michaelwatkins
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 p.72 #3 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless | |
Comment to Bob, moved from image thread where it didn't belong...
Bob I find myself nodding to the essence of what you say but I think there may be other factors at work than just a desire to sell more lenses for new mounts/short back focal distance/high resolution/large sensor cameras" theme. Bear in mind Sony has no lenses to sell today but 1 kit zoom and the FE35. FE55 coming next. And then in 2014, others. They can't afford an A7/r still birth so catering to alt-glass and system migration/second back buyers is critical to them.
1) Sony benefits from the alt-glass buzz so even if there is a desire to spur on lens sales, given there isn't a fully fleshed out FE lens line-up *today*, if anything, they Sony would be encouraged to make the A7 and A7rs the absolute best camera for *all* alt-glass, if it were possible to satisfy all needs. If it were possible.
Let's assume it were possible to satisfy all variations of lenses - FE, M, SLR/DSLR mounts, equally well: Sony could make the A7 or A7r the best body for M mount glass, period, and simply not replicate the feat in future models if their desire were to sell more AF lenses. Drag M glass shooters over to an instant classic. Future models, not so much.
But I don't assume it's possible to satisfy all wants simultaneously if one of the objectives is small, light, very high performance native FE class E mount lenses for a line of cameras intended to go on for a long, long time, assuming sensor pixel densities increase even just a little over the next decade.
2) That said, they stand to gain more from drawing people from Canon than Leica, probably, and adapted Canon SLR/DSLR lenses aren't subject to the same sorts of issues. They kinda get those folks for free. Being as the competitive threat to Sony is never Leica but Canon, Nikon, and other mirrorless makers, simply not standing in the way of those users is a good, low cost, approach for Sony.
3) Meanwhile they still need a small, lightweight high performance lens line up to go with their short back focal distance cameras. Even Leica has issues supporting a 27.5mm mount; 18mm just complicates what is already now and going to be with higher pixel densities an increasingly more difficult problem to lick. Maybe Leica gets frozen in time with its current sensor for quite some time; that company can slowly bring out redesigns of well loved lenses, but they have a finer line than Sony to walk lest they alienate their bsae of users many of which pay multi-kilo-bucks for lenses which might not be as portable to future Leica digital M's let alone Sony products.
4) Who is the only full frame, narrow flange focal distance, compact mirrorless camera maker out there without a legacy base of users to account for? Sony.
Here's where I agree with you the most: they have a relatively new mount; a new class of camera; and the opportunity to bring out high quality compact lens designs tuned for this reality.
The physics are dictated by user wants. Who hasn't wanted a digital "SLR" that was the size of our relatively compact film SLRs of days gone by? That's what Sony has brought us. Was it always the plan with the NEX ant 18mm E mount? did they sketch out futuristic (then) A7 type cameras and know they could eventually get there? Dunno.
What we do know is if the mount were substantially deeper, we'd have chunky Nikon Df style cameras coming out of Sony instead of the svelte little A7s.
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), so A7R is no longer my concern. In addition to Otus 55, I would like in wide end is either 2/28 (current ZE/ZF is almost good enough) or 1.4/28 - If Sony strategy is small/slow (I consider 2.8 slow) lenses there won't be wide angle lens for me in future either => A7R-platform most likely just won't offer me anything at this point, let's see in 2014 what lenses Zeiss will produce to the platform.