me of course. I’m a frequent reader of sonyalpharumors, so I’d be thrilled if we warranted a mention there. We’re offering a very limited number of CM33 lenses at a significant “earlybird” discount for those who back us early, which may be of additional interest to your readers. By the way, I’m also sharing this info with your sister sites fujirumors and canonwatch (since it’s also relevant to those systems).

Some relevant links:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modulaoptical/cm33-compact-manual-focus-lens-for-mirrorless-with
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/11/prweb13059961.htm
http://www.modulaoptical.com
https://youtu.be/J7hemNnkut4

Bildschirmfoto 2015-12-12 um 13.23.06

Editor’s note: I posted Matthews text in a recent Tidbits post. But I realized afterwards the project deserves a proper spot on SAR ;)