Sony has new mirrorless full-frame E-mount cameras, and they do not have only one of them, no, they’ve got two. Everybody drools.
They both are extremely light cameras, especially but not only as full-frame cameras go. In fact the 36 megapixel A7R is slightly lighter than Olympus’ OM-D E-M1. That’s impressive, but only until you start adding lenses. Yes, there is a small and light 35/2.8 lens, but everything else is big and heavy, and there’s not much of it either. Two lenses will be available almost immediately, five sometime in spring, and one of them will come only as a kit lens for the 24 megapixel A7. Thus the top of the line A7R seems to be restricted to using a 35/2.8 lens only for a few months. Two of the zooms overlap completely. Crazy? Well, not if 35 mm is what you’re looking for, but certainly so in any other case 😄
Apart from the lens issue there is the usual idiotic decision to stabilize lenses and not the sensor. The zooms will be stabilized, the primes won’t. And that’s from a company that has access to Olympus’ five-axis IBIS! You see me puzzled. To me all those decisions seem absurd. They are not what I’d expect from engineers, they don’t look marketing-inspired. The only explanation that comes to my mind is free-wheeling, totally clueless top management. Or maybe rolls of the dice 🙂
The Song of the Day is “Here We Go Again” by Ray Charles and Norah Jones. Hear it on YouTube.