gdanmitchell
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 p.16 #16 · Z8 vs R5? I'm just curious... | |
1bwana1 wrote:
There is a new book out written by the lead engineer for Sony mirrorless cameras. In it he is very open about the deficiencies in the early mirrorless Sony cameras. He details how Sony overcame these and made a superior product that has reshaped the entire industry. It shows how essential it was that Sony was both the camera company and the sensor designer/fab in this process. It probably couldn't have been done without this. It should finally put to rest the B.S. about the Sony camera company, and the Sony Sensor Division being separated with a firewall that gives the camera company no additional benefits than other camera companies. Total B.S.. Being the same was essential to the development of suitable digital sensors. The depth and number of important innovations that it took to make this happen are amazing. Sony camera, and Sony Semi are one company and work together as one. To the benefit of us and all the other camera companies that are Sony customers....Show more →
I think that what Sony did when they moved from their DSLRs to their early mirrorless models — in particular the FF mirrorless series — is a remarkable story. I write this as a person who did not move to their cameras, who continued to use a competitor's equipment (Canon), but who uses and likes a mirrorless system from another company (Fujifilm).
I've long held that Sony did something that neither Canon nor Nikon could have done at the time, and the point above about the "deficiencies in early mirrorless Sony cameras" is right on target. Basically Sony leveraged there _weakness_ in the DSLR market and their strength in sensor design to disrupt the entire market.
The early Sony cameras were, aside from the sensors, functionally inferior to the DSLRs of the time. Folks didn't like to talk about it (though they are more open about it now), but the cameras had serious AF issues, relied almost entirely on other manufacturers for lenses, and had a clunky interface.
But Sony found a way to make it not matter. It was brilliant marketing and a very wise business move, though there were risks.
Imagine if, say, Canon had introduced those first Sony mirrorless cameras with their name on them. Imagine literally the exact same cameras but with Canon branding. They would have failed. Imagine Canon coming out with a camera with a worse interface, poor AF, and no native lenses... and urging Canon buyers to instead use lenses from, say, Nikon... by adding adapters. They would work, with varying degrees of compatibility, but in many cases their performance would be compromised.
Imagine the market reaction! People would have thought Canon lost its collective mind. The product would have been panned mercilessly as a giant step backwards. Even with a higher resolution sensor it would have been panned. People would have wanted the sensor in a DSLR with full functionality, and if it had been only available in a lower performance mirrorless body they would have been deeply resentful. It would have failed quickly.
Canon (and Nikon) was expected to produce solid, reliable products that built on and were compatible with previous gear and each new Canon release was expected to be minimally as good as what came before and typically include some advance.
Ah, but Sony was in an entirely different situation. They were producing some credible DSLRs but... they were undistinguished and not drawing many buyers away from the Canon/Nikon competition. It is doubtful that Sony could have dragged enough users away to a different DSLR even with the 36MP sensor. (Note that Nikon used that sensor in their DSLRs... and still saw their market share decline.)
So Sony threw a Hail Mary pass, essentially betting their camera company on a gamble that they could more successfully pull customers from other brands with a camera that wasn't a me-too product. So they put that industry-leading sensor in a camera that was functionally deficient for many purpose. But... they made it easy for people to try out that impressive sensor by producing an adapter that let Canon owners easily (almost as easily as if they had bought another Canon camera!) bring their expensive lenses along as they tried out that not super-expensive body. Folks who didn't need super AF performance were quite interested — a whole bunch of my landscape photography colleagues got the Sony and attached their Canon lenses.
Suddenly, Sony wasn't the third place, never-gonna-catch-up DSLR company... but it was the company making the camera with the best sensor that photographers using gear from the biggest competitor (Canon) could try out with minimal expense, as long as they didn't need super AF performance. They looked like the future.
This gave Sony a foothold in this market and gave them time to continuously improve the cameras (thus attracting upgrade sales AND more new users) and to create a line-up of native lenses, and eventually to produce leading/competitive systems across the line.
Ironically, if they had been successful with those early Sony DSLRs... I suspect that this all would have evolved in a very different way.
Dan
(Note: I come at this topic from the cross-post in the Canon forum — that may explain part of my orientation to the issue. Also, I firmly believe that Canon, Sony, and Nikon all make excellent cameras and I think that most of the brand wars stuff is nonsense.)
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