Robert Collins

I dislike iTunes and havent used it in years - even though I have some Apple products. What exactly do you use iTunes for?

The Sony A73s can record proxies along with 4K in camera - however you lose facial recognition focusing...

I would caution about getting out of adobe for stills. I have bought ON1, DXO and Photo Ninja in the past, ON1 raw is simply a buggy mess (and incredibly slow). DXO is ok in parts but quite limited in others (selected adjustments) and I am not sure that Photo Ninja still exists. Now Capture One is very good but will work out expensive (especially as you sort of have to upgrade raw developers with your cameras.) I always find myself going back to Lightroom. And Lightroom is pretty good these days (especially since the introduction of luminosity and color range masks.) Photoshop is unbeatable, spend an hour in Affinity and you will quickly come across limitations. Plus they are both stable (neither have crashed on me for a couple of years) and the photography plan at US$10 is quite a bargain measured against the competition. I see the general angst about Premiere - it is unstable and buggy and slow and certainly not cheap. So looking/going elsewhere for video makes a lot of sense but for stills far less so. Of course if you are getting out of Adobes clutches as a matter of principle that is a different matter.....

I am not optimistic. It seems to me that the whole social media - youtube/facebook etc - thing is 'one circular mind f**k'. It seems that peoples actions are no longer driven by themselves but their perception of other peoples perception of them - the echo chamber of life. IT seems an extremely efficient way of wasting time.

Apparently over half of youngsters want to be youtubers/vloggers... https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3617062/children-turn-backs-on-traditional-careers-in-favour-of-internet-fame-study-finds/ So presumably half the world will be youtubers and the other half will spend their time watching youtube...

It was actually Sony who bailed out Olympus after the Yakuza blew a hole in their balance sheet (go figure). But realistically, these companies stay in the camera business because it is relatively sexy - or far more sexy at least than endoscopes (Olympus), photocopiers (Ricoh), image sensors (Sony) and microwaves (Panasonic) or however they make their money.... One would have thought that the market is ripe for a new company (DJI?) to come in and disrupt the market (like say Godox in lighting) but maybe the market is too small or consumers too entrenched in their systems to change.

Camera companies have an enormous capacity for pain. Olympus's camera division last made a profit in 2009. BTW, Leica was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2004. I rather suspect that Sony sees its losses in cameras as a marketing expense for its sensors....

Oh... there is no doubting it is a cash grab. Nice work if you can get it.

The angst about Sony menus from camera 'reviewers' merely reflects the profile of 'reviewers'. Rather than using one camera system like most people, they typically 'test' an array of cameras from many systems. Sony menus are detailed and deep. My A7riii has 23 pages of options for setting up custom buttons. That might seem overkill but it does at least enable me to setting the custom buttons to do exactly what I want. Reviewers dont much like this because it takes longer to set up a Sony camera than others and they have the next camera review on the horizon. Some cant be bothered to make the effort and then complain they are always having to delve into the menus because they simply havent set up the camera properly for their needs in the first place. So it is fair to say that Sony menus arent great if you have to change cameras and systems constantly. Personally I like them because I can set up the camera exactly how I want. But then again I used to like the Olympus menus (when I used Olympus) and everyone said their menus were rubbish too.

The issue really isnt 'subscription software' per se. I am sure this payment model suits many people - well me at least!! Banning subscriptions software makes little sense. The real issue - which is anti-competitive by nature is that Adobe has 'taken away' the 'one payment stand alone' option. The 'subscription only' model means that Adobe has 'virtually no incentive' to innovate or improve its product - at least while its software maintains its near monopoly/industry standard status. People have to pay to use it whether it improves or not. If they had 'competing' payment offerings consumers would at least have a choice (of sorts). If Adobe's offerings were not consistently improving most people would vote with their wallet, buy the stand alone product and then not upgrade. It would make sense to only 'allow' software companies to offer subscription services if they also offered a 'stand alone' alternative.

Yes, sorry. A7r4 photo....

Look first off camera specs dont have that much influence on market share. Canon has been consistently the market leader overall in ILCs for the last 20 years and their camera specs are years behind their competitors. Sony is doing fine in FF mirrorless. Look at this data from BCN for April this year... The a73 is massively outselling say the Z6 in April this year despite being launched at least a year earlier. Sony is at 50% market share of FF mirrorless despite not introducing a new model for 18 months. I dont dispute Sony A7 series is now behind Nikon and Panasonic for 'video' (not convinced they are playing catch up to Canon) but I dont think that video specs have much influence on overall ILC sales. If they did, sure Panasonic would do better....

The vast majority of people I know who like high megapixel FF cameras - like them not because you can 'print big' but for the ability to 'crop'. So an apsc sized crop on the A7r4 (1.5x) gives you 26mp (as much as any existing apsc camera) and 15mp if you crop to M43 (2.0x) which is pretty good. That for instance means I can shoot my 100-400 lens at 800mm and still have 15mp. As far as matching the S1. Panasonic has effectively been the market leader in mirrorless video specs for the past 10 years and it has seen its market share of the mirrorless market fall from well over 50% to under 10% during that period. And that is why Sony doesnt have to compete in that market.

Face it - nobody has a clue what Sony is going to do. I dont think you get much of a clue from reading the tea leaves of the A7r4. This is a top of the line stills camera with pretty much insane specs. Video is an after thought - it hardly even makes sense shooting 4k from a 61mp sensor. It certainly doesnt make any sense for Sony to bring out an A7s3 that doesnt shoot 10 bit. And I think we all pretty much know that for Sony to be competitive 'long term' in the video centric market it needs a bigger body to help with the heat issues. I imagine the smart business decision for Sony is to can the A7s line and leave the video side to the likes of Panasonic - it is a very small market... But I think Sony likes its 'halo'/'vanity' projects (A9!!). So I wouldnt be at all surprised to see an 'A7s3' in a redesigned body - it makes more sense to me than trying to shoehorn a video centric camera into a 'stills' body.