Interview with Sony ILC chief

[ahsanford]

From DPR:
https://www.dpreview.com/interviews/4571668362/sony-interview-our-focus-is-to-increase-the-overall-market

A few interesting tidbits:

• They feel they need a more durable camera for wedding/event photogs.
  
  
• Both the Sony heads and DPR (see the caption below the baby shot) hyped the upside of a company that develop both the camera and sensor in-house. Like it's a new concept. :
  
  
• Speed (in general) has increased of late, so they will start to court sports and photojournalism folks soon. [Whether they were referring to the fabled A9 or just an upcoming third-gen of the A7 line remains to be seen.]
  
  
• They are 'paying close attention to' 8K and Light Field. They stated LF costs 5 pixels per LF pixel, so it wrecks the attainable resolution.
  
  
• DPR still has a crush on all companies that don't rhyme with Bannon. They literally opened a question with: "One thing Sony can't be blamed for is a lack of caring when it comes to quality." :
  
  
• They openly benchmark against other companies' product (as all surely do), but their tone was somewhat refreshing: "We learn from other companies. We must, because we are still beginners."

It's a brief but interesting read from the madmen churning out these A7 rigs.

- A

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I would not call Sony a beginner, maybe their executives are new to the business, but they basically grew the Sony DSLR business out of Konica Minolta which they acquired many years ago.

The merger was said to be a mess with Minolta Engineers and Ideas downplayed, and the whole DSLR division of Sony being held back by the then profitible P&S division. So, the ILC camera division is only new because the P&S sales went belly up and they were the last man standing.

Sony was very big in camera displays and sensors long before that, virtually all camera makers use at least some Sony LCD displays and sensors. Japanese companies compete, but they also sell each other components.

 

[ahsanford]

Sony was very big in camera displays and sensors long before that, virtually all camera makers use at least some Sony LCD displays and sensors. Japanese companies compete, but they also sell each other components.

Seems like the DPR staff laid an egg on the obvious question: "You may develop everything in-house, but your sensor division and imaging division are now separate businesses -- please tell me why that's a good thing for photographers."

This opens a can of worms regarding potentially conflicting priorities between the different business units. The Sensor division could rack up a lot of money to serve its own business unit bottom line by licensing/supplying their best tech to Nikon or Canon for top dollar. But it's clearly in the Imaging division's best bottom line outcome that the Sensor division shuts off supply of sensors to those two.

- A

 

[Mikehit]

Seems like the DPR staff laid an egg on the obvious question: "You may develop everything in-house, but your sensor division and imaging division are now separate businesses -- please tell me why that's a good thing for photographers."

This opens a can of worms regarding potentially conflicting priorities between the different business units. The Sensor division could rack up a lot of money to serve its own business unit bottom line by licensing/supplying their best tech to Nikon or Canon for top dollar. But it's clearly in the Imaging division's best bottom line outcome that the Sensor division shuts off supply of sensors to those two.

- A

IIRC, Sony did not license out to Nikon but made sensors to Nikon's specifications - this is not an unusual business model from confectioners to engineering. But I always thought it odd that Nikon cameras managed to get more out of the sensor than Sony cameras even though they were (presumably) using the same basic architecture.