Not sure who gets the better deal . Once Sony gets all the tech from Olympus...sorry Olympus no sensor for ya . Consider MFT is a threat for NEX.

"Olympus and Sony will now officially work together on the mirrorless front. Today Sony-Olympus held a press conference in Tokyo and you can read more about it on DC.watch (translation here). In short:
- It is Sony’s interest to keep the MFT system well alive
- Sony will supply sensors to Olympus
- Olympus will share their lens and mirrorless knowledge and technology to Sony
- Future mirrorless camera parts may be co developed by Sony and Olympus (example EVF and OLED screen).

For now this sounds like a good deal. It also opens a new kind of possibilities for Olympus. For example they could make lenses for the NEX system or even uses Sony’s FF sensors for a new PRO system. But all that is just speculation for now!"


http://www.43rumors.com/olympus-and-sony-conference-in-tokyo/#comments

I'm not sure there's much for Olympus to share with Sony, in terms of lens design. Sony absorbed Minolta, works with Zeiss, and own a stake in Tamron. Their lens design team is already pretty capable, although the more the merrier!

Probably small body mirrorless IBIS is something they can pick up.

There's nothing stopping Sony from making an MFT body and glass and vice versa for Olympus.

FlyPenFly wrote:
Probably small body mirrorless IBIS is something they can pick up.


I don't think Sony would need to learn anything new in that regard. They just decided on another direction.

I honestly don't see a lot coming from this acquisition anytime soon. Apparently, it's the medical division where the real interest is.

douglasf13 wrote:
I'm not sure there's much for Olympus to share with Sony, in terms of lens design. Sony absorbed Minolta, work with Zeiss, and own a stake in Tamron. Their lens design team is already very capable.

Maybe quality control...or whatever it is that allows Olympus to produce better performing lenses at the high end with a sensor format that is even more demanding (smaller sensel size). Sony and even ZA Zeiss branded Sony lenses have for the most part not been what they should have been, save for a few of the longer ZA's imo. Rampant CA and decentering issues abound.

Without sony's sensor Olympus would have been sunk.

My opinion is the lens design team is the huge weakness in the Sony NEX offerings. There are some good alpha lenses, some good NEX lenses, but they're crawling out with new releases.

Maybe it's the sensor team that's hurting the lens team?

Did you guys see the magenta shift on the nex-7 with the new compact 16-50 zoom? It's freaking awful.

Sony's product planning / product management could use an overhaul. Bet the internal organizational structure is what drives really weird outcomes from an outsider's perspective. Like the cartoon consumer UI on the Nex cameras out of the consumer division and a a real UI on the RX100 out of the cybershot side but which clearly had some input from the prosumer/pro dSLR guys - maybe they owned embedded software and UI/UX on the RX100. All speculation, but would be interesting to hear from someone who understands how Sony works internally to see if there is any truth to this.

ken.vs.ryu wrote:
Without sony's sensor Olympus would have been sunk.

There appear to be other capable sensor designers/manufacturers, just Sony is huge and has some really good product right now. I don't think they're ahead by as much as the forum talk would lead one to believe.

I'm not sure there's much for Olympus to share with Sony, in terms of lens design. Sony absorbed Minolta, works with Zeiss, and own a stake in Tamron. Their lens design team is already pretty capable, although the more the merrier!

Yet with all that expertise, they still can't seem to manage to make a fast 35mm equivalent in proportion with the body; or at least smaller than the ridiculous protuberance that is the Zeiss 23/1.8.

No doubt Sony helped Olympus much like Sony helped Nikon from the brink of death .

ken.vs.ryu wrote:
Without sony's sensor Olympus would have been sunk.

wolfloid wrote:
I'm not sure there's much for Olympus to share with Sony, in terms of lens design. Sony absorbed Minolta, works with Zeiss, and own a stake in Tamron. Their lens design team is already pretty capable, although the more the merrier!

Yet with all that expertise, they still can't seem to manage to make a fast 35mm equivalent in proportion with the body; or at least smaller than the ridiculous protuberance that is the Zeiss 23/1.8.

Well, there aren't really many like mirrorless lenses on the market to compare it to. The prototype of the new Fuji 23/1.4 is about the same length, but bigger around with 58mm filter. It'll be interesting to see how the Canon 22/2 performs for EOS M.

I agree with FlyPenFly that the NEX-7's purple shift sensor issues aren't helping the situation.

FWIW, Sony is touting better edge performance with the upcoming 35/1.8, so maybe they've learned a thing or two?

rscheffler wrote:
ken.vs.ryu wrote:
Without sony's sensor Olympus would have been sunk.

There appear to be other capable sensor designers/manufacturers, just Sony is huge and has some really good product right now. I don't think they're ahead by as much as the forum talk would lead one to believe.

CMOSIS? Does anyone want a $3000 m4/3 camera?

There's also Aptina. I'm sure more as well... at least that's my impression. What about Panasonic with the new sensor in the GH3? I haven't really looked into it carefully, so could be wrong. As with most things, it's usually the big players that get the limelight, but the deeper you dig, there are often many niche, highly capable options. As you suggest, one barrier to such options might be price. With a large manufacturer such as Sony, they definitely should be able to leverage their scale to offer attractive pricing, which benefits Olympus by allowing them to develop a reasonably priced product.

As for a $3K m43 camera, If it had 1D/D4 build quality (not to be confused with size), 3-4MP EVF, did 10-12 fps with 30+ RAW buffer, then I'd consider it. Heck, give me 3 seconds of 10-15MP 24-30fps frame grabs.

It would be interesting to know how much the CMOSIS chip costs Leica, i.e. whether it's considerably more expensive than other similar sensor options. The fact that Sony's two new 24MP FF cameras are less than half the price of the new M would suggest that might be the case. Or, perhaps Sony is content to work on less profit per unit with the expectation of much higher volume. How many A99s/RX1s will they sell vs. the M? Let alone that FF sensor design also being subsidized by the D600...

Some are speculating that the GH3 sensor may be Sony, too, since they got rid of the multi-aspect ratio like on the GH2. We'll see.

Either way, while there are other options out there, Sony's design has been the best for a while now in mainstream cameras, particularly in terms of DR. The Sony sensor in the OM-D certainly did wonders for the camera.

Leica likely can't buy in the volume required to purchase sensors from Sony at a logical price.

I doubt the Nikon 1 system's next Aptina sensor will match the RX100. As far as final IQ goes, I just don't see any Aptina sensors that are that great.

What Sony however is Awesome at more than any company ever is blowing a sizable lead (Personal audio players, Playstations, TVs, etc)

It looks like, at least for now, the only camera collaboration between Olympus and Sony will be for P&S cameras: "Olympus's capital alliance with Sony will see the companies work together on fixed-lens compact cameras, and not interchangeable-lens models, Olympus Japan has said."

link