The A77 thread (cont'd)

roweraay wrote: Steve-S wrote: It's possible that some critical component(s) may NEVER become available, that Sony will have to re-engineer with an alternative part and that the camera-spec may change as a result. Yup, the "critical components", along with their engineering specifications and diagrams, washed away during the Tsunami flood.

<heh>
My point was that a rebuilt factory may be re-tooled to a "newer" specification, re-purposed to some other use, or even written off as a loss. Not every part is always available, and if Sony had specified anything "unusual" it may turn out to be unavailable at a reasonable cost and/or in a reasonable timeframe -- not even with engineering spec's!

Recall that the SLT's are, themselves "unique" products; you can't get them from ANYONE but Sony. Similarly, there may be some component(s) which cannot simply be bought from another supplier...


- Steve S.

Compared to the tsunami, which was a disaster and killed thousands of people and did enormous material damage, waiting a few extra months for a new camera model seems a minor inconvenience. Get a perspective on what's important in life!

Serdar A wrote: I am certain most of us did what we could financially aside from getting on an airplane and helping the relief effort personally (and there is at least one member who even did that). But at some point, you have to move on...That is life.

agreed

cata352004 wrote: tsunami was in 2011 and they torment us for over two years ... goodnight Sony !!! not surprising that more and more people buy Nikon / Canon ... are not necessarily better than Sony Alpha but have more options (nikon d7000,d300s;canon 60d,7d...etc) Sony sleeps ...

It is a well known fact that that a700 (and to a lesser extent the a850/a900s) have not had stellar sales.

Word was that Sony even lost money on the a700

You do have to understand that "they" run a business and the "who" control the business are looking for a Return On Investment. Maybe they understood they would loose money on the a700 to set the market.. We will probably never know.

I doubt the Engineers and marketers could have made a case to their management to follow up a (money) loosing camera to a saturated market place (We are talking K5/7D/D300 market space here)

Now with the apparent runaway success of the a33 and a55 the eng and marketeers at Sony did have a chance to sell their bosses on a upper mid market / prosumer /advanced amateur.. what ever you call it.. Model that is not an "Also ran" in this space. Truly unique. I think they will do well and unless there is some geologic oversight, will buy one myself.

Tsunami is responsible for a couple months..

The 2 yrs you speak of is because there are not enough of us dedicated to SONY in this market segment to give SONY the money back on what they spend.

The July 2006 Tsunami affected Indian Ocean people and no impact in Japan directly. The November 2006 Tsunami was NE of Japan, with very minor impact on very-Northernmost parts.

What is the point of the 2006 Tsunami relative to Japan manufacturing.

We certainly all empathize with the massive misery of Indian Ocean areas and their losses.

jcbenten wrote: Sony is thinking of their customers. Sony's customers are the SLT and NEX users and not Pro-sumer users.

That would appear to be the case, or at least a logical conclusion based on what appears to be Sony's direction. I think many "old school" photographers, myself included, where hoping for Sony to pick up the fight left by Minolta. For a while they did with the a100, a700, a850 and a900. But it appears that they feel more comfortable in producing the consumer electronics products they are more comfortable with as opposed to fighting it out in the high end camera market with Canon and Nikon. The rumored $1000 street price of the a77 came as quite a surprise to me.

dca1213 wrote: That would appear to be the case, or at least a logical conclusion based on what appears to be Sony's direction. I think many "old school" photographers, myself included, where hoping for Sony to pick up the fight left by Minolta. For a while they did with the a100, a700, a850 and a900. But it appears that they feel more comfortable in producing the consumer electronics products they are more comfortable with as opposed to fighting it out in the high end camera market with Canon and Nikon. The rumored $1000 street price of the a77 came as quite a surprise to me.

Sony has decided not to fight Canikon head-on or even capture current high-end camera users but to grab all the P&S users who want a bit more. IMO whomever offers a FF (20-24 mp) for $1000 will win that battle. Then a 50mm lens will mean 50mm and not 75 or 80 or 100mm (I know, I know a 50mm is 50mm whether FF or Cropped but the 35mm film users, like me, no longer have to do a calc.)