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Where did all the long lenses for FE mount go?
#11
Quote:This appears to be your opinion (and sure many share it). But there's a number of professionals that have moved to the mirrorless world and are very happy with that (e.g. those at Luminous Landscape). 

 

Anyway, since we're talking about Sony, the relevant point is that they have a good bunch of professionals that have become testimonials of their mirrorless system. Fighting Canikon is a very hard task, and there's no evidence that Sony is going to challenge them with a legacy mount that never created any problem to the two major leaders of the market so far. 
You call it numerous. I call it a small group with low demands in certain areas.

 

The mount is irrelevant, it is the body that counts (and the lenses available). The current FE bodies are not suitable for most professionals. That Sony has made rather meh and or lousy A-mount DSLRs after taking over from Minolta is a totally different subject, and not related to the mount itself.

 

Count the "those at Luminous Landscape" (whoever they are) to the "just a number of photographers" I referred to above.
#12
I repeat that the point is not making a whole world poll, rather the discussion of Sony's strategy. Sony is clearly advertising the use of mirrorless in the professional world and there are the "Sony artisans" acting as testimonials to that. They might be wrong or right, I don't care. It's the message Sony wants to deliver. 

stoppingdown.net

 

Sony a6300, Sony a6000, Sony NEX-6, Sony E 10-18mm F4 OSS, Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* E 16-70mm F4 ZA OSS, Sony FE 70-200mm F4 G OSS, Sigma 150-600mm Æ’/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary, Samyang 12mm Æ’/2, Sigma 30mm F2.8 DN | A, Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan 100mm Æ’/2.8, Samyang 8mm Æ’/3.5 fish-eye II | Zenit Helios 44-2 58mm Æ’/2 
Plus some legacy Nikkor lenses.
#13
Like I said, only in a small part of the professional world. The point was that Sony says they are going for #1 spot in FF, for that they do not only lack the lenses, also the bodies at the moment (last part was my point).

 

1st step will be to finally bring back a decent RAW format across the entire range, by the way.

 

Step 2 maybe, be more dependable? 1st they mess up the A-mount with sub-par lens releases, crappy SLT bodies and a non-competitive lens line up in the 1st places, after which they seem to more or less abandon A-mount for the new flavor of the month: NEX with E-mount. Now they seem to want to abandon more or less NEX with E-mount for the FE variant. And all that in just a few years?

#14
You might want to read about using the A-mount lens on the A7RII with the Sony LAEA3 adapter:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1380420
#15
I know youpii, and the Tamron 150-600mm has been reviewed by many in the A-mount version + adapter. But I consider it a work-around, a complete system shouldn't need adapters to other mounts.

stoppingdown.net

 

Sony a6300, Sony a6000, Sony NEX-6, Sony E 10-18mm F4 OSS, Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* E 16-70mm F4 ZA OSS, Sony FE 70-200mm F4 G OSS, Sigma 150-600mm Æ’/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary, Samyang 12mm Æ’/2, Sigma 30mm F2.8 DN | A, Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan 100mm Æ’/2.8, Samyang 8mm Æ’/3.5 fish-eye II | Zenit Helios 44-2 58mm Æ’/2 
Plus some legacy Nikkor lenses.
#16
The A7 & A7r along with the full frame E mount were announced on Oct 13, 2015... That's less than two years ago.

Since then, Sony had continuously released lenses but no 70-400 because that was just a fake rumour.

A company like Sony can't realistically release more than 5 or 6 new (refreshes don't count) lenses per year. This year the new lenses included 35/1.4 & 90 Macro.

I guess that if they released a 70-400 instead of the 90 Macro, you'd be happy but someone else would post a message like "where are the macro lenses ?"

During the A mount, Sony released a few 2.8 zooms. And the forums were full of "where are the F4 zooms ?" messages. Now Sony released F4 zooms for the FE mount and forums are full of "where are the F2.8 zooms ?"...

The roadmap will probably be updated soon (sept / oct ?). My guess is that Sony will focus on making FE lenses that don't exist in A-mount or whose A-mount lens is obsolete but let's see what will come then.

http://www.sony.net/Products/di/lenses/roadmap.pdf

 
In the mean time, Sony has also made adapters that makes it very easy to use A-mount lenses on FE-mount cameras to fill holes in the system. I'm now using screw-in AF lenses such as Sony 85/1.4ZA on my A7r and it work surprisingly well.
#17
It's correct to say that some will always be sad for the priorities in a new system. I also understand that long teles couldn't be a priority at the beginning, because there was no AF on par. But at least Sony could have described a detailed roadmap earlier - e.g. "dear customers, there won't be long teles for FE mount until 201?". And if there won't be info in the next released roadmap, well, I don't see excuses now.

 

But I'm not talking only about Sony: I mentioned Tamron and Sigma. They could just propose versions of their lenses with an updated mount, without changing the optical design. They'd perform on par with their current lenses + A/E-mount converter. After all, it's what Samyang does.

 

BTW, Sigma has even retracted the A-mount version of their latest 150-600mm...

stoppingdown.net

 

Sony a6300, Sony a6000, Sony NEX-6, Sony E 10-18mm F4 OSS, Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* E 16-70mm F4 ZA OSS, Sony FE 70-200mm F4 G OSS, Sigma 150-600mm Æ’/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary, Samyang 12mm Æ’/2, Sigma 30mm F2.8 DN | A, Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan 100mm Æ’/2.8, Samyang 8mm Æ’/3.5 fish-eye II | Zenit Helios 44-2 58mm Æ’/2 
Plus some legacy Nikkor lenses.
#18
Quote:Like I said, only in a small part of the professional world. The point was that Sony says they are going for #1 spot in FF, for that they do not only lack the lenses, also the bodies at the moment (last part was my point).

 

1st step will be to finally bring back a decent RAW format across the entire range, by the way.

 

Step 2 maybe, be more dependable? 1st they mess up the A-mount with sub-par lens releases, crappy SLT bodies and a non-competitive lens line up in the 1st places, after which they seem to more or less abandon A-mount for the new flavor of the month: NEX with E-mount. Now they seem to want to abandon more or less NEX with E-mount for the FE variant. And all that in just a few years?
1. It doesn´t matter what Sony says they are going for, what matters is that they really have interesting and innovative stuff targeting the FF camp right now.

2. The A-mount misery - IMHO it´s dead. So what?

3. Sony to abandon the E-mount (APS-C mirrorless)? Just a crude speculation.

4. Talking about misery - Canons as well Nikons profits are shrinking faster than ever. How long does it take until they turn belly up? "And all that in just a few years?"

5. The future is mirrorless.
#19
Quote:4. Talking about misery - Canons as well Nikons profits are shrinking faster than ever. How long does it take until they turn belly up? "And all that in just a few years?"
5. The future is mirrorless.
I can't find the articles again, but they were probably somewhere on Thom Hogan's sites. At least for 2014, while DSLRs were still in decline, Canon by themselves were bigger than the entire mirrorless market.

To look forward a bit more, I just tried to compare the CIPA shipment figures which are available for up to 1st half 2015.

CIPA have only broken out mirrorless data starting 2012, giving both units and yen value. Given most camera players are Japanese companies I don't think it unreasonable to compare them. It is easier to list who isn't part, of which the only significant players are Samsung and Leica.

So we only have 3 full years of data to compare, 2012 through 2014, and 1st half 2015. To extrapolate what full year 2015 might be, we can't just double it as there is traditionally seasonal variations. To make an estimate of this impact, I split 2014 into two halves, and saw the 2nd half was greater than the 1st by roughly 15% for SLR units, 20% mirrorless units, 22% SLR value, 26% mirrorless value. I will use these scaling values for 2H 2015, and add it to actual 1H 2015 to give a 2015 predicted year to compare to 2014 and earlier.

In terms of units, year on year, DSLRs have been dropping 15% into 2013, 24% into 2013, and 5% predicted into 2015. So while 2014 was particularly deep things may be flattening out. Mirrorless has been flatter with a 16% drop into 2013, and no further change into 2014 and 2015 predicted.

Value comparisons are a bit different. DSLRs saw a 11 and 16% drop into 2013 and 2014, with predicted 3% increase in 2015. Mirrorless is better off here, with a 3% drop into 2013, 13% gain in 2014, and perdicted 1% gain in 2015.

Since we have value and units, we can work out the average value per unit. DSLRs hold an upper hand here. being 22% higher in 2012, 9% in 2013, 6% in 2014 and predicted up again to 13% in 2015.

Finally, what about sales share? Mirrorless as a percentage of total interchangeable camera unit sales: 20% 2012, 19% 2013, 24% 2014, 25% predicted 2015. By value the share is on average 2% lower.

What does that show? I dunno. DSLRs may be flattening out and increasing in unit value now they're adapting to the shrinking market by not overproducing. Mirrorless are still on an upward trajectory but lagging DSLRs.

I don't see anything to change my opinion that while there will be a change to mirrorless, it will be a long slow one.
<a class="bbc_url" href="http://snowporing.deviantart.com/">dA</a> Canon 7D2, 7D, 5D2, 600D, 450D, 300D IR modified, 1D, EF-S 10-18, 15-85, EF 35/2, 85/1.8, 135/2, 70-300L, 100-400L, MP-E65, Zeiss 2/50, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300/2.8, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Olympus E-P1, Panasonic 20/1.7, Sony HX9V, Fuji X100.
#20
http://www.eoshd.com/2015/07/canon-profi...s-to-fall/

 

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27...FD20150727

 

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/niko...sults.html

 

At the same time Sony seems to do well in terms of growth:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6223902...ales-surge
  


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