Quesabesde (translation here) reports an interesting story. Hasselblad goal was to partner with Fuji but Fuji showed their back to the Swedish company. Sony was “only” the second choice. Maybe Fuji managers saw the sketch of their Lunar project and run away before to sign the partnership agreement? Don’t be mad at me Hasselblad…It’s a joke ;)

I think (and hope) you can do great things with together with Sony. Share your medium format knowledge for the next high level Full Frame or Medium Format cameras from Sony. That would be a nice start! I am certinaly a bit “retro” but I would love to see a Full Frame [shoplink 16919 ebay]Hassleblad X-Pan[/shoplink] styled E-mount camera!

[shoplink 16919 ebay][/shoplink]
P.S: The X-Pan acutions on [shoplink 16919 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

Image courtesy: DSLRmagazine.

The Spanish website DSLRmagazine (translation here) interviewed Mr. Masaaki Oshima from Sony. The main talk is about the RX1. What I didn’t know until now is that all the RX1 cameras are manually assembled in the same factory. This allows Sony to have a 100% control over the final quality, and that’s part of the reason why the RX1 is expensive. Actually two people are working on one camera during the assembling process!

RX10: When asked about the camera that could fit in between the RX1 and RX100 MR. Masaaki said: “we haven’ decided anything yet but we are investigating the best solution for such a camera“.

Back to the RX1: Valentin Sama told Mr. Masaaki Oshima that in his opinion the RX1 price in Euro is way too high. Something also Focus Numerique wrote lately. Mr Masaaki than asked what a good price for the RX1 would be. There is a difference of 1000 Euro between the US and EU price you can’t justify by VAT difference only. But I am not going to buy the camera anyway…I am waiting for the NEX FF instead even if I still have to wait for 12 months :)

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The financial result of the Sony Imaging business

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Sony issued the latest financial report and you can read more about it at Bloomberg. And Bloomberg’s title says it all “Sony’s Hirai Sells Property Instead of TVs as Revival Stalls”. The TV business is still the main problem of Sony but also the other businesses aren’t doing well. That’s why Sony is selling some of their buildings to make some cash. While this may help for a short time they really need to change their product strategy to succeed in the long term.

Talking about the camera business. You can read more about that business under the “Imaging Products & Solutions (IP&S)” section on that pdf (download here): “Sales decreased 4.7% year-on-year (a 9% decrease on a constant currency basis) to 180.5 billion yen (2,075 million U.S. dollars). This decrease was primarily due to a significant decrease in unit sales of compact digital cameras reflecting a contraction of the low-end of the market resulting from the popularization of smartphones as well as a significant decrease in sales of broadcast- and professional-use products. Sales of interchangeable single-lens cameras increased significantly year-on-year.”

You will see form those three lines how important the NEX system is for Sony and why Sony decided to push the NEX-FF development instead of releasing another SLT-FF yet.

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P.S.: Sony to Focus on Image Sensors (Image Sensor World).

Now let’s talk about real photography instead of Sony gear :) You can see this years finalists of the Sony World Photography Award at Worldphoto.org. Some pics are really amazing!