The USA readers are having the biggest difficulty to find a NEX-7 in Stock. So it will may help you to know that at the NEX-7 body with 18-55mm lens is in Stock for the normal price at Amazon (Click here) and the body only at Cameta (Click here). In Europe you can find plenty of cameras at Amazon Germany (Click here), Amazon France (Click here), Amazon UK (Click here), Jessops (Click here), Amazon Italy (Click here), Redcoon Poland (Click here) and Redcoon Spain (Click here). In Asia at Amazon Japan (Click here) and Digitalrev (Click here).

But now let’s go back to the NEX-7 theme of the moment. Photozone (Click here) now published the 55-210mm NEX lens test and once again it proves that the NEX-7 demands top lenses to get superb results. Anyway, the lens isn’t as bad as the other NEX lenses: “The lens is surely not remotely capable of exploiting the potential of this sensor but the results are generally decent – at least from a real world perspective.”
Kurt Munger (Click here) tested the 30mm macro lens on the NEX-C3: “Unfortunately, Sony’s hot streak has come to an abrupt end with the new 30mm F/3.5 macro lens.  It’s not that it’s a bad lens, it just isn’t very impressive.”

In Short, if you like me want the best quality on the NEX-7 than go for the superb Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 (Here at [shopcountry 8450]) or the cheap and still good 50mm f/1.8 (preorder at [shopcountry 8448]).

Image credit: Lensrentals (Click here)

As I told you Sony is working on two new FF models, one with 24 and one with 36 Megapixel sensor. With the recent release Canon opted for a “low” resolution 22 Megapixel sensor while Nikon opted for the Sony 36 Megapixel sensor. Question is, how much difference will it make in the real world? Roger from Lensrentals (Click here) made a comparison by testing the same Zeiss 25mm f/2.0 and 100mm f/2.0 lenses on both cameras. There are some interesting findings:
1) The difference becomes clearly visible when using the best performing lens aperture. At full wide aperture the difference is almost zero.
2) You need super quality glass to get out the most from the D800. Interesting, the Zeiss lenses are slightly superior to the tested Nikon lenses.

Sony’s strategy to offer two different FF models is welcome but there is also a secret weapon Sony has to push. The Zeiss lenses. It seems they can give the A-mount camera the edge in terms of resolution over Nikon and Canon lenses. I hope the rumored A mount 50mm f/1.4 Zeiss SSM lens will arrive along the next FF camera!

P.S.: Nikon D800 rules the DSLR ranking (Click here) while Sony rules the mirrorless ranking (Click here). Looks liek Sony sensor and camera business is doing great!

THe US store BHphoto (Click here) expects to ship the new A57 on April 22. Meantime new tests have been published: ISO test at DCfever (Click here). A57 image samples at Lenstip (Click here). First impressions at DxOmark (Click here). Sony Alpha A57 at each ISO setting at ThePictureDesk (Click here).

The next new SLT camera should be the A37. And than the A99…

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P.S.: Zeiss for NEX is back in Stock at Amazon (Click here).

Image courtesy: Photozone.

Klaus from Photozone has some bad news for us. He tested three NEX lenses and all are delivering sub average results when used on the NEX-7. The 24 Megapixel sensors demands high quality lenses and the cheaper 16mm, 18-55mm and 30mm macro can’t exploit the full sensor potential. The only exception is the [shoplink 8448]50mm f/1.8[/shoplink] lens and very likely the still to be tested and wonderful [shoplink 8450]Zeiss 24mm f/1.8[/shoplink]. Here are the latest three tests from Klaus:

1) The Sony E 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS (Click here to read the review) kit lens isn’t good enough for the NEX-7: “it may perform decently on lower resolution NEX cameras (the 3 and 5 series). However, its capabilities are clearly overstrained on Sony’s 24 megapixel sensor. In so far it is very surprising that Sony is also offering it bundled with the NEX 7.”

2) The 16mm f/2.8 pancake (Click here to read the review): “the Sony E 16mm f/2.8 may be a controversial lens on lower resolution NEX cameras. However, it seems rather pointless to use it on the NEX 7 – 24 megapixel are way beyond the capabilities of this tiny lens.”

3) Klaus also tested the A-mount Zeiss 85mm Planar lens on the NEX-7 (Click here to read the review) and while it definitely performs much better there are still some issues: “even the mighty Zeiss isn’t perfect anymore on the 24 megapixel sensor. At max. aperture the center performance is certainly very good but the border quality is a bit lower than expected. This is somewhat surprising considering the fairly big lens to sensor distance due to the required adapter. The decrease in border quality either relates to a difficult sensor characteristic or, possibly, to a sub-optimal sample of the lens.”

All these lenses do deliver a better performance on other NEX cameras with lower resolution sensors like the [shoplink 8452]Sony NEX-5n[/shoplink]. This is a call for Sony to focus on the development and release of good quality lenses! The NEX-7 remains a top seller surpassing the direct competition like the Fuji X PRO 1 and Olympus E-M5 at Amazon US (place 2), Amazon Germany (place 8), Amazon France (place 4) and Amazon UK (place 17). And they would sell ton of lenses if there would be more of them.

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Sony NEX-7 preorder search links: [shopcountry 8454].
Sony 50mm f/1.8 preorder search links: [shopcountry 8448].
Zeiss 24mm f/1.8  preorder search links: [shopcountry 8450].

As you know it is the Sony 36 Megapixel Full Frame sensor that powers the current Nikon D800 topseller camera (Click here to see the ranking). And as far as I know Nikon has a (one year?) exclusivity on that sensor. DxOmark just tested the sensor quality (Click here). It beats all current FF sensors and “is comparable to the best medium-format sensor, and in fact does even better — much better — as ISO increases.” It shows that Sony sensor technology greatly improved during the last couple of years. Even Canon has to worry.

My guess is that the Canon 5DmarkIII is loosing his war against the Nikon D800. This may be a chance for Sony if they don’t wait to much. A double SLT FF camera announcement (24 and 36 Megapixels) would probably be the right thing to do!

The German Heise website (Click here for the english google translation) is the first website posting image samples and a short review of the Super Quality and most expensive Alpha mount lense ever made. The reviewer says the lens is “impressive” but suggests you to borrow the lens when you really need it instead of buying it. The lens cost $13000 at BHphoto (Click here). For us “poor” people go for the [shoplink 11531 ebay]Sigma 500mm f/4.5 EX APO (Click here)[/shoplink] which costs $5000 only! :)

Oh, and read this: Photographer uses red-dot gunsight as AF assist (Cnet US).

The Rokinon 8mm fisheye via ThePhoBlographer.

Samyang (also known as Rokinon) is a well known company that makes some amaizng lenses for different mounts. But until now all their lenses were manual focusing only. But in a recent interview at Techradar (Click here) they unveiled that they are going to release their first autofocus lenses for the NEX system in 2013. Good to hear we don’t have to rely on Sony and Zeiss only to get some good quality E-mount lenses!

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I like Rokinon/Samyang lenses a lot and I recommend you the following two lenses for Alpha mount:
1) The 35mm f/1.4: In US you can find it as Rokinon at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here) and on [shoplink 7453 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]. In Europe the name is Samyang and you can find it on [shoplink 7380 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and with the name Wallimex again on [shoplink 7831 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
2) The 85mm f/1.4: You can get for $274 on Amazon (Click here), branded with the name Rokinon on [shoplink 7456 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and branded with the name Samyang on [shoplink 7454 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].