The new Sony will be interesting, with initial sales taking a nice little slice for that particular segment for a few months. But I've seen his senario before. Three months after release sales will disappear. There is MUCH work for Sony to do. I like the fact the envelopes are being pushed also though.
But the 'buzz' is missing from the A700 release. This is something that Pentax are completely inept at finding. They have a superb camera in the K10D that has won all the prestegious awards, yet few look for it. Lenses are definately a problem (and their pancakes are so understated).
These guys seem to have no plan. They don't know who they are marketing their cameras to. What percentage of he pie do they want, now/3 years. The Canon 5D is targeted, as is the D200. And the D40x is probably the best example of targeted marketing I've seen for a while.
But the Sony and Pentax cameras don't seem to have an audience. The A100 was probably the worst camera I've seen in terms of a targeted audience. A feature set that was overly complex for a beginner, and missing important stuff (like build quality) for an enthusiast.
The price was initially too high but they still managed to sell them to people who a)bought everything Sony, b) the few people who still had minolta lenses..... then they couldn't give them away.
They could do with the marketing heads of Nikon and Canon working there. I hope they find their feet, we'll see what happens. Boy, does this camera (A700) need some absolutely stellar reviews!
J.D. wrote:
Doesn't matter. They have the expertise. I was using CCD as an example. Sorry. I could have made myself clearer.
The point is that in two years from now they will be a very serious contender.
I also think that Sony could indeed become a very serious contender. Sony is still a big name in consumer electronics, and with newbies entering the d/SLR market Sony could indeed draw them into the Alpha system. Sony also spends allot of money on marketing and advertising which again will give them an advantage.
Would it really be a bad thing if Sony puts some pressure on the competition?
I don't think Sony will have much success in the DSLR market. They will sell a few units, but they are expensive, the lenses are expensive, and Canon and Nikon were and are well positioned for the DSLR boom. Sony is getting in too late with lackluster offerings.
They jumped in because they saw the boom, and dollar signs. I bet they have a rough go of it.
The D3 sensor apparently uses a new CCD technology that does away with the Bayer array. It uswes a series of dichroic mirrors to direct the red green and blue light to different photo sites. The result is very high picture quality beyondd what the megapixels would indicate.
tomb18 wrote:
The D3 sensor apparently uses a new CCD technology that does away with the Bayer array. It uswes a series of dichroic mirrors to direct the red green and blue light to different photo sites. The result is very high picture quality beyondd what the megapixels would indicate.
What? Merely because Nikon has a patent for this type of technology, does not mean that Nikon is using it this camera. Nikon has actually said nothing that would suggest that the sensor uses such a new approach. If it had employed such a new approach, surely they would be talking about it as a way to help sell the camera. But they actually say very little. Companies often have many, many patents in the areas they do research, but only very few of them are ever sufficiently viable commercially to ever make it into a product. They could have hundred of patents and only actually use a few. The existence of a patent doesn't mean it is being used.
Why further do you say that the result would be, "very high picture quality beyondd what the megapixels would indicate"? Nikon's patent does not make this claim, nor does Nikon make the claim anywhere else. What is the reasoning for this? Do you have scientific or technological basis for such a statement or is it merely a guess based on intuition or something less?
All Nikon has said about it, is essentially: 12.2 megapixel FX (full-frame) CMOS sensor with gapless surface micro-lenses and advanced on-chip noise reduction, wide dynamic range and 12-channel readout. And I might point out further that it is not clear that the CCD chip described in the patent, could be made with a CMOS process to produce the CMOS chip used in the camera
My guess Sony will never go Pro unless they enter into a JV with either Zeiss or Leitz.
Ultimately it is all about the glass and I cannot contemplate a specialist manufacturer of TV's and Walkmen taking the high ground from two of the worlds leading specialist manufacturers of optics
Tim Ashton wrote:
My guess Sony will never go Pro unless they enter into a JV with either Zeiss or Leitz.
Ultimately it is all about the glass and I cannot contemplate a specialist manufacturer of TV's and Walkmen taking the high ground from two of the worlds leading specialist manufacturers of optics
They already are. Apart from the Minolta lenses they inherited, they are also involved with another high quality glass manufacturer (can't remember which one but it's German*). Sony has a number of advantages in that they bought an existing manufacturer of good repute. They also went with an in-body stabiliser. People here complain often enough that the IS in Canon lenses can attract a $600 premium over non-IS. Where would you rather see the money spent: lens-based IS or higher quality glass?
Add to that the fact that Sony has been selling CCDs to both Canon and Nikon since DSLRs started and you start to realise that Sony has been in the game since day one, whether they also make Walkmen or not. That Canon and Nikon are leading optical specialists is almost irrelevant when you consider the forces which Sony can bring to bear.
If this fizzles out in two years time I'll be the first to admit I was wrong but the only things they've got going against them is their marketing strategy, which nikt rightly pointed out is flawed, and their rather cumbersome layout.
tomb18 wrote:
The D3 sensor apparently uses a new CCD technology that does away with the Bayer array. It uswes a series of dichroic mirrors to direct the red green and blue light to different photo sites. The result is very high picture quality beyondd what the megapixels would indicate.
Phil from dpreview.com has said that it's just a normal CMOS bayer censor (he has a pre-production model).
J.D. wrote:
They already are. Apart from the Minolta lenses they inherited, they are also involved with another high quality glass manufacturer (can't remember which one but it's German*). Sony has a number of advantages in that they bought an existing manufacturer of good repute. They also went with an in-body stabiliser. People here complain often enough that the IS in Canon lenses can attract a $600 premium over non-IS. Where would you rather see the money spent: lens-based IS or higher quality glass?
Add to that the fact that Sony has been selling CCDs to both Canon and Nikon since DSLRs started and you start to realise that Sony has been in the game since day one, whether they also make Walkmen or not. That Canon and Nikon are leading optical specialists is almost irrelevant when you consider the forces which Sony can bring to bear.
If this fizzles out in two years time I'll be the first to admit I was wrong but the only things they've got going against them is their marketing strategy, which nikt rightly pointed out is flawed, and their rather cumbersome layout.
*It's Zeiss.
Edited by J.D. on Sep 09, 2007 at 11:25 AM GMT...Show more →
Hi JD, which Canon DSLR uses Sony's CCD? I thought Canon only use CMOS
Olympus will announce a very good replacement for E-1, unfortunately for them they have shackled themselves with 4/3. Sony will announce a FF competitor to 5D next year, hopefully at PMA. Given the noise performance of the D3 this could send shock waves through Canon. Sony's CMOS is delivering big time.
tomb18 wrote:
The D3 sensor apparently uses a new CCD technology that does away with the Bayer array. It uswes a series of dichroic mirrors to direct the red green and blue light to different photo sites. The result is very high picture quality beyondd what the megapixels would indicate.
Ron Hew wrote:
Hi JD, which Canon DSLR uses Sony's CCD? I thought Canon only use CMOS
The DSLRs don't. The P&S cameras do. Nikon still uses Sony CCDs for their DSLRs. Canon are now building their own CCD factory.
Again, apologies for not making it clearer but I reiterate my point that Sony has been in this game since it started and has provided sensors for the top still camera manufacturers. FWIW, Sony have been producing CCDs commercially since the late 1980s. Now they are producing CMOS chips for their own cameras including more complicated examples like the 3 CMOS versions of their camcorders. I seriously doubt if anyone knows more about sensor technology than Sony and that includes Canon and Nikon.
"A CMOS sensor that has a capture area of 23.9mm x 36mm (which is effectively identical to the size of a frame of 35mm film) and records 12.05 million pixel photos when the entire sensor area is active. Nikon calls this FX Format mode.
While it's widely known that Nikon uses sensors designed by Sony in most of its digital SLRs, the D3's sensor is an original Nikon design. The only other digital SLR models to also feature a sensor created by Nikon are the D2H and D2Hs, and as with those models, Nikon isn't revealing their manufacturing partner."
And I really curious to see some more testing of this statement from the same article,,,
"Larger-pixel sensors tend to have better signal-to-noise ratios than smaller-pixel ones, and based on a look at ISO 1600 - ISO 25,600 frames produced by prototype D3 bodies, including a handful we shot ourselves, the camera looks like it will produce low light photos that are both massively cleaner and more usable than the D2Xs and in the same ballpark as Canon's EOS-1D Mark III (which is the D3's primary competition). Nikon promises a dynamic range bump of 300%, and we suspect that this claimed improvement is almost entirely because of the lower noise characteristics of the sensor."
Shane Canfield wrote:
From Rob Galbraith's intro article on the D3...
"While it's widely known that Nikon uses sensors designed by Sony in most of its digital SLRs, the D3's sensor is an original Nikon design. The only other digital SLR models to also feature a sensor created by Nikon are the D2H and D2Hs, and as with those models, Nikon isn't revealing their manufacturing partner."
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