p.3 #1 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
I suppose if I were coming in cold with zero legacy lenses already in the kit and only had a budget for a low-mid range kit Sony might appear to be behind if you were only buying new.
Given what I know now if starting from scratch I'd just pick up a used A1 or A9II or A7 RV here along with some lenses and take advantage of the vast array of FE glass.
p.3 #2 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
DWOfPaul wrote:
Lately, people have started asking if Sony is falling behind Nikon and Canon in the low to mid range FF market.
I see this as:
a7rV vs Z8 vs R5 II
a7IV vs Z6III / Z5II vs R6 II / R8
This site is usually a lot more level headed than most, so I was curious what your opinion is. Are the a7rV and a7IV overdue for an update? Or is this just another case of newer cameras being shinier in people's eyes?
Sony is way behind in video specs. Sony is fortunate that it has somehow cornered the market for a long time, thanks in part to the help of YouTubers who constantly promote Sony cameras for video content.
p.3 #3 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
chez wrote:
If your current gear doesn’t hold you back, why do you want to buy the latest?
For me, it's mostly about lenses. There are lenses like the Sony 28-70mm f2 and 400-800mm f8 that I can see making a noticeable difference in my kit. But I have a hard time committing to such expensive lenses when I don't see the corresponding body to commit to using them on for the next few years. So right now, I am in the wait and see mode and using what I have. But admittedly, if Nikon makes a good 28-70mm f2 first, or I end up needing a new 24-70 f2.8 first (mine is currently over 10 years old), I will probably end up expanding my Z kit instead of my E kit.
At the end of the day, these thoughts about Sony's camera lineup have been in the back of my head for a while now as I spent a good amount of time thinking about my gear needs for the next few years when all the tariff craziness happened. I came to the conclusion that I should wait and see what camera Sony announces as the a7rV replacement before committing to a large purchase of E mount lenses. Then, recently, when these discussions started happening on sites like PP and SAR it seemed like people had similar feelings that the a7rV and a7IV are overdue for an update. Since some of those sites are known to be a bit hot headed when it comes to brand debates, I decided to ask the question here to get a more balanced opinion.
It does seem like most people seem to prefer around 3 year update cycle for low to mid range FF cameras. Which tracks pretty close to what we have seen manufacturers do historically. Some people are definitely itching for the Z9II too, with the Z9 being close to 4 years old. But I have to think low and mid rnage cameras make up a much larger percentage of the market than flagship cameras. It will be interesting to see how often brands update their models as we settle into the mirrorless and post COVID world.
p.3 #4 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
sonofjesse2010 wrote:
I think a lot has to do with release cycles. Like I would hope/guess when the A7V gets released it will be competitive and maybe hair bit more "spec" wise on paper better than the Nikon/Canon, but it also will be the newest, when Nikon/Canon refresh that line it will be better than the A7V, until the A7VI comes out.
Sony has a good spot in the market, and don't' think they are in a panic to release something that is not ready (Could be software, production, pricing etc).
A7RV came out in 2022
Z8 was 2023
R5II was 2024.
So just based on the timeline I would assume the Sony has the "oldest tech specs". However for 95% of photographers i think any of them 3 would get you what you need.
(I"m not just a Sony fan boy). I think all 3 make great cameras now.
My prediction is A7V late this year or early next year for delivery (Christmas sales) and the A7RVI won't be until next year.
If the A7V has all the features we think and at a fair price. I can see a lot of used A7IV's on this board and people upgrading cause hopefully the body will be under 3,000 and have a lot of cool features right:? (AI autofocus, precapture, more FPS etc)
Does anybody release the sales numbers per model of the big 3? I would love see the number. Most people I know just use their phones, as less and less people buy these, I would think the price might have to creep up. ...Show more →
none of those features are required by the professional photographer, my a7iv will remain my main body for another 7 years or untill it breaks down. only the hobbiest look at fancy numbers not knowing what they actually want them for 🙄
p.3 #5 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
In a general sense, deep concern about which brand is "in the lead" usually reflects a pretty short vision timeline.
Arguably, just about every brand is "ahead" in some way when their newest models are released. It is a continuous game of leapfrog. Brand A comes out with something new and is arguably "ahead" of Brand B and Brand C.
A while later Brand B comes out with its new thing and now it is "ahead," Brand B is close behind, and Brand C is in last place.
Before long, Brand C releases its newest thing and now Brand A, the former "leader," is in last place.
Until the cycle starts again and Brand A releases its next new thing...
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Over the long term, in almost all cases, it is best to make a brand selection initially that works for you, looking at things like availability of lenses that you need and how close to the most recent release you are... and perhaps what your friends, associates, family members are using.
Then, as the other two brands inevitably pull ahead, don't panic. Your gear still works great – as well as it did when you got it because it was "the best." It will last more than two or three years, and soon your brand will issue an update, too.
Then look at this update carefully and ask yourself, "How much difference will this actually make in my photography?" For a small number of people, it might make enough difference to get the very next upgrade. But for most photographers living in the real world, it is generally better to skip the next upgrade and keep using what you have.
p.3 #6 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
gdanmitchell wrote:
In a general sense, deep concern about which brand is "in the lead" usually reflects a pretty short vision timeline.
Arguably, just about every brand is "ahead" in some way when their newest models are released. It is a continuous game of leapfrog. Brand A comes out with something new and is arguably "ahead" of Brand B and Brand C.
A while later Brand B comes out with its new thing and now it is "ahead," Brand B is close behind, and Brand C is in last place.
Before long, Brand C releases its newest thing and now Brand A, the former "leader," is in last place.
Until the cycle starts again and Brand A releases its next new thing...
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Over the long term, in almost all cases, it is best to make a brand selection initially that works for you, looking at things like availability of lenses that you need and how close to the most recent release you are... and perhaps what your friends, associates, family members are using.
Then, as the other two brands inevitably pull ahead, don't panic. Your gear still works great – as well as it did when you got it because it was "the best." It will last more than two or three years, and soon your brand will issue an update, too.
Then look at this update carefully and ask yourself, "How much difference will this actually make in my photography?" For a small number of people, it might make enough difference to get the very next upgrade. But for most photographers living in the real world, it is generally better to skip the next upgrade and keep using what you have....Show more →
A lot of truths to that, but not completely. Z9 was released almost a year after A1. Did it surpass A1? I think if a company starts leading because it hits the right marks, it usually last more than a generation before competition catches up.
p.3 #7 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
I'm not a Sony shooter (I think it's just about the only brand I don't own at all), but this discussion about which brands lags which other one has become largely theoretical to me. The upgrades have become marginal vis-a-vis actual shooting experience and results.
p.3 #9 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
I'll interested in Sony if they come out with a decent rangefinder style camera, GFX100RF like body with 40-50MP stacked sensor without mechanical shutter, and 28 1.8G, 35 1.8G, 50 1.8G lenses.
p.3 #10 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
A74me wrote:
none of those features are required by the professional photographer, my a7iv will remain my main body for another 7 years or untill it breaks down. only the hobbiest look at fancy numbers not knowing what they actually want them for 🙄
We have all probably met someone who updates just for the sake of updating. For cameras, I usually update every other model. For things like phones and computers, I am now updated about every 4 models.
But I think we are also still in a time of key feature growth for certain types of photographers. For example, take pre capture Raw in the a1II. That's a game changing feature for wildlife and action photographers. Video is becoming more and more important to photographers. Video features are still rapidly improving with each generation. Features like stacked sensors and partially stacked sensors are still rolling out to more models, which enables faster readout times which improve rolling shutter, improve AF, allow for more FPS, and allow for silent photos in more situations.
I may be wrong, but I think competition in the FF mirrorless market is going to heat up over the next few years.
p.3 #11 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
Lukacs wrote:
I'll interested in Sony if they come out with a decent rangefinder style camera, GFX100RF like body with 40-50MP stacked sensor without mechanical shutter, and 28 1.8G, 35 1.8G, 50 1.8G lenses.
I think Sony's lens development kind of reinforces the original point - there are few recent non-G and G options. One has to buy an expensive camera and expensive lenses - it's untenable for young people or people without a ton of money. I'd prefer photography not to join the ever-increasing ranks of heavily monied hobbies.
To your point, I'd also love to see more lenses in the G line, even non-G. Perhaps Sony has decided that third party manufacturers are providing enough value there?
Still, a camera sub $2k CDN, like an A7V lite, maybe a stripped down A7CII.
p.3 #12 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
Dave Sanders wrote:
I think Sony's lens development kind of reinforces the original point - there are few recent non-G and G options. One has to buy an expensive camera and expensive lenses - it's untenable for young people or people without a ton of money. I'd prefer photography not to join the ever-increasing ranks of heavily monied hobbies.
To your point, I'd also love to see more lenses in the G line, even non-G. Perhaps Sony has decided that third party manufacturers are providing enough value there?
Still, a camera sub $2k CDN, like an A7V lite, maybe a stripped down A7CII. ...Show more →
I agree that Sony can use more affordable lens and camera options. Most people don't start photography by buying 5k+ in gear. Right now a Z5II + 24-50mm f4-6.3 is 1,996. An a7IV + 24-70 f3.5-5.6 is on sale for 2,400, list price 2,900. Currently, the main advantage of the a7IV over the Z5II is 33mp vs 24mp. Add in a more expensive lens like a 24-105 / 120 f4 and the price differences stay similar. Most people pick a camera to start with and stick to it. I can't help but feel the Sony's competitive prices / price advantage in the early mirrorless days helped it develop there market share.
On the low end market, Sony definitely gets an advantage with all its third party lens options. But in the mid ranage market the inability for third party lenses to go over 15 FPS or use teleconverters is becoming more of an issue by the year.
p.3 #13 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
Dave Sanders wrote:
I think Sony's lens development kind of reinforces the original point - there are few recent non-G and G options. One has to buy an expensive camera and expensive lenses - it's untenable for young people or people without a ton of money. I'd prefer photography not to join the ever-increasing ranks of heavily monied hobbies.
To your point, I'd also love to see more lenses in the G line, even non-G. Perhaps Sony has decided that third party manufacturers are providing enough value there?
Still, a camera sub $2k CDN, like an A7V lite, maybe a stripped down A7CII. ...Show more →
Not sure I'd agree with the "few recent non-G and G options". Granted, the non-G lenses are few and far between, but IIRC they always were to some extent. But the recent G options have been great -- from the 16/1.8 to the 400-800 -- and in the last few years there have been a full range of new options released, mostly constant-f4 in the case of zooms but also a bunch of faster primes.
If I had any beef with Sony then it would be the fact that G lenses are now priced almost where GM lenses used to be while GM prices have gone stratospheric, so ultimately your point about cost is valid. But is this just a feature of photography in general now? It feels like everything photography-related is so expensive now, albeit arguably also better quality than it was a decade or so ago. It's almost like camera makers have ceded the low-end ground to phones and are just focusing on people who want more than (very capable) phone cameras.
p.3 #14 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
wordfool wrote:
Not sure I'd agree with the "few recent non-G and G options". Granted, the non-G lenses are few and far between, but IIRC they always were to some extent. But the recent G options have been great -- from the 16/1.8 to the 400-800 -- and in the last few years there have been a full range of new options released, mostly constant-f4 in the case of zooms but also a bunch of faster primes.
If I had any beef with Sony then it would be the fact that G lenses are now priced almost where GM lenses used to be while GM prices have gone stratospheric, so ultimately your point about cost is valid. But is this just a feature of photography in general now? It feels like everything photography-related is so expensive now, albeit arguably also better quality than it was a decade or so ago. It's almost like camera makers have ceded the low-end ground to phones and are just focusing on people who want more than (very capable) phone cameras. ...Show more →
There’s a much smaller pie in photography today than in the hey days. You have to increase your prices if you want your revenues to stay the same or grow. What company wants their revenues and profits to shrink. Hopefully we’ve stabilized in the photography market.
p.3 #15 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
I don't think a "stripper" FF body to entice users is particularly inviting. It's the broader "system" price at work here. If I can only afford to buy a cheap body and only one lens, it's hard to see that making sense when the "phone" competition is so strong. I suppose the big brands could fight over the luxury market but buyers have a choice, too. A small portion of the industry is based on solid business needs for specific features and capabilities, with a lot of this being recreational, hobby, family users, they aren't motivated to keep buying as prices go up.
p.3 #16 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
chez wrote:
There’s a much smaller pie in photography today than in the hey days. You have to increase your prices if you want your revenues to stay the same or grow. What company wants their revenues and profits to shrink. Hopefully we’ve stabilized in the photography market.
Sure, you can go the higher-price, lower-volume route, or try to increase volumes by offering lower price points. Either is a valid route to profitability, but obviously the choice is dependent on myriad other data points to determine the optimal market strategy for a particular manufacturer.
As far as the pie size size goes camera shipments peaked around 2010 IIRC and have since plummeted, but that's largely due to the rise and fall of point-and-shoot models that accounted for a huge share of the overall camera shipments a decade or two ago before phone cameras took over that segment. All the data I've seen recently for the ILC and lens markets suggests they're growing at a significant rate, which is not surprising given the boom in high-quality content creation over the last decade and the sheer number of ILC bodies now available from Sony and others.
p.3 #17 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
DWOfPaul wrote:
We have all probably met someone who updates just for the sake of updating. For cameras, I usually update every other model. For things like phones and computers, I am now updated about every 4 models.
But I think we are also still in a time of key feature growth for certain types of photographers. For example, take pre capture Raw in the a1II. That's a game changing feature for wildlife and action photographers. Video is becoming more and more important to photographers. Video features are still rapidly improving with each generation. Features like stacked sensors and partially stacked sensors are still rolling out to more models, which enables faster readout times which improve rolling shutter, improve AF, allow for more FPS, and allow for silent photos in more situations.
I may be wrong, but I think competition in the FF mirrorless market is going to heat up over the next few years. ...Show more →
you quoted all the features that degrade image quality and video quality. i just compared the new R5ii for video and even the a6700 walks all over it, and so does the a7iv, its why sony just bought out the FX2 as the top hybrid camera.
p.3 #18 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
Dave Sanders wrote:
I think Sony's lens development kind of reinforces the original point - there are few recent non-G and G options. One has to buy an expensive camera and expensive lenses - it's untenable for young people or people without a ton of money. I'd prefer photography not to join the ever-increasing ranks of heavily monied hobbies.
I hear you. But…
… as high as prices for new gear are right now, if you compare inflation-adjusted prices from a couple of decades ago (near the start of the DSLR boom) to the current prices they aren’t all that different… except in quite a few cases the current costs are actually lower than the original inflation-adjusted prices!
Example:
A7r (2013) at $2300 — a lowball price designed to entice people away from DSLRs
A7rII (2015) $3200
A7rIII (2017) $3200
A7rIV (2019) $3500
A7rV (2022) $3900
If we ignore that 2013 teaser price and start with the more realistic A7rii, inflation between 2015 and 2022 would have raised the price of a $3200 item to about… $3950! In other words, the release prices were actually comparable, as surprising as that sounds. (By 2025 the price comparable to that 2015 $3200 cost would be over $4300!)
Indeed, in virtually every case where I have checked (including other brands) the current inflation-adjusted prices of cameras has actually gone down over the past 20 years!
I know that doesn’t make it any easier for you to afford the latest and greatest stuff right now — but I’m afraid that buying into good photography gear has been fairly expensive for quite a while now.
Some ways to deal with this include:
1. Start out with good used gear bought at a discount.
2. Avoid falling victim to the “I need all the gear” and “I must have the very newest gear” mindset. (The market is set up to make you feel that you need the newest and “best” of everything. You don’t.)
3. Try to focus on the photographs, not on the gear. This isn’t always easy — again, the gear business does a fine job of persuading people that photography is all about gear.
4. When you do buy new gear, go slow and think it through carefully, and buy stuff that you really will keep for a long time.
5. Don’t fall into the trap of imagining that you have to buy each new update. You don’t. Keep that new camera body through one or more upgrade cycles and try to keep lenses even longer.
p.3 #19 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
Your points are all well made - but it's still missing the mark. It's great that expensive cameras are costing the same or less, adjusted for inflation, but the price of the latest 'R' is irrelevant as it is not a low end, entry level camera. Young people cannot walk in to, say, Best Buy and buy Sony cameras that are cost competitive, and certainly not a FF camera.
An A7RII (my current camera, yikes!) may have cost $3200 in 2015, which was a lot...but there were a ton of options in the DSLR world for young people or people of not a lot of means to buy and use. Your points 2-5 just reinforce this - yes, it's not about the gear, yes you should focus on photos, yes you don't need the latest...hence why access to something priced like a Z50 or Z5 is important.
gdanmitchell wrote:
I hear you. But…
… as high as prices for new gear are right now, if you compare inflation-adjusted prices from a couple of decades ago (near the start of the DSLR boom) to the current prices they aren’t all that different… except in quite a few cases the current costs are actually lower than the original inflation-adjusted prices!
Example:
A7r (2013) at $2300 — a lowball price designed to entice people away from DSLRs
A7rII (2015) $3200
A7rIII (2017) $3200
A7rIV (2019) $3500
A7rV (2022) $3900
If we ignore that 2013 teaser price and start with the more realistic A7rii, inflation between 2015 and 2022 would have raised the price of a $3200 item to about… $3950! In other words, the release prices were actually comparable, as surprising as that sounds. (By 2025 the price comparable to that 2015 $3200 cost would be over $4300!)
Indeed, in virtually every case where I have checked (including other brands) the current inflation-adjusted prices of cameras has actually gone down over the past 20 years!
I know that doesn’t make it any easier for you to afford the latest and greatest stuff right now — but I’m afraid that buying into good photography gear has been fairly expensive for quite a while now.
Some ways to deal with this include:
1. Start out with good used gear bought at a discount.
2. Avoid falling victim to the “I need all the gear” and “I must have the very newest gear” mindset. (The market is set up to make you feel that you need the newest and “best” of everything. You don’t.)
3. Try to focus on the photographs, not on the gear. This isn’t always easy — again, the gear business does a fine job of persuading people that photography is all about gear.
4. When you do buy new gear, go slow and think it through carefully, and buy stuff that you really will keep for a long time.
5. Don’t fall into the trap of imagining that you have to buy each new update. You don’t. Keep that new camera body through one or more upgrade cycles and try to keep lenses even longer.
p.3 #20 · Do you feel Sony is falling behind on the low to mid range FF market?
It seems most likely that Sony did a cost benefit analysis and has decided not the chase after the budget full frame market. Their entry level cameras are APS-C, and users can upgrade to full frame later if they have the money and desire to do so.
I don't recall photography ever being an economical hobby if you want the high end gear, and the low end gear keeps getting better. I remember drooling over the Canon 1DSII which was, what $8k? You can get a used A73 for $800 that would run circles around the 1DS. Forgive me for being a grumpy old man
