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The Minolta Sony A Mount Is Dead: Sony a99 II Just Discontinued

Chris Gampat
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04/01/2019
2 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sony a99 II review product images 35mm, f2.8, ISO 100, 1-40s,35,SONYILCE-7, Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 35 mm F2.8 ZA (SEL35F28Z)

Last Updated on 04/01/2019 by Mark Beckenbach

With the discontinuation of the Sony a99 II, Sony loses most of its ties to its ancestor: Minolta.

A major testament to the death of the DSLR was revealed today with Sony’s latest notice on the discontinuation of the Sony a99 II–the company’s last camera to be made with the Minolta A mount. Sony acquired the mount and lots of key Minolta technology after a purchase made over 10 years ago. And for years, journalists have been asking how much support will be given to the A mount. In fact, lots of us thought that it was dead and over with on the announcement of the Sony a9. The Sony a99 II isn’t really a DSLR as much as folks call it a DSLT, but the bigger news here is that Sony has no truly viable A mount cameras in their lineup currently.

The decision came upon realizing that the DSLR market is shrinking in addition to the entire interchangeable lens camera market being on the demise. Within this shrinking market, full frame is growing and after way too many years, the hot word is mirrorless. As a result, Sony claims they’re working to focus their resources even more on their mirrorless technology and the future of photography. Indeed, they’ve been talking a lot about this since Photokina 2018. With their emphasis being so much on “the future” we should have seen the writing on the wall. Pretty much every relevant product that Sony has put out in the past few years have been mirrorless cameras.

So what does this mean for the photo industry? Well, honestly I’m not sure. Canon and Nikon are bound to follow suit eventually and Samsung, Apple, Google, and Huawei are convincing tons of people they don’t need actual cameras anymore. Even at the professional level, photographers are becoming very impressed at what smartphones can do with computational photography. If I had to really guess, The Sony FE lineup of cameras is going to need to take even bigger steps forward. Maybe they’ll even create a system where apps can be downloaded and applied to their cameras.

Oh wait…

Editor’s Note: This is an April Fool’s joke

a-mount April Fool's camera minolta sony sony a99 sony a99 II Sony Mirrorless
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.