Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM
I suspect the recent events in Japan have pushed back any product releases for a while. There was also talk of Nikon starting production of the D3000 again, so they could have a camera at a lower price point, but that also hasn't happened or been announced.
Sony, I mean "Zeiss" glass for the Alpha line is a bit of a joke. Zeiss may have designed them, but it is still Sony glass made in Japan, not Germany. Note that none of the real Zeiss glass is made for Sony mounts?
Sony is an electronics maker, any there target market is consumers, not real photographers. Their cameras show it in the design and control layout. They may have boring, and IMO, inferior technology like sensor based anti-shake, and some tiny mirrorless cameras which most pro photographers shun due to poor controls, but they just aren't that interesting when you really take some time to use them. I played with an NEX at Best Buy, wasn't impressed at all.
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One of my friends is a real enough photographer to get a free NEX from Sony, and she thought it was okay. The controls take some getting used to, but she likes the size. She lent it to me for a while, because she wanted a layman's opinion, and I really liked it. But I'm not a
real photographer, I only take pictures.
I wouldn't expect pro photographers to "get" the NEX, for the same reason I wouldn't expect your stereotypical IT neckbeard to "get" the iPad. ("It's smaller, but it's not like that
matters!") That doesn't mean that some fake photographers aren't going to find cameras like the NEX great for their needs.
I think the consumer camera market is undergoing a seismic shift (too soon?). Cameraphones are reaching the point where they're "good enough" for most people. A lot of my friends don't even
have "actual" cameras. I know, because they ask to borrow mine whenever they go on a vacation.
But now, some of them are like, y'know, I'll just bring my iPhone. Sure,
we know that most phone cameras are absolute garbage but for most people they're "good enough," a la Flip Video. So all those people aren't bothering to buy cameras any more. Compare the number of consumer cameras Canon has introduced this year, compared to years previous. And all the camera manufacturers aren't exactly keen on losing that huge market, so they're increasingly going to try to go after prosumers/smug consumers and sell them on things that cameraphones can't match, like interchangeable lenses. But there's just not
that many people who are keen on carting around a big DSLR kit, hence the totally-coincidental introduction of the heavily-marketed NEX and EP1.
Unsolicited prediction: At CES 2012, at least one of the camera manufacturers will introduce, amid much fanfare, an imaging-focused Android smartphone to combat their sliding consumer camera sales, a la Garmin's nuvifone. It probably won't be very effective (especially if it's Kodak).