Tony Northrup shared his 2019 predictions. While the A7000, A7sIII and A9sII predictions sound quite reasonable Tony added an unexpected bomb: He believes Sony will make a super fast autofocus lens.

Now call me crazy, but I do believe this would indeed make sense!

Of course Sony would not make any profit from such a lens. It would be expensive to make, expensive to sell and nearly nobody on this planet would buy it. But It would stop Nikon managers to keep bashing on the Sony mount. And forums, blogs and trolls would suddenly have no more arguments. So yes Sony, let’s show Nikon have we do a proper superfast autofocus lens!

According to latest info posted on L-rumors.com in late January we should finally get full specs and pricing info about the next direct Sony competition: The Panasonic S1 and S1R cameras!

The one stand out feature of these cameras will be 4k60p video recording which is missing on all current Sony FF cameras:

Sony A7sIII will be the first model with 4k60p but it’s not coming any time soon.

We are getting closer to two major Sony events:

Event ONE:
Sony will have an official press conference and product announcement day on January 7 at 5pm Las Vegas time. Usually Sony doesn’t announce new E-mount gear at CES. Last time this happened was in 2014 for the A5000. But you never know and at least the BeAlpha event on Jan 8 hints at “possible surprises”. We heard Sony’s focus will be on unveiling a full 8K platform which includes:

8K Television/CLEDIS
8K Laser projector
8K camera/camcorder
8K postprocessing platform

Event TWO:
Sony has organized a major journalist meeting around mid January. There is no 100% guarantee they will announce new products but in most cases those events lead to some kind of lens or camera announcement.

I will hopefully be able to embed a CES press event live stream on SAR. Stay tuned!

Sony is ready to launch a bunch of new 8K sensors and a new 8K codec in 2019. This post sums up all the many info we leaked the past weeks:

New XEVC 8K codec (article and detailed images here):
8k at 24fps, 12 bit and 240Mbps peak bitrate.

New Full Frame sensors:
IMX435 is a new 36Mp 8K sensor (article here)
IMX551 is a new 60MP 8k sensor (article here)
IMX455 is a stripped down version of the IMX551 (article here).

APS-C sensors (article and detailed specs here):
IMX510: 32MP, 16 bit…
IMX571: 26MP, dual gain ISO, 16 bit stills

All the sensor mentioned here are open for sale to third-party manufacturers. But To use the full potential you need to buy the rights to use the Sony proprietary SLVS-EC interface. Sony itself might use those sensors or a customized variation of those sensors.

One of my sources just sent me this video of the new 50mm f/1.0 Full Frame autofocus E-mount lens! This lens is rumored to be made by Yongnou but this has yet to be confirmed. They already make AF lenses for Canon and Nikon (they are on sale here on Amazon US, Amazon DE). I assume it’s very likely they are could make this lens. It’s also a nice to have a direct competition of the Nikon which will launch the 58mm f/0,95 lens this January but will be available as manual focus lens only. Of course, I don’t expect Yongnou to match the Nikon in terms of quality…but the Nikon also is rumored ot cost around $6,000 while Yongnou lens will be a lot cheaper.

The lens is rumored to be launched sometimes in early 2019. If you can find an image of that lens please drop me a message at sonyalpharumors@gmail.com. Thanks!

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Note: Unlike reported on the previous rumor the lens isn’t f/1.1 but f/1.0.

Other rumor sites keep deliberately posting specs and images they found on this Weibo page. That page has a history for posting fakes and nevertheless the other rumor sites post info from the site as “rumor”.

Again, if you see those images and specs on a so-called rumor site know that they are using you for pure clickbait reason. They know the specs and images are made up but they want to sell it to you as legit “rumor”.

Those sites are now spamming forums and facebook groups with that A7000 spec list and images. If you see them please warn the people who the source is 100% fake.

Here are the FAKE and purely made up specs:

ILCE-7000 (first to launch in the new product line-up)
32MP Exmor RS APS-C CMOS with DRAM
New Ultra Fast LSI
Blackout-free Shooting
New BIONZ X
925-point PDAF, 60fps AE/AF
10fps/16Bit Mechanical Shutter
20fps/14Bit Electronic Shutter
30fps/12Bit AE-L/AF-C E.S.
Electronic Shutter Speeds up to 1/32000s
4K/60p 10Bit Super35mm Video
4K/24p 10Bit 2.4:1 WDR Movie
ISO 64-64000
580g

Some asked me what’s the difference between some of my rumors that were wrong and those other “rumors”. The difference is simple: I don’t post rumors I know for sure that are wrong. I don’t use sources who have a long list of FAKES to post rumors on my site.

The only reason why I am posting this today is that people kept me asking if those rumors they see on the web are legit. No they are not, because the source used for this has a year long history of creating fake specs and images for fun.

The fake A5500 inmages

There are other rumor sites that keep reposting FAKE rumors they found on a specific Weibo site. First they reposted a fake rumor about an A7sIII announcement in January which is 100% NOT going to happen.

Yesterday the same account posted FAKE A5300 specs and those FAKE images:

A5300
Dramatically improved 4D AF system
693 point PDAF
AE/AF 6/10fps continuous
26MP Exmor R sensor
16Bit compressed RAW with selectable compression ratio
Super-sampled 4K video up to 30p with no crop
FHD/60p,120p with no crop
3inch 1.44m dot 3-way tilt touch screen
NP-FZ100 battery
500-650USD

I repeat it, the so called rumor sites reposting these rumors are doing this for pure CLIKBAIT reasons because they know exactly that account has a history of posting continous fakes.

I will have soon SR5 news about the A7000 As7III and other lenses! Stay tuned!