We just learned (via 43rumors) that Panasonic is going to announce a [shoplink 3003]Sony NEX[/shoplink] competitor, the GF2. I guess Panasonic didn’t expect Sony to release such small mirrorless cameras and they have choosen to develop the GF2 to compete against them. The ruor says that it will be at least as small as the NEX. Bad for Panasonic, it uses the same Panasonic GF1
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Yes, pity about the same old sensor, but if it’s to compete against NEX-3/5 I guess the camera is aimed at people who don’t know that much about the more technical things (and besides it should be cheap).
What would be interesting to see is Sony’s own response to Panasonic’s GH2. Any news about the NEX-7?
The GF1 has better PQ in low ISO – sharper and more detailed images. The M43 cameras also get more high quality lenses (Current Sony E mount lenses are not good at all).
NEX system is not that great….
“Current Sony E mount lenses are not good at all”
Who cares bout e mount lenses, I have a nex-5 and it has never touched a e mount lens. You just strap on a Zeiss SSM lens and it beats anything that a panasonic, nikon or a canon can throw at it.
Panasonic is just wasting their time…
Actually, the e-mount lenses are quite good.
Great PQ? And what about the DR? The NEX just kills the m43 there.
Readin Luminous Landscape article Sony should better hurry up anouncing the Nex 7. Picture stills: NEX-5 and GH2 equal, Usability: advantage GH2, video: GH2 big advantage.
“As for its most direct competitor, the Sony NEX 5, I would judge them comparable when it comes to overall stills image quality. But the GH2 leaves the NEX 5 in the dust when it comes to ease of use, especially for the more serious photographer who doesn’t want to have to fight the camera to find needed functions buried in deep menus, and who value traditional mechanical controls rather than multi-modal buttons. Yes, the NEX 5 is smaller than the GH2 even though it has a larger sensor, but not by that much. But the GH2 has a high quality EVF, and is about as small as a camera can be and still have a full range of mechanical controls so beloved of serious photographers.
When it comes to video the GH2 has it all over the NEX 5. Full manual video control, 1080 /24P, 24 Mbps AVCHD vs a highly feature constrained video offering on the NEX, and no EVF. No contest.”
Link to full article:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/panasonic_gh2_first_look.shtml
And Sony please give us the Alpha 900 firmware update finally
1st – i believe Sony have sorted the ease of use with firmware updates to the NEX. It was rushed to marked & that was visible in the UI which i believe Sony have gone a long way towards fixing. The comparison would be better against the newer UI
2nd – Sony have quite clearly stated that there will be NO firmware update to the a850/900
In video mode nex3/5 use sensor area close to m43 sensor size.
Silly Bear! (NEX is trouncing M43 in the marketplace!)
Luis, I agree–it’s time for news about the NEX7, which I expect to be much more than a response to the GH2.
Silly Bears indeed.
Sony should release NEX7 on the same day as the GH2, just to kick some asses!
I like the competition. It ensures that everyone, including Sony, is on their toes and continues to improve their products.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/panasonic_gh2_first_look.shtml already has a review?
Echoing other comments: Panasonic was very strategic here, in my opinion, in that they hurriedly upped the megapixel count of the GH2 to just above that of the NEX. Thus, when compared side by side at a retailer, buyers will simply see that the G2 has more megapixels than the NEX–totally obfuscating the fact that the NEX has a larger (superior) sensor over the 4/3’s format.
For the most part, it will work.
Panasonic made the best strategic decision it could to blunt the NEX impact, and I respect it. Panasonic’s rapid response is also quite telling; by advancing the G2 release by a whole quarter (or two) it shows just how worried they are about the strength of the NEX format.
I’m really dying to know Sony’s plans for the “NEX7”, please dig DEEP for RUMORS! Because I’m at a loss when I think of how Sony will differentiate the NEX7 over the NEX3/5?
Will it still be APS-C with more megapixels or go FULL FRAME (an NEX “9” if you will)? EVF? No VF? “NEX RANGEFINDER” viewfinder? What, exactly can be done without seriously blurring the lines between the NEX 5-A55?
Off topic but kind of relevant: I just wish there was a true FULL FRAME compact competitor with the LEICA M9, and Sony could easily do this.
GH2 is different than GF2. GH2 has already been released, GF2 is the rumored camera.
I do wonder whether the design info for the Minolta CLE and Konica Hexar RF were included in Sony’s purchase of KM’s camera division. A digital CLE with an E mount would be killer.
I’d personally much rather focus using a a brightline rangefinder than with an EVF.
While on the topic of Sony competitors; I’d just like to point out how stagnant Canon and Nikon are now viewed in this technology space.
With all of the R&D resources available at Nikon/Canon, if they fail to “wow” in a BIG way next year–as in bring a DOMINANT technology–then it’s just inexcusable considering they have had so much time to sit, analyze, and design. Anything less than a dominant technology will truly be a death-knell.
“I’d just like to point out how stagnant Canon and Nikon are now viewed in this technology space.”
I’m not much of a photo-guru, but every time I think about further development of mirrorless cameras, I come to the logical end: a compact or a PnS.
Pretty much all advances of mirrorless can be applied to the compact cameras. Also by integrating the lens with the camera, manufacturers can keep the price lower, make the design smaller (no need for mount) and provide more sophisticated optical artifacts compensation (since lens is integrated, that can be tuned to no end).
To me it seems that though Canikon are missing the moment of the mirrorless, they are not missing much. The hype would go down relatively soon as next generation of compacts would arrive. Yes, the mirrorless would maintain the IQ advantage, but they would always lose at the price and the compactness – and those are more important to the most consumers.
It would be interesting if somebody could gather all the modern advances made in the mirrorless area and evaluate their impact on the dSLR market.
If the Panasonic GF2 is a micro4/3rds, then it isn’t a competitor.
The non-technicals all call it mirror less camera…
I agree, some competition is good.
At the very least it will urge Sony to bring us some news about the Nex-series to keep interest up.
And since the GF2 is a m43 or mirrorless camera it is a competitor.
An EVF is just about all that is keeping my NEX-5 from being a perfect little camera.
The speed Sony is pushing out firmware updates on the NEX system shows that they seem to care a lot more over the consumers than Panasonic. To echo everyone else’s sentiments, a NEX-7 would be the best thing I could hope for until that A950 starts to come around, as I’ve been finding a lot more fast orphan lens mounts to use these days as a result.
+1 for EE.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a forum where someone correctly uses ‘obfuscate’ in a sentence. Kudos to you.
@EE
Thanks for the luminous-landscape link –
Interesting opening section from Mr. Reichmann
” … in 2006 I had dinner with a senior executive in the photographic industry. We were talking about the historical market battle between Nikon and Canon. At one point he paused and said, “You know – the future doesn’t belong to either of those two. The future of the photographic industry belongs to Sony and Panasonic …. Wait – you’ll see”
I had the same reaction. His strongest point spoke to Sony’s vertical integration as being its core strength; and he’s spot on correct. Sony has entered this arena in-force and the stage is set for Sony’s domination of the consumer camera space. As far as I can tell, SIGMA is the only other fully-integrated camera company–but it lacks the resources and willpower to take chances. However, if that were to change, then SIGMA would do very well.
Canon and Nikon are no longer innovating, doing only just enough to maintain the status-quo. And honestly, I can’t wait for their market share to evaporate, not because I’m a Sony acolyte, but because Canon (and less so Nikon) is just so damned overconfident.
Canikon must BRING it next year. Nikon is rumored to have an EVIL in the works due next year, and I badly want it to be awesome, but something tells me there won’t be anything truly compelling about it.
And NOBODY seems to know what the hell is going on at Canon. Whoever runs “canonrumors” website must be bored and realllly discouraged, no credible rumors of any kind regarding an EVIL. I happen to think that Canon has been or is in denial and was or is, in fact, not developing anything. They’ll eventually HAVE come out with something, no doubt.
Add it all together and you can see the trajectory of these companies.
To loosely-analogize, I see Canon/Nikon as being like Microsoft; a huge base of users but bogged down by legacy, preventing innovation.
The photographic industry has it’s ebbs and flows, and the market leader has changed several times.
Yashica was big player in the TLR era, but failed to dominate in SLRs, Topcon was almost Nikon’s equal in the pro segment for a time, but is almost an unknown brand now, Konica was the first with autoexposure and electronic shutters, but within ten years had fallen by the wayside, Canon initially struggled to make the move from a rangefinder company to an SLR one, Minolta held the number one sales spot for several years after the 7000 and then proceeded to throw it all away against Canon and Nikon’s counterattack, prior to Canon’s dominance in the 90s the company that sold the most SLRs was Pentax, Minolta was firmly in third place and not far behind Nikon until they thought that the next market trend was towards APS film rather than digital, Contax/Yashica/Kyocera was pretty much delivered a fait accompli by digital as well, whereas Canon more or less had the market to themselves for several years when their main competitors were Kodak and Fuji.
Given the history, there’s no reason to think that Canon and Nikon will necessarily dominate in whatever market changes are going to happen in the future. Having said that, both companies have a history of resilience against changes in market trends that Sony hasn’t always shown in the fields they do business in. But how much of the Alpha subsidiary is run by decree of upper management, and how much of it is the former Minolta camera division is something that isn’t exactly clear.
Sony, hurry the **** up and bring out a pancake to compete with Panasonic’s 20/1.7!! I want an e-mount 28/2 already. Lenses are the only advantage the m43 system has over our NEX system… sigh.
You could always use a Minolta 28/2, it’s pretty compact. It won’t AF, though.
Using a Minolta 28/2 on the NEX can not be compared to something like the 20/1.7. No AF, not compact at all (not a pancake, plus the size of the adapter) and it’s very expensive and rare to find and only available second hand.
1.7? Give me .95 please.