Ok so here is your chance to have a say, get it out what is Sony doing right or wrong, kit, firmware, service what ever you want

[spudhead]

Ok so frustration growing with me now, still hanging on to the old bodies waiting for a better body to come along that does not cost the earth ie a9iii hopefully but who knows will it be what I hope for. Let me say now Sony are great at pushing a new body for a while then just stop with the small firmware updates that would enhance its use. ok whine number one from me so have a whine and I am sure I will jump if the thread moves on and add more. Thanks guys what ever your whine lens, service post up please, oh and you can post the good stuff as well

 

[Gaz]

I’m an apple user.

Why can’t my A7iv connect via a hotspot directly to my iCloud account and upload my images in RAW or Heif so I’m not relying on an archaic card system?

BTW, the Sony software is shite. We all use Lightroom or something. Sony apps will never replace them so why do they bother with these DOS style dinosaurs?

 

[Unframed Dave]

A7c viewfinder needs an eyecup. Too much stray light enters and makes seeing the image very difficult. Yes, you can get a third party one, but it ties up the hot shoe.

 

[BrianN]

When will they do a firmware to add a bulb timer on the A7IV

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

I think Sony is perfect!

 

[Brownie]

Firmware for feature updates are atrocious, but my biggest complaint is Sony's tendency to cripple lower priced cameras of features that are readily available. Why not stacking in the A6700? There's a thread ongoing right now about fake shutter sound for electronic shutter. Really Sony? Does it really make your A1 that much more valuable to keep it off the 7 series?

I could go on and on. Frame rates are stupid slow on everything but the A1 and A9, no other company does that.

I've said this before: If not for Sony's lens ecosystem, it'd be very easy to jump ship.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I'd like to whine about all the whining, but I'm having dinner, and I don't like to whine and dine (sorry, that pun was crying out to be made).

I've seen (on another site - the people here are smarter) someone claiming that the "AI" chip is a hoax, and that the new AF could be added to any Sony camera. Apparently the information came "from an inside source" (perhaps inside a bottle?).

---

Has anyone noticed that the neck strap supplied with Sony cameras is getting cheaper? I didn't bother putting the one that came with the A7RV onto my camera, but I noticed the edges felt kind of "sharp". I don't think it would be all that comfortable to use for long.

---

As an anti-whine - I bought a pair of Sony headphones recently, and they really are trying to improve their packaging. No styrofoam, and no plethora of plastic bags. The A7RV was similar - cleverly folded cardboard packaging and reduced waste. I like that.

 

[Brownie]

LOL. Talk about timing. Sony is the first one after the intro:

 

[AlphaWorld]

LOL. Talk about timing. Sony is the first one after the intro:

He didn't get the order of the names right on that screen grab! No attention to detail!

 

[Doug Herr]

No gripes about the a1 but I'd like to see more 300mm and longer prime lenses, especially lightweight options.

 

[dragonsdreams]

I go to a camera club and of course there are members that have cameras from other brands.
I am envious when they can use pro-capture ( á la Olympus) and in camera focus stacking for taking macros. In camera multiexposure would also be fun.
Should be possible to give those 'upgrades' A1 easily(?)

 

[Brownie]

I go to a camera club and of course there are members that have cameras from other brands.
I am envious when they can use pro-capture ( á la Olympus) and in camera focus stacking for taking macros. In camera multiexposure would also be fun.
Should be possible to give those 'upgrades' A1 easily(?)

It is possible to give those upgrades to every camera in their lineup (or at least those with the newer processor) via firmware, but then they wouldn't be able to charge you $7,000 for the A1ii.

 

[MeowZzz]

Weren't they proposing firmware upgrades as pay to play? I mean, as much as we expect everything to be free forever, it makes sense for them - and if it incentivizes them to make new features available for my aging camera, then maybe it is worth weighing up the cost of a firmware upgrade vs. the next new shiny model I may not need.
Bird eye recog. in the A9 would be great, thanks.

 

[spudhead]

I'd like to whine about all the whining, but I'm having dinner, and I don't like to whine and dine (sorry, that pun was crying out to be made).

I've seen (on another site - the people here are smarter) someone claiming that the "AI" chip is a hoax, and that the new AF could be added to any Sony camera. Apparently the information came "from an inside source" (perhaps inside a bottle?).

---

Has anyone noticed that the neck strap supplied with Sony cameras is getting cheaper? I didn't bother putting the one that came with the A7RV onto my camera, but I noticed the edges felt kind of "sharp". I don't think it would be all that comfortable to use for long.

---

As an anti-whine - I bought a pair of Sony headphones recently, and they really are trying to improve their packaging. No styrofoam, and no plethora of plastic bags. The A7RV was similar - cleverly folded cardboard packaging and reduced waste. I like that.

To be honest the Sony straps have always been cheap and tacky but who wants to advertise Sony when they use their camera, I never use them or have ever unpacked all but one, well each to their own it could be worse I have seen people wear be alpha hats

 

[spudhead]

I think Sony is perfect!

Sorry Clint I should have said all replies welcome apart from Clint since he is in his happy Sony place , some of us already knew this

 

[spudhead]

No gripes about the a1 but I'd like to see more 300mm and longer prime lenses, especially lightweight options.

I would like some more primes with reach in mind but affordable for more people

 

[spudhead]

Firmware for feature updates are atrocious, but my biggest complaint is Sony's tendency to cripple lower priced cameras of features that are readily available. Why not stacking in the A6700? There's a thread ongoing right now about fake shutter sound for electronic shutter. Really Sony? Does it really make your A1 that much more valuable to keep it off the 7 series?

I could go on and on. Frame rates are stupid slow on everything but the A1 and A9, no other company does that.

I've said this before: If not for Sony's lens ecosystem, it'd be very easy to jump ship.

Yes Tim lots of good points mate, most of Sony recent camera releases seem to have been more upgraded previous versions unless it is the so called flagship body, in fact Sony seem to be dragging their feet now with new bodies

 

[iamdlewis]

I really dislike that so many Sony cameras are fully electronically customizable but the A1/9 have shooting mode and frame rate only controllable through dials. This means that you can't set either of those in the custom memory settings so for a camera that can do everything great is slower to change settings than lesser cameras.

 

[Deleted Member 5045]

I really like Sony...

 

[spudhead]

I go to a camera club and of course there are members that have cameras from other brands.
I am envious when they can use pro-capture ( á la Olympus) and in camera focus stacking for taking macros. In camera multiexposure would also be fun.
Should be possible to give those 'upgrades' A1 easily(?)

I do not know about the upgrades but I am lucky to have the use of an oly setup but to be honest not really played with the stacking bit much

 

[spudhead]

I really dislike that so many Sony cameras are fully electronically customizable but the A1/9 have shooting mode and frame rate only controllable through dials. This means that you can't set either of those in the custom memory settings so for a camera that can do everything great is slower to change settings than lesser cameras.

David the frame rate on a dial is one of the things on the a9 I like to be honest, I rarely change it from low or medium anyway

 

[iamdlewis]

David the frame rate on a dial is one of the things on the a9 I like to be honest, I rarely change it from low or medium anyway

So for you it really wouldn't matter if it was controlled via dial or menu. For me I would love to be able to have my bird in tree memory with a low frame rate and my BiF memory with high+ without having to change multiple dials. I tend to forget about the shooting mode dial so when I spot something just outside and want to grab a quick shot I change to the correct memory setting but forgot I was shooting some sunset with the shooting mode on the timer.

They could keep the dials and add an additional choice that lets you select the options via menu.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I go to a camera club and of course there are members that have cameras from other brands.
I am envious when they can use pro-capture ( á la Olympus) and in camera focus stacking for taking macros. In camera multiexposure would also be fun.
Should be possible to give those 'upgrades' A1 easily(?)

in-camera focus stacking - I'm not going to bother researching it, but I would be surprised if any camera offering this feature allows the stacking of more than a handful of frames, because there simply isn't the memory in the camera to allow it (and cameras don't have disk space!). From what I've read in forum posts written by serious focus stackers, they talk about stacking 100+ frames to get a really beautiful result. So if you are a manufacturer wanting to support focus stacking, do you implement a solution to the serious focus stacker problem (which is what Sony has done, in implementing a focus bracketing solution supporting up to 299 frames in a bracket, which have to be stacked in post-processing), or do you cater to the toy solution (supporting in-camera stacking of maybe four frames, outputting as JPEG - the output can't be a RAW file). I very much doubt that the clamour for in-camera stacking is coming from the serious stackers.

Pre-capture (I dislike calling it "pro-capture", because that gives a value judgment to the feature) would be nice, but it's not a trivial thing to implement. You need to allocate a sizeable chunk of memory to the circular buffer that's capturing the images prior to the button press, and that buffer space is going to need to cater to the uncompressed image size (you don't want to be storing variable size images in a circular buffer, especially given that you'll be executing intense focussing code while doing this). So for 1 second of pre-capture on an A7RV your circular buffer must be about 1.2GB (assuming 10 images of about 120MB each). On an A1 it would be about 2GB when shooting 20 fps of 100MB or 3GB when shooting 30 fps of 100MB. I don't know how much RAM there is inside one of these cameras, but I think that's going to be a lot of what is available (I wouldn't be too surprised if an A1 has something like 2GB of RAM in it). I wouldn't be surprised if camera offering pre-capture shows up with an enormous image buffer when not using pre-capture, and substantially less when using it.

I don't think implementing either of these as a firmware update to an existing camera is a trivial exercise.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Weren't they proposing firmware upgrades as pay to play? I mean, as much as we expect everything to be free forever, it makes sense for them - and if it incentivizes them to make new features available for my aging camera, then maybe it is worth weighing up the cost of a firmware upgrade vs. the next new shiny model I may not need.
Bird eye recog. in the A9 would be great, thanks.

The ZV-E1 has a "free license upgrade" for some feature (is it 4k/120?), hinting at the possibility of there being non-free upgrades in the future.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I really dislike that so many Sony cameras are fully electronically customizable but the A1/9 have shooting mode and frame rate only controllable through dials. This means that you can't set either of those in the custom memory settings so for a camera that can do everything great is slower to change settings than lesser cameras.

What solution would you like?

• take the dials away?
• allow the custom modes to disable the dials and set a fixed value?
• have the custom modes set a value, but allow the dials to override it if they are moved?

I think any of those solutions would upset a bunch of people.

 

[spudhead]

What solution would you like?

• take the dials away?
• allow the custom modes to disable the dials and set a fixed value?
• have the custom modes set a value, but allow the dials to override it if they are moved?

I think any of those solutions would upset a bunch of people.

Hi Tony just wondering if you are in fact part of Sony official marketing team or just believe Sony can not do any wrong and that is a serious question

 

[iamdlewis]

take the dials away?

Why not they are not on any of the A7 or A6xxx series bodies, we have a ton of custom buttons and the FN menu to attach them too.

allow the custom modes to disable the dials and set a fixed value?

Why not?

have the custom modes set a value, but allow the dials to override it if they are moved?

Why not?

Or as I said already: They could keep the dials and add an additional choice that lets you select the options via menu.

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

Note: I have not read any other replies, so this is a direct answer to the question.

What are they doing right? Pushing the technology forward, or at least they were and building cameras that at least feel like they will last. Lenses. They are still superb and the 200 600 was a pretty ground breaking lens. That's about it these days though.

Wrong? Everything else I think.

Pricing and camera range: Far too high to get interest from new buyers or people looking to switch, because they aren't catering for the enthusiast in the slightest. Forget the 6700, it's too small and fiddly and really doesn't have a decent spec compared with the likes of Canon and even Nikon to a small extent now. The lowest priced full frame is the A7C, which is not a good camera (forget the 7 III it's old). The cheapest good one is £2400 with the 7IV. Canon have bang up to date full frame cameras with 30fps shooting and superb AF tracking for under 1k now and mid range under 2k, that will run rings around any of the Sonys unless you buy the A7RV, A9 or A1, far more expensive cameras. Even then the competition have other features that Sony haven't implemented, like in camera stacking for example, and the option to have a sound on E shutter. Currently only the RV has stacking, and only the A1 allows an optional shutter noise on E. I'm considering an A1, but honestly, I could buy a top end Canon and an RF lens for less money. Sony think they are Leica...

The stupid eye recognition sensor on the eyepiece. Certainly on my A7RIV it has cost me shots on more than one occasion, by giving me a black viewfinder because it hasn't recognised the eye or whatever. It's also badly affected by strong sunlight. Maybe it's better on other models, but it is the source of my greatest frustration with the RIV.

I'd like to see the ability to switch off OSS on the lens via a customised button on the camera too, rather than having to manually flick it off. I know some don't bother but I do, and you should

Lack of software updates for older models. I think some of the features on older cameras could easily be updated in a software , but Sony seem to do one or two, and then forget the camera, hoping people will get fed up and go for the next new model instead.

Lack of a good mid range fixed lens, like a 300 f4, and also a longer Macro, like a 150 or 180 would be fantastic. and of great interest.

Do I hate Sony? No, I love my camera, even though it's getting old in camera terms now, it's still fantastic, and I will be keeping it, but for me to buy a newer body that will have better capabilities, is going to be costly.

 

[spudhead]

Note: I have not read any other replies, so this is a direct answer to the question.

What are they doing right? Pushing the technology forward, or at least they were and building cameras that at least feel like they will last. Lenses. They are still superb and the 200 600 was a pretty ground breaking lens. That's about it these days though.

Wrong? Everything else I think.

Pricing and camera range: Far too high to get interest from new buyers or people looking to switch, because they aren't catering for the enthusiast in the slightest. Forget the 6700, it's too small and fiddly and really doesn't have a decent spec compared with the likes of Canon and even Nikon to a small extent now. The lowest priced full frame is the A7C, which is not a good camera (forget the 7 III it's old). The cheapest good one is £2400 with the 7IV. Canon have bang up to date full frame cameras with 30fps shooting and superb AF tracking for under 1k now and mid range under 2k, that will run rings around any of the Sonys unless you buy the A7RV, A9 or A1, far more expensive cameras. Even then the competition have other features that Sony haven't implemented, like in camera stacking for example, and the option to have a sound on E shutter. Currently only the RV has stacking, and only the A1 allows an optional shutter noise on E. I'm considering an A1, but honestly, I could buy a top end Canon and an RF lens for less money. Sony think they are Leica...

The stupid eye recognition sensor on the eyepiece. Certainly on my A7RIV it has cost me shots on more than one occasion, by giving me a black viewfinder because it hasn't recognised the eye or whatever. It's also badly affected by strong sunlight. Maybe it's better on other models, but it is the source of my greatest frustration with the RIV.

I'd like to see the ability to switch off OSS on the lens via a customised button on the camera too, rather than having to manually flick it off. I know some don't bother but I do, and you should

Lack of software updates for older models. I think some of the features on older cameras could easily be updated in a software , but Sony seem to do one or two, and then forget the camera, hoping people will get fed up and go for the next new model instead.

Lack of a good mid range fixed lens, like a 300 f4, and also a longer Macro, like a 150 or 180 would be fantastic. and of great interest.

Do I hate Sony? No, I love my camera, even though it's getting old in camera terms now, it's still fantastic, and I will be keeping it, but for me to buy a newer body that will have better capabilities, is going to be costly.

Great reply Kev and it shows Sony need to up their game because it looks like you have been watching the other makes and specs, I have been so taken with the a9 for a long time that I have just been waiting on Sony to bring out a full on new version of it at a sensible price, so I guess Sony have created Sony blindness in the case of many of us myself included.

 

[Brownie]

I really dislike that so many Sony cameras are fully electronically customizable but the A1/9 have shooting mode and frame rate only controllable through dials. This means that you can't set either of those in the custom memory settings so for a camera that can do everything great is slower to change settings than lesser cameras.

Interesting, I did not know that. It pretty much removes both from consideration. I want the ability to put my cameras on a custom mode and not worry about major settings. Stupid idea, Sony.