Good news! Sony wants to push the Imaging Division (and 4K technology).

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Sony just issued a pdf document (Click here to download) where it describes the future strategy. And there are good news for us Alpha Camera users! One of the main goal is to Strengthen the Imaging core businesses  (Digital   Imaging,  Game,  Mobile).

Here is the detailed plan:
“Sony is reinforcing its development of image sensors, signal processing technologies, lenses and other key digital imaging technologies in which it excels, and plans to leverage these technologies in both its consumer products (such as compact digital still cameras, digital video cameras and interchangeable lens digital cameras) and broadcast and professional products (such as professional use cameras and security cameras) in order to further strengthen and differentiate Sony’s overall product line. The Company also plans to extend the use of these key technologies across a wide range of business applications, from security to medical, to further expand the scope of its digital imaging business. Sony will target total sales of 1.5 trillion yen and double-digit operating income margin from the consumer, professional and image sensor businesses by FY14.”

You can find another strategy presentation here: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/strategy/2012/. One of the main aspects are the “acceleration of the 4K Innovation”.

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New Sony A57 reviews roundup (release delayed to fix the firmware)

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Sony Japan announced that it will dleay the release of the new Sony A57 because of firmware issues that have to be fixed before the official shipment. There is no info about the new shipment date. Meantime you can check some new reviews about the A57:

ePhotozine (Click here) posted a full Sony A57 review: “The Sony A57 is an excellent camera, capable of taking great photos, with low noise and bright saturated colour, however it just seems that the camera it replaces (the A55) was just as good, if not better?”

Sony A57 preview and image samples at Techradar (Click here). Another hands-on in japanese at Ascii (Click here for the google translation).

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USA: Sony 50mm will ship in 4-7 weeks only.

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The high request of the lens (or the low production capability of Sony) are making the 50mm almost impossible to find in US stores. According to Amazon (Click here) this lens will ship within 4-7 weeks only. As long as I see this kind of problems I remain worried that Sony may has to push forward some other new NEX lens announcement. I hope I am wrong…

Check more 50mm pre order options at [shopcountry 8448].

UPDATE: The NEX-7 body and the kit version is back in Stock and sold by Amazon itself (Click here).

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New NEX-FS700 video and test roundup.

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Adam Wilt (Click here) is right now testing the camera. He shot the 240 fps test video on top and writes: “you’ll see increased noise in the 480 and 960 fps clips as a result, though Sony cautions me that the multi-layer circuit boards still need to be optimized to reduce crosstalk: this camera is a “fairly good, stable, underperforming engineering sample”, and shipping versions may well yield cleaner images.”
Andy Shipsides shot this 480 fps you can see on vimeo (Click here).
Hangman shot another 200fps mode @1080p video you can see on vimeo (Click here).
First Look at the Sony NEX-FS700 by Sardo on vimeo (Click here).
EosHD (Click here) posted the content of a Q&A session with Sony.
According to BHphoto (Click here) the camera will ship on June 30th.

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New Sony patent describes the organic sensor!

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A couple of weeks ago a trusted source told me how Sony is working to bring some major evolution in the sensor technology. We are talking about a completely new generation of sensors which could hit the market as soon as late 2013- early 2014. One of these technologies is the “organic sensor”. The last few months I saw some patents from Fuji and now finally Egami (Click here) found one from Sony. Basically we are talking about a sort of Foveon technology made with organic material instead of current non organic materials. The major flaws to overcome are the slow speed and durability of the material. But Sony seems to have found some sort of hybrid material solution that could overcome the issues. While google translation doesn’t really help a lot to understand how it works I will try to give you a short summary:

1) The sensor is made by a organic and non organic material. That is necessary because organic material has less “speed” than the non organic silicon material.
2) Three layers of organic material are positioned one under the other. This means every single pixel contains all the color data!
3) The advantages are higher color fidelity, higher resolution because of the lack of the Anti Aliasing filter which usually needs to be used on RGB sensors. Currently [shoplink 12209 ebay]Medium format cameras[/shoplink] or cameras like the Fuji X PRO 1, Nikon D800 and Leica M9 do not have AA filters. Another advantage is that organic material has a higher absorption coefficient than non organic material.

As usual keep in mind that most of the patents will never be applied in a real mass production camera. Or it may will take longer than we hope. Anyway, Sony is already on a very high quality level with their current sensors and I am pretty confident that we will see great new stuff in future!

P.S.: The current Sony 36 Megapixel sensor used by the Nikon D800 is almost as good as medium format cameras according to DSRLmagazine testing.

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Links to all mentioned cameras:
Medium format cameras on [shoplink 12209 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]. Nikon D800 at Amazon (Click here). Fuji X PRO 1 at Amazon (Click here). Leica M9 at Amazon (Click here).

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Sony NEX-7 back in Stock at Amazon (and NEX-7 versus markIII comparison)

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A couple of NEX-7 cameras are right now in Stock at Amazon (Click here). And every time it is in Stock it quickly jumps on position one of the mirrorless sales ranking.

And Cameralabs (Click here) made a short NEX-7 versus Canon markIII image comparison: “Ultimately I’d call their real-life resolving power at 100 ISO as being essentially the same, and while that may not come as a huge surprise given their similar sensor resolutions, it remains a great result for the NEX-7 considering its considerably lower price tag – not to mention its considerably smaller body too.”  Surprised?

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Sony with “worst loss ever”. 10,000 jobs cut coming.

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I guess you already read the news on your daily magazine. Sony announced the worst loss ever, ¥520 billion for the past financial year. Converted this means a 6,4 Dollar or 4,9 Euro billion loss. Sony will cut 10,000 jobs to bring Sony back to profit within March 2012. There are many reasons for the bad results listed by NYT:
1) additional (unexpected) tax expense
2) heavy losses in its television business
3) strong yen
4) natural disasters in Japan and overseas.

The digital camera market is just a small part of Sony’s business and currently doing pretty decent thanks to the A77 and NEX-7. The problem is Sony has lost many battles like the music war with Apple and the TV war with Samsung. When I talk with my sources they more or less agree that Sony is quite slow and too heavy when it comes to take action. Probably the company has a to complex structure that leads to waste time and resources. That doesn’t necessary mean that you have to cut jobs! What matters more is to have a good management and clear and easy communication-action structure within the company.

Sorry if I repeat myself again but they lost so much money with their slow camera and lens release! The [shoplink 8454]NEX-7[/shoplink] and [shoplink 8450]Zeiss 24mm[/shoplink] and [shoplink 8448]50mm[/shoplink] are selling well but Sony can’t keep up with the production. Plus they are loosing money every day by not releasing new NEX lenses. Cutting jobs will not help if your product strategy…”sucks“?

I hope the latest rumors I am getting about the next FF camera are a good sign that Sony may anticipate the FF announcement. About time!

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