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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.
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).
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
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.
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
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.
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