Re: Leica M11-V to be announced (Now called Leica M EV1)
philip_pj wrote:
Sony envisioned a Leica style camera in the - 465 grams! - a7r, complete with top panel shutter release, and spare design. Mine is my main camera, and after 13 years (I bought in real early) l want another one, but unabused low shot count ones will be hard to find.
The shutter never bothered me, it appears very strong and the report lets subjects know when you have taken the shot. It's old-fashioned! Sony made a mistake by not repurposing the sensor which had just a little AF on it. That sensor (D800 too) was the fulcrum upon which the mass market shifted its axis. Remember all the 'what lenses will work on 36mp' questions?
'The original Sony a7R has an electronic viewfinder (EVF) with a resolution of 2.4 million dots, a magnification of 0.71x, and 100% field coverage.'
'The Sony a7CR's Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) has a resolution of 2.36 million dots, a 0.70x magnification, and 100% frame coverage.'
'Sony Alpha a7CR is 32% (15.2 mm) thicker than Sony A7R.
Sony Alpha a7CR [515 g] weights 11% (50 grams) more than Sony A7R [465 g]' (plus ca change)
Thanks for comparing this - I was unaware that my old A7R EVF is still comparable with more modern A7 based cameras!
Sony targeted especially Canon at the time to move customers. This was another smart Sony move, because they knew that many vested Canon EF users were stuck with limited Canon FF sensor resolution and DR at the time and jealously looked at the D850. But switching from one lens environment to another was costly and tedious. Sony saw the niche and offered a solution with the A7R using this higher resolving sensor with much more DR and allowing Canon users to use their EF lenses with adapter which worked flawlessly if AF wasn't as important (in this case Canon offered the 5D MkIII anyway for better AF performance). Sony pushed this openly by even adding a free Metabones EF/E-mount adapter to their A7 cameras in Australia (unfortunately they never did this in the US).
I also remember reading in 2013 that after the A7 series release Leica had emergency meetings in Wetzlar because they also felt threatened first by this innovative and capable camera series. IMO what saved Leica's camera sales were two things: different and unique rangefinder focusing system plus that wider M lenses caused issues in the corners with the thicker Sony sensor cover glass. If Sony really wanted to go after Leica - likely the M-lens market was too small of a niche for Sony to really consider - they would have made a thinner cover glass. But Sony's focus was and remained on adapting (D)SLR glass especially before Sony/Zeiss lenses hit the market with quite some delay in a larger variety followed by other E-mount lens makers.
Leica stayed its course as we know, but other established camera brands changed gears after 2013 and put resources in to develop their own FF-based MLC systems which have replaced now the DSLR lines. Without Sony and its A7 series push, this development would have taken much longer for sure - probably > 10 years.
Always to my big surprise the main potential biggest competitor with Sony in the FF MLC market stayed away from even trying to get in there - Fuji. They theoretically had all ready to go since they were already in cropped sensor MLC systems. It still remains a mystery why they let Sony covering this whole FF MLC niche for many years - maybe they didn't see it as such a big success in the beginning and underestimated it until it was too late to compete. Another theory is that Fuji had an agreement with Sony to split the market between them in FF and cropped MLCs, but this is unproven.
Nov 18, 2025 at 07:52 PM
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