Dear Sony: that’s nice that you could make f1.0 lenses, so please do that and a lot more.
I completely understand Sony’s take on the fact that f1.0 lenses won’t sell as well as an f1.2 lens for the Sony FE mount, but I think that this could help push not only Sony but other dedicated camera manufacturers to do something much bigger and better for the industry. I look at what Apple and Google are doing with phones and see that they’re going squarely after Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, etc. But I don’t see the Japanese companies responding in any way and it perplexes me.
Sony could have been a significantly more innovative company if they simply hadn’t killed one of the biggest and best things about their camera system: the PlayMemories apps. Features like touchless shutter should be built in and charged for accordingly. So too should things like time lapse shooting modes. But beyond that, I’m sure that Sony could do even more. They could probably find a way to use AI or other things to make their lens bokeh even creamier. I mean, imagine a medium format looking images with The Sony 24mm f1.4 G Master lens. I know that it’s possible organically as the Canon 50mm f1.2 RF L USM has an output that looks like an 80mm f2 medium format lens. So if Canon, a company that hasn’t really innovated in the past 8 years, can create a lens and camera system that can look like and rival that of a medium format camera, then why can’t Sony? Sony is arguably the single most innovative camera maker on the market and yet they’re holding themselves back.
These innovations don’t necessarily need to be on the hardware side, they could also be on the software side. This too would mean that Sony would need a much more suped up processor–and as it is we typically don’t know a whole lot about camera processors. For all we know, the processor in our phones could be significantly better than that inside a camera.
Then there are loads of other big things that could be done:
- Wireless tethering via the internal modem to a computer and Capture One or Sony’s own software could receive the images.
- Computational photography that creates better RAWs and JPEGs overall
- Apple’s lighting options in portrait mode
- Heck, Snapchat and Instagram filters
- Better wireless tethering to your own phone where the phone receives the images as you shoot
- Why not try to do more with Bluetooth?
- Connecting to Sony’s own wireless headphones via Bluetooth for video recording
- Teaming up with a printing company to give photographers better integration to go right to the printer–which could really help out at parties and weddings
This is just a start; but if we’re going to talk about f1.0 lenses, then we should also be talking about how much more not only Sony, but many other companies in the photo world should be innovating.
