GHarris
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 p.4 #1 · Pre-order: Sony A7C Compact Full Frame ($1,798) | |
chiron wrote:
I was speculating very loosely about the possibility of a new mount, so even if you were to be correct, we are just jawing around here and enjoying ourselves in a sort of excited late-at-night moment before a dawn.
But it is also true that a new mount doesn't mean abandoning other mounts, certainly not the FE, and the idea of a system as a single vast Canon-like array with a single mount stretching to the horizon for all purposes and all photographers may no longer be the best way to think about a system in a time of extremely rapid technological change. It may be better to think about a system as comprising several systems or mounts that optimize performance for different purposes, as many do now with APS-C and FE, not to mention their i-phone. And Sony has officially committed to a design philosophy of making cameras for more specific purposes--thus the ZV-1 and the A9II, which each serve very specific needs.
Given the rate of technological change in electronics and manufacturing, more specific applications make sense. As long as you can get the lenses you need for the bodies you own, and those bodies are optimized for your purposes, different mounts could make a lot of sense.
On the other hand, this is really just all wild speculation and fun at this point!  ...Show more →
iPhones, RX100s, ZV-1s... they're all, in a sense, disposable. Right from the start, there's no upgrade path. You have to replace the whole thing when you upgrade, and you're never led to think otherwise.
And they're much cheaper.
The huge expense of high-end interchangeable bodies and high-end interchangeable lenses creates a very different world. There are inevitably lots of potential customers who want to feel that they are going to have a long-term return and flexibility on their investment.
You can tell yourself, "I can cover so many bases with this fancy lens purchase. It can produce amazing high-resolution landscape shots on my slow but high-res "R" body. It can gather lots of light to freeze the motion for action-shooting on my less-sharp but super-responsive a9 body. And in three years' time, it'll work amazingly well with whatever camera body they'll release next... and it's exciting and reassuring to know that that will happen - there *will* be compatible future camera bodies for many years to come, getting ever more responsive, ever faster at AF, ever higher in resolution."
And so you open your wallet - with confidence.
As soon as Sony release a 2nd high-end enthusiast interchangeable mount, every potential customer is going to ask themselves: "OK, so which of these two systems is going to turn out to be VHS, and which one is going to be Betamax? One of them is going to turn out to be a dead-end. I don't feel I can confidently put my cash down on the counter and take a risk."
I think Sony are going to have to stick with the E-mount for multiple years more before they rock the boat with a curved-sensor mount or anything else disruptive. And I'm OK with that. There's still room for improvement in the pure sheer performance of existing E-mount cameras and lenses - more and more high-end and exotic glass and creative design, faster and better sensors, faster and sharper EVFs, faster burst modes and card slots, new video modes, new wired and wireless connectivity and control options. Smart in-camera image processing.
The wide scope / rich potential for fast-moving technological advancement that you mention is almost entirely unrelated to curved sensors. It's advancement on all fronts, with the current, fully-capable mount system. DSLR was holding so much of the user experience and the technological growth of cameras back. Curved sensors only help with one single thing: potentially, the size and weight of a lens of a given optical quality. Only that. It doesn't revolutionize how autofocus works, how viewfinders work, how video works. It's just (theoretically/hopefully) a smaller lens for a given quality level. Only that. No small thing, but not enough to upset your pretty position in the market with high consumer confidence and trust in future purchasing options.
I don't think Canon would have released two separate, incompatible mirrorless mounts if they had thought it through. They released the APS-C mirrorless mount because they weren't thinking far enough ahead. Let your customers feel confident that their investment in your system is going to pay off, and they'll spend more, again and again, down the years. Whereas personally, if someone were to say to me, "I want to buy an APS-C camera, I'm considering various options, what do you think about Canon?". I'd tell them to avoid the M mount, because for all we know it will quietly die out once RF matures and can cover all the bases. It barely feels like a completely viable system as-is, with its lack of different body options and price-points. And you can't help but doubt how long there will be new toys released for that system. Because it's already somewhat of a dead-end, with a bigger and more capable and incompatible newer RF system receiving all the R&D and prestige.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to say. I agree. In all my bullshitting and proclaiming I forgot to say that this is all just chat for fun :-) You're right. Sorry if I come across a little strong.
Edited on Aug 29, 2020 at 05:24 PM · View previous versions
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