Sony Announced Hybrid Digital Camera

Anna Merikin writes to tell us that Sony has begun shipping a new digital camera, the R1. With the R1 Sony has married the big digital SLRs' sensor with the live preview display of the compact cams. But to do so, it is not an SLR although it is about the same size as one. The new architecture also allows wider-angle optics to be used, but it does not have interchangeable lenses.

Comments

Why Sony?

[Lxy]

Ignore the rootkit and the other reasons we don't like Sony. Why would you buy a digital camera from Sony?

Canon knows optics. Canon makes awesome cameras. Try a Powershot or a Rebel, absolutely blows away everything on the market. Fuji makes a nice line of cameras also. Sony always seemed to be lacking in both their CCD and their glass quality.

Also, why would you buy an SLR without interchangeable lenses? If you're geeky enough to properly use an SLR, you probably won't be happy being stuck with one lense.

Re:Why Sony?

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

If I may add to this a bit, even Canon consumer cameras are the best. Easy to use, competitive pricing and excellent picture quality. I think it's pretty much undisputed at the moment that Canon make the best digital cameras bar none.[/canonadvert]

Anyway, People in general are lemmings, they buy what is advertised, what is "recommended" to them by salesmen. It's not true for all people granted, but it's a sad fact that a very large portion of people are like this. I find it sad that people are no longer customers or people, they're consumers.. they consume, they buy what they're told to buy and like the lemmings they are they jump off the cliffs.

And in order to inject some humour into this post they also occasionally blow up after ten seconds with an "Oh no!" just before they see oblivion.

Re:Why Sony?

[totoanihilation]

If I may add to this a bit, even Canon consumer cameras are the best. Easy to use, competitive pricing and excellent picture quality. I think it's pretty much undisputed at the moment that Canon make the best digital cameras bar none.[/canonadvert]

Disclaimer: I deal with digital cameras for a living.
I find that while canon does good cameras with great image quality, they are still highly overpriced, and excruciatingly SLOW (in the compacts). IMHO, 3 seconds for the camera to react to my pressing a button (the shutter button on the A520, A410) is absolutely shameful.

As for the Rebel, I find the post-processing the camera does to be terrible, specially in high-iso. Obviously, it works great to impress the guys at DPReview who take pictures of a uniform gray chart. But when it comes to picking out details, I find the Nikon dSLR's to give much more natural results, even though they give visible grain.

So, my point is, Canon makes decent cameras, but they're not the best at everything, not by a long shot. Other brands are out there to stimulate competition, as they all have their strong points. Sony have the fastest compact cameras, bar-none. Sure the image isn't as good as a Nikon or Canon, but it's certainly good enough, and it's much better being able to capture the picture _when_ you want it, than to have a great looking picture of something you didn't want because of shutter lag.

Well... Enough rambling. That was my 2 canadian cents worth ;)

Re:Why Sony?

[Kadin2048]

Speaking as someone who used to sell these things, I second your thoughts. I wouldn't get a Canon or Nikon low-end camera for myself or someone in my family. At the higher end -- where the customers are somewhat more discriminating -- they make great gear, don't get me wrong. But at the low end they rely a lot on their brand name and cut a lot of corners.

Fuji, Olympus, and Minolta are all better in terms of consumer grade cameras than Nikon or Canon's entry level, IMO. Although they all have their good and bad years, and Nikon had some great prosumer equipment in the past (the Coolpix 950 comes to mind, that thing was great), you need to pay some money with Canon or Nikon to get into their non-crippled gear. Fuji -- possibly perhaps because they have a brand name that's associated with cheap drug-store film to most people -- gives a lot of bang for the buck. (Although I think they made a mistake with those xD cards.)

Anyway, just my two cents. I worked at a big camera retailer and we used to push Nikon merch like it was our job -- because basically it was, Nikon had great sales incentives -- but when it came time to get a gift for a friend or family, or pick up an inexpensive digital for myself, I went with the "second tier" brands.

Re:Who cares?

[masklinn]

No one but a tool would want a R1 though. RTFA, the lens is fixed, there is no macro mode, no burst worth speaking of (3 pics is not what I call burst), no video, no fast-switch preset modes (akin to Canon's Best Shot modes), ...

The only things it has going for it is 10MPix photos that you get on SLR and live preview that you get on compacts... I guess I should say "yay", but to me innovation sounds much closer to Panasonic putting an optic stabilizer on his FX8 and FX9 compacts AND at an affordable price (instead of the numeric "nonstabilizer" everyone else has).

Why electronic viewfinders are better

[G4from128k]

I've been using a Minolta Dimage 7 and then an A2 since 2001 and vastly prefer electronic viewfinders (EVF) to traditional optical ones. Some of the benefits include:

1. Better understanding of the exposure: On an optical finder, the dynamic range of the eye automatically handles dark shadows and bright highlights that the camera cannot - its too easy to see a great picture that the camera can't get. An EVF gives me a better idea if I'm blowing out the sky or losing detail in the darkness. An EVF gives me instant visual feedback on what the picture will look like before I hit the shutter button.
2. Extensive programmable informational overlays: An EVF can overlay a huge amount of data about the image, the camera's mode, the user-interface state, image histogram, sighting lines, etc. Or I can turn it all off for an uncluttered view.
3. Instant post-shutter review: An EVF can display the actual picture taken immediately after the shot. I don't have to pull the camera away from my eye to check the results on an external screen (that's hard to see in day light anyway).
4. Magnification: With an EVF, one can zoom into a bit of detail in the live image to check the quality of the exposure or focus. It's like using a magnifier in a darkroom or a loupe on a print (the A2 offers 4X magnification). This is something that no optical finder can handle.
5. No viewfinder alignment/cutoff issues: Unlike an optical veiwfinder, an EVF shows exactly 100% of the image perfectly aligned and centered. Its more WYSIWYG than an optical finder.
6. Amplification in darkness: In low lighting conditions the EVF can boost the gain to provide a useful image. It's not night vision by any means, but it does help.

I'll admit that an EVF isn't perfect (even the A2's EVF needs more pixels), but I'll never go back to an optical viewfinder again. I look forward to better sensors and better EVFs

Re:No thanks.

[modecx]

Nobody uses CF because of the 4GB disk drives... For one, they suck up a bunch more power--and that makes a big difference for compact cameras, particularly when you're using the LCD. Secondly, they don't have the burst write speed of some of the newer CF cards. Thirdly, there are some questions about their reliability--it's not such a big deal if you lose an iPod mini full of music, because you've already got it on your computer, right? If you, as a semi-serious hobbyist photographer, lose a gigabyte of photos, you're probably going to be upset.

And that's another reason why microdrives, and very large compact flash cards don't appeal to many photographers... If something happens to the card, you're sunk. It's about as easy to carry around a few 1-2GB cards, and it's quick and simple to swap them out. Even with pro-consumer cameras in RAW mode, more than a hundred shots will fit on a 2GB card. you can pick up on 2GB cards, save money relative to larger cards and microdrives, and switch cards every hundred or so shots--which is all too easy to do with an SLR!

Obviously, professional photographers using professional cameras (8+MP), shooting in RAW mode will consume huge amounts of storage (~15MB each for 8 megapixel, 30MB for each photo on a 16MP Canon 1Ds MkII!)... This is why 4GB won't represent a huge number of photos to professional photographers using such expensive equipment. And, if you've got over ten thousand in camera equipment in your bag, the $500 each your 4GB CF cards cost probably isn't going to scare you too badly.

Honestly, though, I'm very suprised Sorny went with CF, ever. I would have guessed they'd recall every memory stick unit ever to modify it to take super mega ultra pro memory sticks before they went with CF. It's gotta be gettin pretty cold in Lucifers' place tonight!