This was already preannounced last year and now it’s happening: Sony is separating it’s Imaging Business (consumer camera, medical and broadcast segment) in a new separate company that will commence its operations on April 2017.
This is part of a long-term strategy from Sony. They have done the same thing with the other branches. The goal is to strengthen their business by making them more independent so that decisions can be taken faster and more effectively. Nothing will change for us Alpha customers.

Here is the full press text via Sony.net:

Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc. to be Established
Reinforcing Imaging Business

Sony Corporation (“Sony”) has decided to establish Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary that will be responsible for its imaging products and solutions businesses. All functions currently held within the Imaging Products & Solutions Sector within Sony, including the functions related to the consumer camera business, solutions business with a focus on broadcast- and professional-use products, and medical business, will be transferred to the new company. Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc. will aim to commence its operations on April 1, 2017. Shigeki Ishizuka, currently Corporate Executive Officer in charge of the imaging products and solutions businesses at Sony, is expected to be appointed President and Representative Director of this new company.

As part of its mid-term corporate strategy announced on February 18, 2015, Sony outlined its intention to sequentially split out the business units within Sony to form new subsidiary companies. The aim of these measures is to ensure clearly attributable accountability and responsibility from the perspective of shareholders, management policies with an emphasis on sustainable profit generation, acceleration of decision-making processes and reinforcement of business competitiveness. The establishment of Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc. forms part of this strategy, and upon completion of the transfer, all major businesses of Sony group will be operated by its subsidiary companies.

Kipon Japan announced the worlds first EF-S to E-mount electronic adapter with built-in variable ND filter. And it’s now in Stock at Amazon US (Click here) and Adorama (Click here).

On the German Forum Dslr-forum.de Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens owners spotted a specific issue: The lens takes unsharp pics when shooing at f/2.0 aperture with AF-S focusing via the EVF. Sigma germany acknowledge the problem and is working to fix it.

I am sure Sigma will fix that issue as this sounds a lot like a software issue. There is really no reason to not buy this lens also because it’s the best APS-C E-mount lens to date according to DxOmark.

Get the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 E-mount lens at [shopcountry 49396].

Lensvid posted that Sony video interview. A couple of news we got from this:

1) Sony sees a market for A-mount enthusiasts (particularly in the mid-upper level)
2) don’t expect Sony to make any entry level camera other than the A68
3) We will quickly recover from the Kumamoto damage
4) We are working on algorithms to increase the battery life and lower the overheating on E-mount cameras. These could be released
5) In Europe we have 25% of the Full Frame market share

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Tokina Germany informed Photoscala that the new Tokina FiRIN 20mm f/2.0 FE lens will ship in Q1 (January-March) 2017. Tokina did yet not unveil the price of the lens.

Finnish Sony Alpha photographer Toni Ahvenainen interviewed Dr. Michael Pollmann from ZEISS, who is a product manager for the Batis lens family. The full interview can be read at Lenspire. There are many interesting answers and I will report only three of them:

1) Batis production shortage:

We simply underestimated the need for the lenses.  We had to increase our output several times before we were able to meet the demand. But this should now belong to the past. Recently our output had been significantly higher than the stable order income, allowing us to fulfill open orders.

2) Debunking the E-mount design flaw:

Due to the shorter distance from sensor to camera mount, the “common” design concepts used in lenses for DSLR cameras are no option. You have to start differently. And, of course, in the beginning you don’t know, whether it works out or not. Fortunately it did with the Batis 2.8/18.

3) About the weather sealing

For the water resistance tests we have our own environmental test lab on site, for the dust resistance we use an external test lab. Both tests are done in quite harsh tests. The lenses are directly exposed to water (simulating rain) and dust.  The “dust” used in the test is so extremely fine – I’d not expected, that a lens would pass this test. A grain of sand is huge in comparison to this dust. It’s more like fine powder. The lens sits in the test chamber and the powder swirls around the lens for hours. After the test is shut off, the powder settles and at the end the lens is totally covered in powder. I cannot think of any real life situation, which comes close to this test. Maybe a sand storm, but that’s probably not the typical situation, when you expose a lens to the environment… Nevertheless Batis lenses passed all the tests.

Links to all current Batis and Loxia lenses:
Batis 18mm at [shopcountry 47045].
Batis 25mm at [shopcountry 45790].
Batis 85mm at [shopcountry 45791].
Loxia 21mm at [shopcountry 46456].
Loxia 35mm at [shopcountry 47046].
Loxia 50mm at [shopcountry 47047].
Loxia 85mm at [shopcountry 51973].

Sony Japan issued a “high demand” warning on the A99II. Because of unexpected high demand on the domestic (Japanese) market they expect a delay int he A99II shipment. It is unclear yet if also countries are affected by this.

Sony A99II at BHphoto, Adorama. Amazon. BestBuy. Calumet Germany and WexUK.