PhotoPlus Expo 2013: News Shooter looks at the full-frame Sony Alpha 7 camera from Chuck Fadely on Vimeo.
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The following text has been written by SAR reader William (from www.lightzoneproject.org) who attended the PDNshow in New York. I think it’s the best descripttion I read about the new Sony “product confidence”. It’s a must read!
by Tex:
“My impressions: The A7 and A7r are really fine looking cameras, overcoming my initial problems with the pentaprism (I was hoping for more of an NEX 7 look/rangefinder look). Very solid in the hand, and also “right-sized” for everyone but those with really large hands. Very solid feel, and basically very good ergonomics. Yes, someone commented somewhere that the shutter release button is a bit awkward being right on top of the camera—but we should remember that this is how slr’s and rangefinders were (and still are) for decades. All the wheels worked great and the special function buttons are also very good. Of course the lens selection at the show was very limited—as was the battery power! Everyone was checking these cameras out. While I was at the booth several times I let people try my Voigtlander 35 f2.5 from my NEX 7 on the cameras (which looked great BTW through the viewfinder), and the Sony people to my surprise were actively talking about 3rd party lens options, adapters, legacy glass from other makes, etc. By actively I mean encouraging it—and not just at the booths one-on-one, but in their mini-theater presentations, too. More on this “attitude” in a moment. There were quite a few people invested in other makes coming into the Sony booth and looking very admiringly at the A7 and A7r. And as far as I’m concerned that viewfinder is a winner—very clear and the magnification worked well. The menu system looked great to me—much more like my beloved A850 (but of course more in it). I wish they had had the battery grip, too bad. Of course the camera has wifi and will be able to be controlled by phone/tablet app, but I asked about the lack of a port for a cabled release. I was told there is a release coming, and that it will use the multi-port.
I also looked at the RX10. Very, very nice camera. Great finish, solid and tight. Neither compact nor big. I am amazed that someone has come out with as fine a superzoom as this—to me it has always been a junk category. Definitely a winner travel camera.
Some general things about Sony’s show presence: Canon had the largest booth by far, but there were a lot of printers in there and video, and a fancy stage. After that Sony’s booth looked like the next biggest, with 2 smaller stages. Not many people were looking at the video stuff. Nikon’s booth seemed smaller than Sony’s, and although closer to the entrance, seemed less central to the show. It was also not very crowded when I was there. Oly and Fuji had nice booths, and both had decent traffic. Panny and Samsung had decent booths and decent traffic, and Leica had its typically elegant booth—NYC is a good market for them I bet. No Ricoh-Pentax that I saw. Lot’s of people at the Zeiss booth asking about E-mounts.
So, about that “attitude” I spoke of earlier. 2 years ago at the show I remember handling the NEX 7 with the reps at the booth, and while enthusiastic, they didn’t seem all that well prepared for the enthusiasm and close questioning by us, the public. At times they seemed a little befuddled and surprised. That was less true last year, but still a little true. But last year it was clear to me that there was growing pride in what they were doing, and the guys working the RX1 counter were clearly very proud—all smiles all day long. If you have never worked a trade show(I have), you should know that they are exhausting affairs. It’s hard to fake your enthusiasm after the first day. For many reps they are just a PITA. So the internal “Sony pride” was very obvious to me last year and even a bit the year before. This year? These guys know they’re hot. They are like a winning sports team, full of confidence. Loads of enthusiasm, engagement, and this year they were far better prepared for the press of interested people and could answer questions better. I had quick discussions with 2 Sony people who are farther up the food chain: Drew Temple, Product Information, Digital Imaging (out of San Diego), and John Bruehl, Vice President, Specialty Retailers, Digital Imaging division. I specifically button-holed them about Sony’s minimum purchase requirements, which I have been told by 2 different pro shops I do business with prevent these businesses from getting involved with Sony. They are just too high—smaller stores cannot carry that much inventory speculatively. One of these shops is my local pro shop, and the owner whom I’ve known since the ’80’s has told me he’d love to have a few of these more specialized Sony products—the RX100, RX100II, RX1, RX10 ,NEX 6 & 7, and now the A7 and A7r, but he has no demand as of yet for the rest of the Sony line (he’s a Nikon-Canon-Leica camera specialist, with the Fuji line thrown in for good measure). This is a store that also supplies a full range of film supplies plus the entire Epson Pro line, as well as most of the major accessory lines and several of the pro lighting lines. The other store is a niche retailer that is a Leica, Zeiss, and Voigtlander dealer—clearly a place that would be interested in the top of Sony’s mirrorless lineup. So I specifically pressed these 2 Sony guys about this, and to please consider making some changes, even temporary ones to let these smaller shops get some traction in order to build up demand. Drew was very forthright, and suggested I go ahead and email him after the show and that he would bring it to the the meeting table, although he promised no changes and said this gets into strategic territory. Yet he spoke to me, not a brush off at all. John was even more willing to speak to me, even though he was clearly very busy—he took more than 10 minutes of his time to talk to me. While he initially disagreed with what I was trying to get across, and explained that SONY has very good MSRP, MAP, and RPM policies (Nikon and Canon do not, according to my sources, favoring B&H, Adorama, but especially Amazon), plus a way for retailers to get smaller quantities through a distributor, on the other hand he was listening, and asked me to email him and triangulate with my friend here in my home town with the pro shop–whom he knew. He seemed open to thinking about this and bringing it up in meetings with “the guys from Japan”. But here is what is most interesting for us who read SAR: He said he has been in sales a long time, and what he always asks is “what are we doing wrong?” He said this startled the Japanese, who asked him why he would do such a thing. Because, he replied, you cannot assume you are doing everything right. Now those “guys from Japan” have heard this, and are beginning to take it to heart—they now want to know, actively, “what can we do better?”. They are listening harder now. I think it shows.
tex andrews
co-founder and webmaster(or minor) for the open-source LightZone Project
www.lightzoneproject.org”
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Specs and Preorders in US and Canada:
Dedicated Sony announcement page at Amazon US (Click here).
Sony A7r body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony A7 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony A7 with 28-70mm kit lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS. TheCameraStore Canada.
Sony RX10 at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 24-70mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 35mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Zeiss 55mm at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
70-200mm A-mount at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Sony A-Mount to E-Mount Lens Adapter at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto.
Sony A to E adapter with mirror at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto.
A7/A7r leather case at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
A7/A7r vertical grip at Amazon, BHphoto, SonystoreUS.
Sony W Series Battery Charger at Amazon, BHphoto.
Sony FA-CS1M Off-Camera Shoe at BHphoto.
Semi-Hard LCD Screen Protector for A7-A7r at Amazon, BHphoto.
Specs and Preorders in Europe:
Sony A7r body at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE.
Sony A7 body at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR.
Sony A7 with 28-70mm kit Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR.
Sony RX10 at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT, WexUK, WexDE.
Zeiss 35mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT,
Zeiss 55mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT
Zeiss 24-70mm at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, SE, PT
Asia:
A7r at Digitalrev.
A7 at Digitalrev, Amazon Cina.
A7 with 28-70mm lens at Digitalrev.
44 Responses
Not at all surprised vendor reps are talking up the vendor products. That is, after all, what they’re getting paid to do.
Nor surprised they are talking up third party lenses as a strong selling point. When you have barely any lenses of your own there is not a lot of other talking points just now to move the product you’re getting paid to move.
Flash forward three years, I’d expect the same vendor reps to be downplaying third party products in favor of their own dynamic line of amazing lenses blah blah blah.
You clearly didn’t have the patience to read the whole article 🙂
I did, and still agree with him.
Then you didn’t understand what he was saying.
Sony is good in electronics. Probably the best. Sony makes the best DSLR sensor, the smallest full frame(both fixed and interchangeable lens).. not to mention their cameras are cheap too. But as for lens business, they are not so good in it. And also more expensive. I don’t think in 3 years they can produce lens selection that is superior than Canikon’s. This is my personal opinion but I think E-mount will always dependent on 3rd party lens manufacturer, primarily ZEISS. After that Canikon lens owners.
Sony has created a good number of outstanding lenses since they have been in the slr business. And btw, Sony manufactures the Sony Zeiss lenses, and I believe Cosina manufactures the Zeiss manual focus lenses made for Canon and Nikon mounts.
“or turn that off (crop mode) and get a really cool vignetting effect (for current NEX lenses)”
Bwahahahahahahahahahahah. Marketing must be tough having to say stuff like that with a straight face.
I would have been really impressed if they have said: take that rear baffle off of the E 50/1.8 OSS and you have an affordable stad prime with OSS! 😉
I agree with Tex’s comment/sentiment about the Sony sales strategy.
We have a small camera shop in town, with a great heritage of supporting photographers over the decades… but they are a SMALL shop. While they carry Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic etc. they are too small to carry Sony with the limitation that Sony has.
I’d LOVE to be able to support my small, local camera store by purchasing Sony products through them, and I’m betting that there are others who feel the same way.
Please Sony, do something to support the small, local camera shops that have been the backbone and foundation for many of us over the years.
I too was at PhotoPlus and had an opportunity to talk with several of Sony’s executives at the show. I’ve been attending PhotoPlus since at least the early 1990’s. I’ve also had chances to talk with at least some of the same Sony executives at previous PhotoPlus shows. I agree that there was definitely a better “vibe” at the Sony exhibit this year than in year’s past. I also agree with the description of the new cameras (A7, A7r, and RX10 – the latter of which may be the most intriguing and interesting of the cameras assuming it tests as good as it feels and suggests with the 24-200/2.8 lens). Sony is clearly making the A7 and A7r the focus point of their efforts right now. The SLT cameras had a far less prominent part of the exhibit area. As usual, I also found many of the Sony reps showing the products didn’t know too much about them (even the SLT cameras). Many of these people actually work for a third party marketing company that Sony hires and are not Sony employees. Some are.
There were some comments in the original post about U.S. Sony executives conveying various information to executives in Japan, which is symbolic of what I think is a fundamental problem Sony has – they don’t understand or “get” all aspects of the industry or market. Japan and the U.S. are two of the largest markets, yet in both Sony’s sales are anemic (though doing better in Japan due to the far greater interest there in mirrorless cameras). Sony does little marketing in the U.S. compared to other companies (particularly Canon and Nikon, but also Olympus and Panasonic), and its relationship with dealers is not good (based on the dealers in my area that I have known and talked with over the years). The comments about conveying to executives in Japan the points the writer made to the Sony folks with whom he talked at PhotoPlus illustrates part of the problem, I think. That is, that whatever Sony executives in the U.S. might want to do in the U.S. to improve Sony’s position is dependent on the executives in Japan, and they are very restrictive. Sony’s US marketing budget is apparently so limited that it cannot focus on more than one product at a time, and that product for now will be the A7 and A7r. There is very little marketing support for any SLT cameras. That budget is dictated by those in Japan. So too are long-term strategic decisions, all product decisions, all support decisions, etc. But those in Japan most likely don’t know or understand the U.S. market as well as those who are in the U.S. I also suspect that those in Japan have very little long-term experience with the higher end camera market segment (that is, above the P&S cameras Sony made for years before acquiring the A-mount system).
In my experience, the US based Sony executives have been very willing to listen to what we have to say at conferences such as PhotoPlus. I also believe they are largely sympathetic to at least some of our complaints or issues. The problem is that they have no say in the decisions that ultimately get made, and only limited input into the making of those decisions in Japan. So, while the folks at PhotoPlus may have been very receptive to what the writer discussed with them, or others such as myself discussed with them, they have very little to no ability to do much about our suggestions or concerns.
Having worked as a product manager for a Japanese company, I can say from experience that this odd detachment you describe is nothing new. Individual saving of face is much more important than a team win. You have no idea whose petunias you have just trampled when you say “What are we doing wrong?”, but you will most likely pay for it. Just saying……
Stopped watching the video after he pointed out the 35 to have stabilization…
I stopped taking him seriously when he said that using existing e-mount/APSC lenses on the camera “gives this really cool vignetting effect”. After dodging the question in the first place.
Seems Sony have got the message loud and clear that they lack the lenses to make this a viable product, and to downplay the lack of compatibility with existing e-mount lenses, while bigging up 3rd party adapters…
I thought this was the best presentation video of the Sony A7r from Sony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGze6rcrv4
It’s interesting how they show that the A7r is almost exactly the same size as early DSLRS. Cameras have gotten bloated and it’s taken us this long to notice!
My biggest gripe is that their is no way that I know of to give sony feedback on things you want improved or things that are faulty. Our only hope is posting on some random forum and hoping that they can see our messages. Apple has a direct line, I wish Sony did.
Yes you can!
Here you go: http://blog.sony.com/2013/10/a7-faq/
thanks for sharing that link
Thanks! I’ll check this out today and see if I can post my 2 cents.
These guys will say anything! They wish it had stabilization.
So funny how this camera looks too small for this guy’s big hands. His fingers would probably push two buttons at a time.
“What can we do better”?
Dear Sony guys, first of all start to think, use your brains. You have nice A-mount lenses without that nice cameras and nice E-mount cameras without that nice lenses.
Besides, lenses with Sony logo are too expensive to be competitive.
So go home, and ask your children what can you do better.
You did have great cameras like A700 and A900 but didn’t make them better on time, didn’t you?
A700/A900 guys one by one sell their toys and buy Canon and Nikon toys.
It’s all over now, baby blue…
I am happy you posted this here and didn’t send it to Sony.
Innovation want go.
Cool. He says 35mm has OSS.
of course, since Nex dont use IBIS, their lenses must have
He is wrong. It does not.
Is the Sony product manager timid or did he not prepare the video interview ( he seemed confused, mixing up info about lens and the numbers of pixels of the A7 and A7R camera and i m sure it s the cameraman which gave him the answer and saved his butt;) )
Btw i m not stunned, I’m used of managers as bureaucrats, good speaker always sneaking around to know if you are efficient but not very expert in the field they manage 😉
I wish Sony would be more serious with their customers like Fuji. They always improve their cameras over time with good firmware updates. That counts! Sony’s service… pitifully!
Please. This is the most tunnel vision common comment I see lately. Fuji’s firmwares are 99% fixing of obviously bad design problems like improving EXTREMELY POOR AF SPEED. In the past, Sony has added features like increased customizability for buttons as well as focus peaking to cameras that were out over a year.
Both Sony and Fuji have done this in similar release timeframes from their product launches. There is no reason to think Fuji will be any better than Sony over time and so far they have done a worse job introducing new features in these early cameras (for example, why would we want white focus peaking? That’s the worst color by far.)
Sorry… that’s not true. That’s all discussed here months before. Think before write …
Just checked out the LightZone project again after a while.
I don’t get these guys – they complain about too many registrations, yet you can only download the software after registering.
“We’ve gotten about 1,000 registration requests in 6 hours, from 1200-1700 UTC. We really appreciate the attention, but all of you new people are hurting yourselves—our system can’t cope with such a rush, even after the changes we made last Wednesday.”
They call themselves an open-source project, complain about a flood of registrations, but yet stick to mandatory registration just to download the software? WTF?
I wish you he asked about there problematic flash system and do they plan to update or fix it.
I did ask about and talk to several of Sony’s people at PhotoPlus about the flash system issues, particularly the F60 overheating, but also the delay when using wireless flash. The basic response I received is they are aware of it and have reported it to Japan, but beyond that there is nothing they can do. It is totally up to the folks in Japan to decide to devote the resources required to assess the problem and determine if and how it can be fixed, short of introducing a new flash like Nikon did (the SB900 had a similar overheating issue that Nikon addressed in the SB910 flash about 12-18 months later). The Sony folks could not even tell me whether the folks in Japan have decided to try to do anything about it.
In the meantime there is a repair service in Miami, Florida that says it has developed a fix to the overheating problem in the F60 flash. The repair costs about $100 (US). I wrote to the Sony executives with whom I spoke about this issue a little more than a week ago, about the fix that this repair service has announced but have yet to receive a response from any of them.
Thank you very much for your response. This really sucks. I hope they fix the problem. I heard about the 100.00 fix but its insane to spend another 100.00 on top of the 500.00 that the flash cost. I may or may not do the fix later but my best option is to just take along a nikon sb-28 and use that in manual mode if the f60 overheats. The nikon option is cheaper than the fix and you end up with a extra flash. Please keep us updated if you get a response or hear anything. Maybe we should sign a petition or something to get there attention.
My solution is using my F58 flash on a bracket. While the flash shoe adapter to use the F58 on the A99 will regularly fail due to slight slippage in the hot shoe, it is secure with the remote cord which connects to the F58 on the bracket. I had started moving away from using the bracket when I could with the A99 and F60 flash, but when I need a reliable flash for event photography, the F60 won’t cut it, so I have to use the F58.
Rather than a petition to Sony, my thinking is a class action law suit, at least for folks in the U.S.
That is a very good idea I would be on board for that.
I thought the 35mm did not have OSS. This guy says that it does???
Sony should encourage the use of non Sony lenses,
This is the only way to sell these cameras to non Sony users,
they are giving a free metabones cupon in some places, you choose whichever adapter you wish.
@Tex @Andrea
Thx for sharing. Not all SAR reader had the chance to go to such event individually and got first hand experience. This writing help me ‘experience’ the event. 😀
From all I’ve seen I’m looking forward to adding the A7r to my D4 and 1DX. I pre-ordered on Amazon Oct. 16th. Wonder how long the wait will be, I need it by Dec 12th for a Europe trip. Is Dec 1st the actual release date or an Amazon estimate ?
Has anyone seen a Nikon to FE adapter for sale yet ?
Thanks for sharing – any news from them on the a-mount front? I’ve got the feeling it’s going to take a back seat until a7/r fever dies down…
Yes, I got them yesterday and will post first rumors soon (if I can confirm them).
Thanks Andrea – looking forward to reading them!
Why did Sony name the Alpha 7 and 7R “Alpha” when they are really E-Mount NEX upgrades? Isn’t that confusing? And what are they going to call the Alpha upgrades you guys have been saying will come out in 2014?