I don't know why you guys are so skeptical.
"Some guys" told him a "major" FW upgrade was coming. When was the last time "some guys" were wrong??
I'm pretty excited!!
Thanks for posting this, I would have missed it, although this being Sony, I don't place much value, if any, on rumors for a firmware update. Sony is a very big company led by (no doubt) very shrewd managers that do nothing if it does not help them increase sales.
So even if an A1mkII is still a ways off, the A9III is coming and if it has a higher resolution sensor, I assume they will want to force us to buy that body rather than be content with an updated A1... and of course when the A1mkII then does arrive, we will all have to dig into our wallets again!
Not meaning to sound cynical, but it is just not a very realistic rumor knowing Sony.
I would love to be proven wrong though..
ChrisMak wrote:
Thanks for posting this, I would have missed it, although this being Sony, I don't place much value, if any, on rumors for a firmware update. Sony is a very big company led by (no doubt) very shrewd managers that do nothing if it does not help them increase sales.
So even if an A1mkII is still a ways off, the A9III is coming and if it has a higher resolution sensor, I assume they will want to force us to buy that body rather than be content with an updated A1... and of course when the A1mkII then does arrive, we will all have to dig into our wallets again!
Not meaning to sound cynical, but it is just not a very realistic rumor knowing Sony....Show more →
Only if you think the latest greatest will allow you to make photos you can’t make with today’s cameras. Of course Sony is going to lead you along like you are on a string. It’s up to you to realize when the equipment you have doesn’t prevent you from making great photos and the newest cameras are just lust not need. The rest is up to you…not Sony.
dclark wrote:
I don't know why you guys are so skeptical.
"Some guys" told him a "major" FW upgrade was coming. When was the last time "some guys" were wrong??
I'm pretty excited!!
chez wrote:
Only if you think the latest greatest will allow you to make photos you can’t make with today’s cameras. Of course Sony is going to lead you along like you are on a string. It’s up to you to realize when the equipment you have doesn’t prevent you from making great photos and the newest cameras are just lust not need. The rest is up to you…not Sony.
That's true. But ChrisMak has a point. Providing a meaningful FM update at this stage, can certainly hurt the short term sale of the coming A9iii and maybe A1ii in the future. Unless they are delayed. Maybe we can hope for that.
No skin off of my back either way. If it comes fantastic, I'll gladly run with it. If not, MEH. The A1 continues to do it all ++ for me. Sorry to be so positive 😎
Has anyone pondered that the A1 firmware team is a little gun shy after the 130 to 132 fiasco & maybe even been replaced...hence no more updates for the A1.
tctmp wrote:
That's true. But ChrisMak has a point. Providing a meaningful FM update at this stage, can certainly hurt the short term sale of the coming A9iii and maybe A1ii in the future. Unless they are delayed. Maybe we can hope for that.
That's one take. Another might be that with an A1 replacement probably more than a year away Sony wants to do something to make sure A1 sales don't drop off a cliff in the near future as Nikon, Canon et al continue to release new high-end bodies. After all, the A1 probably has considerably more profit margin now it's a mature and more expensive product than the new A93 will have when it's released, and the A1 and A9 have co-existed in separate tiers for many years already.
But I'm also cynical enough to expect either nothing or a v1.33 "stability improvements" release
Well, the “major” part of that firmware could just be that the version is called 2.0 and they add support for the Creator mobile app. And then call it a day…
mogul wrote:
Has anyone pondered that the A1 firmware team is a little gun shy after the 130 to 132 fiasco & maybe even been replaced...hence no more updates for the A1.
Did Sony ever acknowledge it was a fiasco? IIRC the fuss about v1.31 never got an official "we messed up" response and there were plenty of people who reported no problems with it.
wordfool wrote:
That's one take. Another might be that with an A1 replacement probably more than a year away Sony wants to do something to make sure A1 sales don't drop off a cliff in the near future as Nikon, Canon et al continue to release new high-end bodies. After all, the A1 probably has considerably more profit margin now it's a mature and more expensive product than the new A93 will have when it's released, and the A1 and A9 have co-existed in separate tiers for many years already.
But I'm also cynical enough to expect either nothing or a v1.33 "stability improvements" release ...Show more →
What I find unlikely, is that Sony would put in a serious effort to upgrade the A1 so close to the A9III release (if it is indeed this year) after having left the A1 virtually unattended for almost three years. It makes no sense to me. Sony coúld have given the A1 some really great updates, even if it does not strictly need any updates performance wise, being as good as it is out of the gate. Think pro-capture in raw, bird eye af in video, focus breathing compensation etc. Doing so could have kept interest in the A1 alive amongst new potential buyers that are sensitive to proper support. Other brands actually dó add new features to their flagship body via firmware in the first years after release, so we are not talking about something very strange here.
Sony however has shown zero interest in keeping the A1 hot, which is fine by me, but why on earth change course now? Close to the A9III of which Sony will want to sell as many copies as possible..
It's all speculation, and if a firmware update comes I'll install it right away, but it makes no sense. I find it much more likely that the A1 is nearing a stage where it will not receive any updates any longer.
Only thing I can think of if these rumors are really true, is that Sony management had a change of heart, in which case, bring on the firmware updates for the A1...
Well, the A1 is still an amazing camera. Here combined with the FE 400/2.8.GM.
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I still also own the A9, a great camera for sure, but always felt it didn’t have enough pixels for BIF.
The A1 addressed that issue successfully. So if the A9 III doesn’t have a much larger number of pixels than I am not interested. The A1 II will have to have major improvements over the current A1, not just some minor ones, for me to become highly desirable. A global electronic shutter, better high ISO performance, more pixels, and like Some Olympus cameras, the ability to buffer images and record the last so many frames once the shutter button is released.
tctmp wrote:
That's true. But ChrisMak has a point. Providing a meaningful FM update at this stage, can certainly hurt the short term sale of the coming A9iii and maybe A1ii in the future. Unless they are delayed. Maybe we can hope for that.
On the other hand, there have to be people like myself that spent a full $6500 on a new A1 and I have not seen ANY continuing support for one of the most expensive cameras I have ever bought. If there is no FM update....then I'll be dammed if I buy another new Sony camera again.
galenapass wrote:
On the other hand, there have to be people like myself that spent a full $6500 on a new A1 and I have not seen ANY continuing support for one of the most expensive cameras I have ever bought. If there is no FM update....then I'll be dammed if I buy another new Sony camera again.
Thank you galenapass for your heartfelt opinion that I can relate to.
Aside from bug fixes, which improvements or new features would you like to see in an A1 firmware update?
galenapass wrote:
On the other hand, there have to be people like myself that spent a full $6500 on a new A1 and I have not seen ANY continuing support for one of the most expensive cameras I have ever bought. If there is no FM update....then I'll be dammed if I buy another new Sony camera again.
I am with you on this. If I am still shooting Sony when the A1II comes out, I won't pay full price for it again, may buy it when it's $1500 lower than the MSRP. For me, I like to see focus bracketing and pre-capture in the A1. I know Sony is not obligated to provide FW to improve the A1 but neither am I obligated to pay full price for the A1II,
I think Sony need at least one major firmware update for the a1. If they don't, then there may be some reticence from buyers for an a1II if they suspect little to no ongoing support for future updates.
If the next iteration of the a9 has some significant improvements particularly resolution and fps then it's going to start creeping into the a1 market. The next a9 will almost certainly have the latest Sony autofocus system which could out-class the a1.
Personally, I think the next a9 will share the same body, and a future a1 will have built in battery-grip.
Realistic things I'd like to see in an A1 FW 2.0 update....all but one of these are recycled from lesser/newer A7 cameras and one that would be new although we know Sony can do this from Cinema line video feature.
1) DMF activation for any lens via camera menu
2) BEAF in Video
3) Focus bracketing
4) Faster memory card formatting like A7RV
5) Pre-capture for photos
And of course I'd like the AF tweaked to be more like 1.20 FW or better than ever before.
k-h.a.w wrote:
Thank you galenapass for your heartfelt opinion that I can relate to.
Aside from bug fixes, which improvements or new features would you like to see in an A1 firmware update?
K-H.
Mostly I would like a precapture feature. I have that on the OM1 and it makes BIF photos from perched birds very easy. Once you get used to having this capability it then begs the question, why isn't this feature more prevalent in other brands? I'm not hard to please, I'd just like some recognition from Sony that their flagship camera was expensive and that they are taking care of enthusiasts that bought in at full price - rather than watching AI features get put in "lessor" cameras. Some other features that the OM1 has (at a much lower cost) are built in "ND" filter, focus bracketing, and hand-held high res (to name a few). All of these are computational features that I believe may be possible for the A1 which already has a lot of chip horsepower. The OM1 can do all of this and more. Olympus cameras have had features like this for years now.....before the A1 was even released.
