The Ruminator

I haven't been posting much recently. This isn't because of the festivities, it's because I don't have much to post at present. Not that I haven't been making images, but I've been unable to get excited enough about any of them to post. Its rare that I can go through a whole memory-card's worth of images and find nothing that's usable, but that's happened to me a couple of times recently. Whatever the reason for this, I'm reduced to posting some of my ruminations about the future of A-mount. Enjoy.

Earlier this year I took the plunge and bought an RX100. But where does that leave me vis-à-vis my DSLT camera?

My A77 is three and a half years old, but the updated A77II – which is itself over a year old – doesn't offer substantial upgrades, and to be honest I’m not feeling any real pressure to change. The mega-pixel wars are over, for the time being at least, with APS-C sensors stabilised at around 24 mega-pixels at the top end and my current camera does everything I need it to do.

However, there is still the lurking problem of the future of A-mount.

To recap: Sony bought Konica-Minolta to get into the digital camera market (this was in January 2006, so the tenth anniversary is coming up soon). This purchase brought with it an existing lens mount with third party support and a substantial stock of legacy glass, which was re-designated Alpha or A-Mount. At the time it looked like a good move.

Having done this Sony then turned its attention to the then-nascent mirrorless market with its NEX branded cameras, which used a different lens mount – E-mount.

There are sound technical reasons for this. SLR lens mounts – including Canon and Nikon – have too great a flange length to allow the small form factors that are a selling point of mirrorless cameras.

Anyway, Sony cleaned up – and continues to do so - in the mirrorless market, whilst its DSLR and DSLT offerings failed to attract professional support and languish way behind Canikon in terms of market share. With hindsight, the wisdom of the Konica-Minolta acquisition now looks much more debatable.

In response, Sony re-badged all its of interchangeable lens cameras under the Alpha brand, dropping the NEX name and mixing A and E-mount in what might look to the unwary like a single range. Last year, when they launched the A7 series of full frame cameras as their new top of the range offering, they had an E-mount*. By contrast, the top of the A-mount range – the A99 – has been quietly withdrawn, with no mention of its long promised replacement. We’re due an update to the A77 in early 2016 – it will be interesting to see if that happens on time, or at all.

In the meantime, SAR has reported that the sale of A-mount cameras has been discontinued in certain territories.

The smell of death, which has been lingering around A-mount for a few years now, continues to get stronger.

But if I have a camera that I'm happy with, what’s the problem?

Well, all of this uncertainty still has a disabling effect. Without it, I might have bought a new A-mount lens rather than the RX100. But I don’t want to spend more money on A-mount lenses when I may eventually have to go E-mount – or abandon Sony altogether.

Sony is innovating in the imaging sector in a way that none of the other incumbents seem prepared to do. The A7 series makes a full frame camera available at a much lower price point – and in a much smaller form factor - than in their competitors’ ranges. Whilst this is great in general, it does mean that their cameras often feel like a work in progress rather than the finished article. Sometimes – just sometimes – I find myself wondering if a Canikon would be a safe, sensible choice.

* Just to add more complexity to the Sony range, prior to the introduction of the A7 series, E-mount lenses had been designed for cropped sensors. So a new range of lenses for the A7 series, designated ‘FE’ (Full-frame E-mount), were introduced, and are generally bloody expensive. Non-FE E-mount lenses will cause image cropping on an A7 series body. Thank you for your attention.