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Sony Alpha – The Rumors of my Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

July 29, 2010 by Gear, Opinion

It looks like the rumor mill among mirror-less camera fans is that Sony will be ditching the Alpha DSLR line in favor of their new NEX system. On first glance, this makes sense to me. I’ve never figured out Sony’s late to the game DSLR plan. They launched a new line of DSLR’s without video capability right as the market for HDSLR’s took off. Maybe the timing was bad luck but to launch a pro-sumer camera against entrenched giants like Canon and Nikon, was ballsey to say the least and probably shows a lack of understanding about the prosumer market. Photographers invest in a system and getting them to break away from that investment in lenses and accessories is a tough sell. I know since I went through this painful process switching from Nikon to Canon during the digital changeover. … Continue Reading

Sony Launches Alpha NEX-5

May 11, 2010 by Gear, News

The web is buzzing today with news and reviews of Sony’s new Alpha NEX-5 and NEX-3. The NEX-5 shoots full 1080 video in a small form factor that seems to emphasize what Shane Hurlbut ASC said last year at the Collision Conference about cameras becoming little black boxes holding the chip and nothing more because it’s all about the glass.

These cameras are Sony’s answer to the Micro Four Thirds systems (which I am a fan of) that can accept almost any brand of lens with readily available adapters. This category removes the optical viewfinder and mirror box (the LR part of SLR) and rely on electronic viewfinders. These systems are commonly referred to as EVIL … Continue Reading