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Longevity and Durability of Sony Equipment?

snegron

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Curious to know your experiences using Sony camera bodies and lenses in terms of longevity and durability. We seem to live now in an age of disposable electronics. New technology is introduced or upgraded regularly and photography is almost right up there with cellphones and computers in terns of rapid evolution/constant replacement.

Sony lists the shutter rating for the A7iv at 200,000 clicks. While I know this is just an estimate and that my A7iv won't immediately self destruct at 200,000, I've read horror stories about earlier models of A7iii having shutter failures after only a few thousand clicks.

As for Sony lenses, I've had mixed luck with Sony, Viltrox and Samyang lenses. Most of the Sony lenses I've owned have had serious decentering issues, and it took several returns/echanges before I was able to get a decent copy. For me personally, 90% of the brand new Sony lenses I've purchased have had decentering issues. My one and only Viltrox (AF 16mm f1.8) died after 3 months. Samyangs were defective right out of the box (AF not working, etc). Luckily my Tamron lenses have all been solid performers right out of the box (except for the 28-75mm f2.8 G2, which had a huge problem with vignetting). I have only purchased new equipment from reputable vendors (B&H, local brick & mortar store, Amazon, and Best Buy). My negative experiences were with all of the 4 vendors, not just one, so it's not a "vendor-specific" issue.

My thought process regarding lenses is if lens manufacturers have so much quality control issues, what's not to say that the few "good copies" I got will sooner than later fail? Also, are manufacturers counting on people constantly wanting to upgrade, so they put less effort into their manufacturing quality control processes?

I know this topic of "build for disposabilty" is not unique to Sony. I own Canon, Olympus, and Panasonic gear (also Nikon gear in the past), and they too have some QC issues. But since this is a Sony forum, I'm asking only about Sony equipment here.
 

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Is your middle name "lucky"?

Being serious, I haven't had call to send anything back.

I've dropped my 600 f4 from a hide shelf and it thankfully survived and I'm not nice to my cameras, I've been out in the rain with one today.

What is decentering?
 
Is your middle name "lucky"?

Being serious, I haven't had call to send anything back.

I've dropped my 600 f4 from a hide shelf and it thankfully survived and I'm not nice to my cameras, I've been out in the rain with one today.

What is decentering?
Decentering is when one or more internal optical elements shift or tilt off the main optical axis, bending light unevenly and causing asymmetrical sharpness or blur across the frame. This usually happens when tolerances in manufacturer's machining stack up poorly during assembly.

Best way to test for this when you recieve a new lens is to photograph a flat, brick wall. If you see one corner of the image blurry (even when stopped down), or half of the image is blurry, you might have a decentered image.
 
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