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by rtfm on Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:19 am
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http://gizmodo.com/5942476/sony-rx1-the ... -it-sounds

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2012/09/1 ... on-report/

Looks very promising in many aspects and a bit of retro-style fits perfectly for it. The optical viewfinder would be great, but now lacking as built-in. Does this RX1 really challenge the only FF mirroless camera, Leica M9, is a totally different question.


Last edited by rtfm on Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Sep 12, 2012 8:54 am
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Sony is definitely getting serious in this photo gear business. They now have the best point and shoot (RX-100), among the best compact (RX-1), the best ILC (NEX), and their DSLR offeings offer more features per $. The lens lineup on both Alpha and NEX still needs work though.
 

by Neilyb on Wed Sep 12, 2012 9:45 am
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But would you spend the same money on a compact with a fixed lens or a new D800? The price is pretty high IMO.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Sep 12, 2012 9:49 am
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Neilyb wrote:But would you spend the same money on a compact with a fixed lens or a new D800? The price is pretty high IMO.
Not a fair comparison, you would have to add the price of a Zeiss 35mm lens to that which would bring the D800+lens price to about $5000!
 

by Anthony Medici on Wed Sep 12, 2012 10:21 am
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Is the RX-1 manual focus? If not, you'd be adding the price of the Nikon 35 F1.4 not the Zeiss 35mm. Still a higher price. And a higher weight too, right?
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by Darren Huski on Wed Sep 12, 2012 10:41 am
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Seems like a poor choice for a nature photographer and more for a Cartier-Bresson wannabe.

A fixed 35mm is to long for landscape and to wide for animals.

Think the NEX 6 sounds more interesting for a nature photographer. Certainly the NEX has a friendlier price.
 

by sonthan on Wed Sep 12, 2012 11:13 am
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As this trend, there will be NEX-9 with Full Frame.
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by rtfm on Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:11 pm
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Although it looks like designed for street photogs and Capa & Cartier Bresson -stylish, it might serve also as a nature photography. My immediate reaction when saw the Sony press release was "If I need to choose just one camera and one lens for serious hiking & mountain biking journey, this is it". Its a good but expensive compromise.
 

by Darren Huski on Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:21 pm
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[quote="rtfm"s "If I need to choose just one camera and one lens for serious hiking & mountain biking journey, this is it". Its a good but expensive compromise.[/quote]

No doubt it would be a good choice for that. I used to have an Olympus stylus Epic film camera with a fixed 35mm f/2.8 lens. However for light hiking camera I would be tempted by the NEX 6 or Canon G1X . I spent a day shooting my buddies G1x and was wow'd by the image quality. Think I would trade sensor for zoom.
 

by sdaconsulting on Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:43 pm
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Sign me up for the NEX-9, assuming it gets a 36MP sensor. I'll just have to find some good FF ultrawide glass for it.
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by SantaFeJoe on Wed Sep 12, 2012 5:28 pm
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Darren Huski wrote:Seems like a poor choice for a nature photographer and more for a Cartier-Bresson wannabe.

A fixed 35mm is to long for landscape and to wide for animals.
Well with a FF 24mp sensor and Zeiss lens I think it would be no sacrilege to crop in considerably to make up for lack of zoom. With high IQ, dynamic range, high ISO performance, quiet shutter and 5fps, it sure sounds good to me, even if you can't go wider.

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by Svein-Frode on Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:38 am
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Most importantly this really shows will from SONY to make enthusiast cameras, something many other camera brands seem to have lost. I'm getting one, but I'm not a purist nature photographer.
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by rbaumhauer on Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:05 am
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Don't understand all these calls for a "full-frame NEX". The big benefits of mirrorless are smaller bodies and MUCH smaller lenses - go to full frame and you throw all of that away. Honestly, the NEX lenses suggest that even APS-C is too large for a mirrorless camera - they've had to go to a collapsible just to get the NEX + lens package size down to a reasonable size, and the lack of lenses for the APS-C NEX cameras suggests that the last thing they really need is another camera body that takes a completely different line of lenses.

That said, I am tremendously impressed with what Sony is doing these days - their SLT bodies are very nice, well-thought-out pieces of kit, and definitely don't suffer from 'me-too' thinking. The NEX are certainly the most forward-looking cameras on the market, even if I think they've missed some critical parts along the way (lens selection and IBIS, the latter particularly surprising given its presence in their SLT line). The RX-100 and RX-1 are both impressive statements of what a modern compact camera can be.

If they had announced the NEX-6 six months ago, I would have had to seriously consider it vs. the OM-Ds that I ended up with - the 24MP of the NEX-7 still strikes me as an unnecessary extravagance for the type of shooting most people are likely to do with such a camera, especially given the still-noticeable holes in their lens lineup. The 16MP NEX-6 seems a much better option. Still, I'd miss the fantastic IBIS from the OM-D, and the excellent (and growing) lens selection on m43. Still, nice to have someone pushing things ahead the way that Sony is these days, and I don't mind having their sensors in my cameras one bit :)
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by sdaconsulting on Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:25 am
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Rick,

I think the calls for a full-frame NEX are all about getting the maximum image quality in the smallest possible body. With the NEX you can use any lenses from any system you like, including rangefinder lenses (there are some IQ issues with rangefinder wides / ultrawides, though).

I don't think Sony has any plans for FF NEX lenses -- the FF NEX lens lineup is the Alpha (Minolta) mount lens lineup + LA-EA3 adapter, plus any other lenses you could ever want to mount on it (with appropriate adapter, of course). They have been adapting their latest alpha lenses to work better with CDAF and Sensor-based PDAF, so that seems like their plan going forward.
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by dbostedo on Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:40 am
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sdaconsulting wrote:I don't think Sony has any plans for FF NEX lenses -- the FF NEX lens lineup is the Alpha (Minolta) mount lens lineup + LA-EA3 adapter, plus any other lenses you could ever want to mount on it (with appropriate adapter, of course). They have been adapting their latest alpha lenses to work better with CDAF and Sensor-based PDAF, so that seems like their plan going forward.
A couple thoughts...

-- The NEX mount may not be large enough to accommodate a full frame sensor. You can adapt full frame lenses because of how close the sensor is to the mount, but that doesn't mean a full frame sensor would see full coverage from a full frame lens. It's possible that the lens image circle is too large for the mount.

-- Either way, if you need a full frame lens for sensor coverage, then they could just use the larger DSLR mount on a NEX style body (a la the RX-1 but with interchangeable lenses) and do away with adapters for their own lenses.

-- Doing that, or using an adapter, would probably negate much of the benefit of NEX in the first place, since you'd have large lenses and possibly an adapter.
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by sdaconsulting on Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:17 am
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David,

There is ALREADY a FF NEX (a video oriented model, using the same sensor as in the Alpha 99 and RX1). I want a NEX with a 36MP+ sensor and a NEX7 body.
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by dbostedo on Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:20 pm
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Cool - thanks Matthew - I hadn't seen the new camcorders. That being said, the fact that the NEX E-mount lenses can cover full frame may explain in part why they are so large (which is a big drawback in my head - but I guess Sony has had the full-frame possibility in mind all along?)
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by rbaumhauer on Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:44 am
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I'd heard murmurings that some of the APS-C NEX lenses had illumination problems in the frame corners on existing NEX bodies, so I'm curious to see how that video camera does, given the required adapter to mount full-frame lenses. In any case, it doesn't seem like a reasonable trade - what is the point of a NEX-size body if you're going to put full-frame lenses on it? The NEX bodies already look unbalanced with anything larger than a pancake/collapsible APS-C lens. It seems like something for which there's a market of about 8 people - Sony seems perfectly willing to chase small markets (see RX1), but I'm sure there must be a limit.

I can state from experience that larger lenses don't balance well on small camera bodies - anything larger than the kit zoom or the 45 1.8 has me using at least the horizontal grip on my OM-Ds, and I use the full horizontal + vertical grip setup most of the time with my 7-14 f/4, 75 1.8, and 100-300.
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by rbaumhauer on Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:47 am
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dbostedo wrote:Cool - thanks Matthew - I hadn't seen the new camcorders. That being said, the fact that the NEX E-mount lenses can cover full frame may explain in part why they are so large (which is a big drawback in my head - but I guess Sony has had the full-frame possibility in mind all along?)
Actually, the E-mount lenses can't cover full frame - the full-frame NEX video camera comes with an adapter for full-fram A-mount lenses. It appears that a full-frame sensor can fit inside the E mount, but there are no NEX lenses that can cover the sensor.
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by sdaconsulting on Wed Sep 19, 2012 8:56 am
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rbaumhauer wrote:I'd heard murmurings that some of the APS-C NEX lenses had illumination problems in the frame corners on existing NEX bodies, so I'm curious to see how that video camera does, given the required adapter to mount full-frame lenses. In any case, it doesn't seem like a reasonable trade - what is the point of a NEX-size body if you're going to put full-frame lenses on it? The NEX bodies already look unbalanced with anything larger than a pancake/collapsible APS-C lens. It seems like something for which there's a market of about 8 people - Sony seems perfectly willing to chase small markets (see RX1), but I'm sure there must be a limit.

I can state from experience that larger lenses don't balance well on small camera bodies - anything larger than the kit zoom or the 45 1.8 has me using at least the horizontal grip on my OM-Ds, and I use the full horizontal + vertical grip setup most of the time with my 7-14 f/4, 75 1.8, and 100-300.
You can use Leica and other RF lenses on the NEX. They are small, bright, and high-quality. There are some illumination problems in the corners with WA lenses but Sony has been working on improving the microlens design to help with this.

I disagree with you -- I think there is a pretty large market of people who would be interested in a FF NEX for -- say $3000. I would buy it as a backup for my dSLRs in a heartbeat, and use it as a lightweight compact travel camera with a few really high quality rangefinder lenses.

What you are talking about here is every bit of the image quality of the Nikon D800 in a NEX-7 body with a couple of really small lenses. This is the perfect go-out-and-hike-all-day landscape photography kit, IMO.
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