The new weird Sony strategy also confused me and some of my sources! The last months I got rumors about an ILCE-7, NEX-7r, NEX-FF, A7, A7R, Alpha FullFrame, ILCE-5000 and an NEX -U212. And here is the answer about what is what:
1) The NEX-FF, NEX-7r, Alpha Full Frame and the ILCE-7 rumors I got are actually for the same camera….the A7/A7R!
2) The ILCE-5000 or A5000 is just the NEX-5T
3) And the NEX-U212 is….a new micro SD card! (I didn’t post that rumor on SAR before).
This is important to know because basically because it means:
1) There is no NEX-7r APS-C camera. The Sony fashion photographer that wrote about the “NEX-7r” camera was talking about the A7r! This also explains why one source was confused by the name and told me the NEX-7 successor is coming (he didn’t know at that time that it was an FF camera).
2) The rumors I got from a trusted source saying that in October there would be new Alpha cameras….well was also referring to the A7 and A7r and not A-mount cameras. The “real” A-mount FF are coming in early 2014.
3) The rumors I got from news sources saying that Sony would drop the “NEX” name on semi pro and pro cameras was correct. I didn’t post that rumor because I try to post as less SR2 rumors as possible. But these rumors are correct! The two new sources are now… trusted sources :)
4) In general all E-mount cameras will have as internal code the “ILCE” prefix. And A-mount cameras will have the internal code “ILCA“. So whenever a source sent me an info on an Alpha camera he may specify if it’s an ILCE or ILCA camera type!
It’s already a hard job to get rumors. Now imagine how crazy it was for me to get rumor about different names and cameras and then learning that basically all different names where for the same camera. I didn’t believe that Sony could mess the names in that way.