We have known about this camera for a while now and it is still believed that it is the Sony a7SIII, but it could also be the Sony a9II. I think Sony will answer the Panasonic S1H sooner rather than later with the Sony a7SIII, but I expect they will wait to announce the Sony a9II until Canon and Nikon launch their new sports cameras the Nikon D6 and Canon 1DX Mark III.
via Nokishita
There is an activist shareholder currently trying to influence Sony to drive up share prices and one of his suggestions was to liquidate holdings like the one Sony has in Olympus so some sites are attributing the move to him. I am not sure if that is the reason why, but Olympus hasn’t been doing well lately and Sony’s venture with them has concluded so that seems like a more likely reason
Sony said in a statement it decided to sell “considering that the initial purpose of the capital alliance to establish collaboration between Sony and Olympus has been accomplished and after reviewing the rationale for owning the Olympus shares.”
Sony already sold off around half of their investment in Olympus previously which made up 11.5% of outstanding shares to fund its own restructuring and now they will liquidate the remaining 5%, which could be reinvested into the company. Activist investors seem to everywhere nowadays, lets hope Sony is making the sale for the right reasons and not just because an investor thinks their stock should be significantly higher.
via reuters
7Artisans posted some photos and a video for a new E-Mount 35mm f/1.4 lens that is coming soon. It looks very Leica like in design, which is nice, but we will have to see how it performs. 7Artisans products can be found on B&H Photo and Amazon.
via Photorumors
There are a few ways to look at Photons to Photos PDR results for the Sony a7RIV compared to cameras like the a7RIII and GFX, but I would say that the a7RIV is proving that we are reaching the limits of what a Full Frame sensor can capture. Yes, the a7RIV is 61MP compared to the a7RIII’s 42MP, but it only outperformance the a7RIII at low ISO. Once the ISO starts to go up you are probably better with the Sony a7RIII, which has a similar sensor to the a7RII, but big AF performance gains.
When comparing the Sony a7RIII/a7RIV to the GFX50S and GFX100 we can see that the larger GFX chip gained a decent amount of PDR performance pretty much across the board in addition to doubling the megapixel count compared to the GFX50S sensor. I believe this is the reason why Fujifilm decided to skip full-frame and move to an even larger sensor because as the generations go on the performance gap should widen quickly with Full-Frame remaining where it is without a breakthrough like BSI.
If we take price into consideration the topic becomes even more tricky, because the Sony a7RIII is currently $1,000 less than the a7RIV and it will likely fall to around $2,000 in the not too distant future. If this happens than APS-C is going to have to come way down in price to compete. If we compare the Sony a7RIII to the GFX100 or GFX50S it is around 1/4 the price of the GFX100 and around 1/2 the price of the GFX50S at this time, which is a really incredible value.
At this time Sony is the only company that can take on Canon and Nikon and they seem to be winning the battle, but if Nikon and Canon pull a Sony and release a larger sensor for their big mirrorless mount than things could get more competitive fast. The possibility is why I believe Sony will start building a medium format system soon because I think they will need it to compete in the coming years.
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Sony a7RIV: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Sony a7RIII: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Fujifilm GFX100: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Fujifilm GFX50R: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Fujifilm GFX 50S: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Sony IFA 2019 is coming September 5th, but there is no expected announcement at this time. The event is Europes largest consumer electronics show and Sony promises to be launching products at the show on their page here.
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