Today at 5pm PST (Las Vegas) time Sony will live stream their CES product announcement. Like I told you yesterday actioncameras, VR, Playstation and other non-Alpha stuff are going to be announced. There is a very small chance Sony will show the A99 successor, the A6100 or the new FE lens roadmap. Keep in mind the “pure” photo event of CP+ is taking place next month already. And as usual with Sony some of the photographic stuff may be announced “off-show”.
Still, we can hope Sony will surprises us tonight! You can follow the video live stream directly here on SAR at:
5pm Las Vegas time
8pm New York time
2:00 Berlin time (January 6 in Europe)
The Best Cameras Under $1000 USD In 2015 (Bokeh Digitalrev).
The 20 Best Poses for Taking Beautiful Photos of Women (Double Mesh).
a7r + FE 90mm macro – Japan; Autumn 2015 Exclusive (SonyAlphaForum).
RX1rII is the DC.watch readers best compact choice.
My Sony A7s Landscape Portfolio (SonyAlphaForum).
Sony Alpha A7S II review at Trustedreviews.
Best photography products of 2015 (Digitaltrends).
As you see Instant Film and ActionCameras is what sells most. System Cameras are just a small niche in the market. See full ranking here: amzn.to/1O1rTOD
Yesterday Phase One launched the new XF 100MP back (article here). The sensor is made by Sony and first SAR readers worked on the 300+(!) megapixel TIFF files (article here). The image quality you get is impressive. This is now the world’s best digital system camera you can buy!
So the question arises if Sony will ever make a medium format RX camera with such a sensor. The advantages for Sony and us would be:
– Sony would explore a new “virgin” territory (first fixed lens digital medium format) – Sony could make the most compact digital medium format camera yet. Something we can really use for reportage and travel photography. The current medium format cameras are more suited for landscape use. – Sony could sell the camera at a less crazy sub $10,000 price. It would be a completely different camera than the Phase One and certainly not compete against it (not interchangeable, not primarily made for studio and landscape photography)
Now imagine Sony announcing such a camera. Below you can see an imaginary RX medium format camera designed by SAR reader Sibuzaru (Thanks!). Its based on the [shoplink 43703 ebay]Bronica 645[/shoplink].
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P.S.: You can see the new XF100MP back for real in Los Angeles! More info at digitaltransitions.com.
Tomorrow (January 5th at 5pm PST) Sony will stream a live video presentation from the CES show. But as reported previously it’s highly likely that Sony’s new A99x and A6100 system camera will be introduced after the CES show at or right before the CP+ photo show in late February. The CES show is more “mass consumer oriented” and as I leaked previously there will be new actioncameras, handycams and maybe some compact cameras only.
Our “SonyNinja” source (cool name!) already visited the Sony CES booth and reported this:
“At CES in the booth past few days. No new big cameras, but new line of TVs and heavy focus on HDRaudio and “lifestyle.” PlayStation VR has a big presence this year along with lots of interactive elements around the booth…”
It may be that like it happened with the A7sII Sony takes out a system camera out of nowhere to avoid any leak. But just to keep your foots on ground don’t expect yet anything granted for tomorrow.
But the good news is that the same sources who were right on the Batis and RX1rII rumors also told us the A99 successor and A6100 are finally coming as next (shipment within March).
P.S.: Virtual Reality seems to be the big thing this year at CES!
SAR reader Vitaly got the new Zonlai 25mm f/1.8 E-mount lens that sells for $129 on [shoplink 43686 ebay]eBay (Click here to read all details on eBay)[/shoplink]. He shared some unboxing pics and image samples on Flickr (Click here):
Did some test pictures and process of unpacking. Impression: Well build, good quality pictures. On downside -very short, narrow turn for focusing. Also my copy has small mark/dot inside metal part that not affect optic.
Lens Features:
Focal Length: 25mm
Aperture Range: F1.8-16
Focusing Range: 18cm-Infinite
Dimensions: Ф60mm X 33mm
Weight: 142g
Materials: Multi-coated Optical Glass / Metal body
Color: BLACK/SILVER
Available on [shoplink 43686 ebay]eBay[/shoplink]
Today Phase One has announced the XF 101 megapixel back. The CMOS sensor was developed by Sony and uses a similar [shoplink 43671 ebay]Sony A7RII[/shoplink] sensor design. Phase One says this is a “Full Frame” sensor. What they mean is that it has the real field-of view size of 53.7 x 40.4mm. It means unlike previous Phase One backs there is no crop.
Original Phase One 101 MP file (left) and 4.5 stop overexposure (right). Image courtesy by Ori Cohen
Our reader Ori Cohen made a short test with the files available for download at Phase One’s website:
“The XF 100MP boasts at being the “ultimate camera system”, powered by the world’s first 100MP sony sensor. Phase One generously gave us a few TIF sample files to inspect, and they are simply stunning. This much detail is every photographer’s dream, but it comes at a high cost of not just money, but also processing power. My system can handle huge files, but editing a 500MB TIF demands more than an I7 and 32GB of memory. I was excited to see that one of the files was under-exposed. The image in question is the dramatic mountain that was shot at ISO100, and its histogram is leaning to the left, with the help of LR I recovered the shadows and blacks in order to see if there was any noise in the shadows. In fact, the majority of the image’s pixels are dark blue\gray. Recovery of the shadows and blacks to 100% did not show any noisy pixels. In a second attempt to force the noise to appear, I pushed the “exposure” slider by +4.5 stops, and there was still no noise! obviously the highlights and whites were blown, but with a small amount of highlights and whites recovery they stayed within the histogram. The only reason I did not add +5 FULL stops of exposure was because the highlights and whites recovery sliders’ range is too narrow for this 16 bit file and can’t push the over exposed pixels to the left of the histogram. Although this observation was done at the optimal ISO, as a comparison I could not recover a similarly under-exposed A99 RAW file without seeing noise at ISO 100. I believe that this camera can recover shadows by more than 4.5 stops without showing noise artifacts, but in order to do that Adobe needs to give us the ability to dial in more than 5 stops in each direction, and extend the shadow/darks/highlights/whites recovery range.”
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