New rumors about the 500mm f/4 lens…

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According to Amateur Photographer the 500mm f/4 lens will be released at the same time of the A900 replacement. Sony is showing a lens prototype at CES which includes on-barrel control buttons. It’s very interesting to note that the lens prototype has a Direct Manual Focus (DMF) control which enables a 15x magnified view of the scene to help focusing. That feature works only for cameras that do use electronic viewfinders only! So I guess Sony will release a Full Frame camera with Translucent mirror!

The question now is…when is Sony going to announce the next FF camera? Not very soon…. :(

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New 5 inch external viewing screen for Alpha and NEX from Sony

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Sony announced the new CLM-V55 external LCD for Soy Alpha and NEX cameras. It has been developed for video photographers. It has selector buttons on the side of the screen to allow navigation directly from LCD. It will be in Stock in March for $399.

Pocket Lint has written a hands-on with some more useful informations (and a picture).

Photography Bay posted a few images of the future NEX lenses (those are the same mockups seen at Photokina). Reminder:

There will be 7 new lenses for the NEX series launching in 2011-2012, including:

  • a Carl Zeiss and G Series standard zoom
  • a standard macro, portrait and telephoto zoom
  • a wide angle zoom and mid telephoto
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Sony A77 mockup shown again (+mid-range speedlight flash)

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Sony displays the A700 successor prototype at CES along the new mid-range speedlight flash. You can see a few pictures at Photographybay. On a first look there seems to be no difference between that body and the protoype shown at the Photokina in September 2010.

Photographybay says that: “No word on the release date, but one would expect it to arrive at or around PMA 2011 in September.“

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(SR3) The awesome Sony NEX roadmap!

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I got two mails from a new source (Thanks!) that seems to know a lot about the upcoming new NEX products. According to him Sony will:

1) release a NEX-4 (16 Mio, 1080p Video) in May 2011 (its the successor of [shoplink 3003]NEX-3[/shoplink]). It will be available as a kit (no body only).
2) The successor of the [shoplink 3003]NEX-5[/shoplink] is coming later, together with…
3) the NEX-7 (24 Mio) in October. The NEX-7 will have the the same sensor like A77 a lot of “mechanical” controls and superb build quality. The cost of nex7 together with 18-55 lens is ~1200€-1250€.
4) New lenses this year: 1,7/24 ZEISS, 3,5/30 Macro, 1,8/50 and 4-5,6/55-200.

The source will read your comments on this post so ask him whatever you want!!!

If you can confirm or deny or correct those rumors feel free to contact me at sonyalpharumors@gmail.com or use the contact form on the right sidebar (it doesn’t store the IP address and you can avoid to send me your name and email but please use some kind of nickname so that I will be able to recognize you in future). Thanks!

Reminder (SR = Sonyrumor):
SR1=probably fake rumor
SR2=rumor from unknown sources
SR3=50% chance it is correct
SR4=rumor from known sources (60-80% the rumor is correct)
SR5=almost certainly correct!

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Sony says PMA in September is the right place for new announcements (we need better marketing guys!)

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After the Sony conference an interviewer made some questions to the Sony entertainment president (Source: ustream.tv). Do consider that he might don’t know the detailed roadmap on Alpha and Nex cameras. That’s why he might made a “small” marketing mistake:
He tells that CES is not really the event to talk about photography equipment especially professionally. He said that PMA should be the event to announce such devices.

Now, I am almost sure the NEX-4 and A77 will come long time before the PMA (which takes place in September only!). But Sony marketing guys should be more careful when saying we should wait until September because one can get the idea that there will be no new Alpha and NEX cameras/lenses in the meanwhile!

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Sony announces new compact camera. No talk about NEX and Alpha

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UPDATE: Sony booth  at CESwill open tomorrow. So only than we will see the eventually new NEX and Alpha camera prototypes. If you are there feel free to send us your report/pictures! Thanks!

Sony press conference is over and there was little to be excited about the digital photography news. Sony introduced a bnch of new compact cameras including the DSC-TX100V wich records video in 1080p60. Defacto this is the only interesting news!

I hope the Sony booth will sow the rumored NEX prototype…

Official press release text:
– Sony announces six entry level compacts (Dpreview)
– Sony unleashes five Cyber-shots with 16.2MP CMOS sensor (Dpreview)

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(Continually updated) Sony conference Live from CES!

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We embedded the Sony live stream in this post. You can also follow the conference at ustream.tv. The conference starts at 5pm Las Vegas time (that’s 1am in the night in London).

UPDATE_5: It was a pretty uninteresting conference. 1 hour of talk about all kind of stuff with no very interesting digital camera news.

UPDATE_4: Sounds like Sony will talk about 3D stuff only. Meanhwile DPreview published the Press Release about the new Sony compact cameras.

UPDATE_3: Conference started! Of course the first theme is 3D…

UPDATE_2: What we can expect to be shown at the conference: New bloggie cameras, compact cameras, new 3D videocameras and more consumer stuff. Sony could also choose to not talk about NEX and Alpha cameras and just show the new prototypes at the Sony booth in Las Vegas.

UPDATE_1: Just to keep me and you busy -> I received some unreliable rumors from new sources. Like for example that Sony will announce a mirrorless partnership with Nikon :)  Sounds almost impossible! As I said in the previous post. Keep the expectations low….for now.

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