I praised many times Sigma for the quality of their lately announced ART lenses. But I also have to express my disappointment for this: Back in June 2013(!) Sigma released the 18-35mm f/1.8 A-mount lens accepting preorders at Amazon US (Click here), BHphoto (Click here) and Adorama (Click here) and expected availability in late July 2013 (see screenshot on top). Since then Sigma never shipped any A-mount lens and also didn’t release any official note. That’s quite a let down :(

Lately one of our SAR readers got an official response from Sigma France saying the lens would ship in May. Now let’s hope this promise will be fulfilled! Here is the original french message:

“Message de votre service clients Miss Numerique
Bonjour,
Nous vous remercions d’avoir commandé chez Miss Numerique.
Le constructeur du produit SIGMA objectif photo ART 18-35 mm f/1.8 DC HSM monture SONY éprouve malheureusement des difficultés à produire cette référence en quantité suffisante, ceci se traduit par des difficultés d’approvisionnement de leur réseau de distributeurs.
Devant notre insistance, notre fournisseur nous a annoncé un approvisionnement dans un délai de 4 semaines.
Votre commande sera alors expédiée dès réception.”

P.S.: And please do not repeat the story with your newly announced 50mm ART lens Neither :) Preorders are up at BHphoto (Click here) and Adorama (Click here).

Image on top shows the silhoutte of the current Sony A77.

I have been told that there is a possible Sony announcement on May 1-2. We can be 100% sure there will be a new A-mount A77II camera announcement. I am still not sure if there will be also new A and FE mount lenses. The A77II is expected to have an updated 24 Meagpixel sensor and the camera is trimmed for pseed (super fast AF, no EVF lag, increased fps and so on).

Stay tuned on SAR! The A7s is here but it isn’t over yet with rumors :)

A7s Preorder or pure notification store links:
USA: Sony US,  Amazon and BHphoto.
Europe:  Sony DE, UK, ES, FR, IT, NL, SE, FI, PL.
Asia: Digitalrev

Note for German readers: Sony RX100 is on Gold Box today: http://www.dealsrunner.com/deals/sony-rx100–20!

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Reminder (SR = Sonyrumor):
SR1=probably fake rumor
SR2=rumor from unknown sources
SR3=50% chance it is correct
SR4=rumor from known sources
SR5=almost certainly correct!

Sony shares climbing during the last three months (December-January-February). Image source: Blog Naver.

Sony’s dream to overturn Canon on the system camera market became truth in one country: South Korea! In February Sony beat Canon by a margin of 0.1% only and now owns 33,163% of the overall system camera market in Korea. The reason hwy this happens is easy: Asian countries are shifting towards mirrorless system cameras while Europe and North American stills tick to DSLR systems. In Q4 of 2013 the mirrorless sales iN Korea climbed up to 58% of the system camera market (DSLR drops to 42%).

Sony now has to focus on “Western countries” to repeat the success they have in Asia.

Source: Blog Naver. Thanks S. Park for sending this :)

Short rumor about the new Pentax 645Z camera that should feature the new Sony 51MP medium format sensor. Digicameinfo leaked the images of the camera and also the specs. And Phototumors reports that it will cost $8500.

So this will be the cheapest Medium Format camera on the market with a Sony 51MP sensor that goes up to 204,800 ISO, does a sort of 4K in interval mode (???). As you know there are rumors saying Sony will do a sort of digital mirrorless [shoplink 25383 ebay]Mamiya 7 (here on eBay) camera[/shoplink]. And it should be cheaper than the Pentax. If it becomes true this will be an amazingly interesting camera!

The image on top shows you the new 28-135mm f/4.0 FE Powerzoom lens on the new A7s. You can here some more interesting tidbits about the lens from minute 6:00 of that video:

Both the Powerzoom and XLR mic kit are marked “under development”. Therefore no price and availability info have been released.

Let’s catch up with rumors that in some kind involve Sony:

1) Pentax launched a teaser for their new Pentax Z medium format camera. Wanna bet it uses the new Sony CMOS medium format sensor? :)

2) Fuji will release a Full Frame system camera in 2015 (via MirrorlessRumors). I heard that flange distance will not be as short as the E-mount. It means their FF lenses will fit on E-mount via adapter. Could be great to sue Fuji lenses on our A7 and future A9 cameras!

The world’s first store accepting preorders and unveiling the price of the new Sony A7s is WexUK (Click here). But asked via Twitter they also said that the price “is given to us by Sony, but it may change between now and the release date“. For comparison: WexUk sells the A7r for 1669 pounds! The A7s costs exactly %50 more! Based on the current A7r Amazon pricing the A7s could cost around $3,450! That would be higher than expected. I hope Sony will read your comments so that they will lower the price :)

Note: Actually the A7r price is lower if you buy it in kit with FE lenses. U to $650 savings on these special pages at Amazon (Click here), BHphoto (Click here) and SonyStore (Click here). Hope the A7s will take part of these kit savings too.

For US readers: One single Open Box A7 sells for $1,249.99(!) at [shoplink 25793 ebay]CameraLand on eBay US (Click here)[/shoplink].

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Thanks Rob for finding the tweet!