Yesterday I told you that the new A-mount roadmap will lead to new FF and APS-C cameras announcements in early 2014. And I am almost sure these cameras will be the first “mirrorless” A-mount cameras. This means they neither will have an optical viewfinder and mirror nor the famous translucent mirror. The key of the new A-mount camera sis the new advanced on sensor phase detection autofocus system. And guess what, I just found a brand new patent (United States Patent Application 20130113982) that describes exactly that kind of cameras!
The image you see on top shows you the A-mount camera design with no mirror. And the image below shows you the arrangement of the phase detection pixels on the RGB sensor.
Yep, that’s it guys. say by by to SLT and to that 1/3 stop light loss :)
People asked me why the heck A-mount and E-mount should coexist and what the difference will be. There are at least three reason that came to my mind:
1) The A-mount mirrorless cameras will have a classic DSLR body. E-mount will focus on compact size.
2) A-mount has on sensor stabilization while E-mount cameras has not.
3) A-mount mirrorless cameras have a large range of A-mount lenses at disposal. E-mount is still very limited in their lens offering.