Interview with SOny Execs about A7R3

Jul 28, 2015
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An interesting interview on Image Resource with Sony Execs about the A7R3. Not so much the camera itself but the main design drivers.

Before now, we didn’t have so many professional or photo enthusiast customers in our user base, therefore, the voice we can get is limited. But now with more and more customers including professionals, we are getting more information, and that helps us to make more decision to set our goals.

So it looks like they are admitting their main impulse was 'cram as much technology as possible' endless about 'can we design a usable camera'. So if they are now listening more to professionals (from their growing professional customer profile) they really will start to challenge Canon on other aspects than merely 'techno-wow'.

So once we launched Alpha 7R Mark II... of course, even before we launch Mark II we heard a lot of voices of customers, but when we had that model, then we need to get the feedback from customers for what we should do for third generation. And surprisingly, when we have that kind of information, yes, some customers want even higher megapixels. But a majority of customers requested different areas of development such as longer battery life, for instance…
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And certainly I think the big thing that's happening in the industry right now is autofocus. From my perspective, image quality is good enough that you know, people can talk about 15 stops or 14, but really, for many people and I'd say almost more for consumers than professionals, autofocus has become more important.

Which really is the sort of decision Canon and Nikon have been making for years - much to the incomprehension of of some.

It was a shame they could not expand more on the timeframes of camera development because the little that was said was starting to get interesting.
 

unfocused

Photos/Photo Book Reviews: www.thecuriouseye.com
Jul 20, 2010
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www.thecuriouseye.com
And certainly I think the big thing that's happening in the industry right now is autofocus. From my perspective, image quality is good enough that you know, people can talk about 15 stops or 14, but really, for many people and I'd say almost more for consumers than professionals, autofocus has become more important.

This is a quote from the interviewer, not from the Sony executives. It's pretty clear that the interviewer was leading the executives on these questions and they were just sort of agreeing. This is a typical industry fawning interview with no really tough questions and no probing, but instead the interviewer injecting his own opinions into the interview.

That's not to say that I don't agree with the interviewer that autofocus is more important than dynamic range. But, absent an explicit and unprompted statement from the executives, we shouldn't presume that his views reflects theirs.
 
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Mar 2, 2012
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Mikehit said:
An interesting interview on Image Resource with Sony Execs about the A7R3. Not so much the camera itself but the main design drivers.

Before now, we didn’t have so many professional or photo enthusiast customers in our user base, therefore, the voice we can get is limited. But now with more and more customers including professionals, we are getting more information, and that helps us to make more decision to set our goals.

So it looks like they are admitting their main impulse was 'cram as much technology as possible' endless [sic] about 'can we design a usable camera'.

If you want to ignore the written words and make up your own, sure that’s what they said.

In reality, they’re saying the growing user base is helping them refine their products.
 
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