Sony Drops the A-bomb
Sony finally released details of their first foray into the dslr market after acquiring Konica-Minolta’s business. The ‘Alpha’ A100 keeps the in-body anti-shake of the late Minolta lineup, and adds anti-dust measures as well. The most exciting thing to me is seeing their relationship with Carl Zeiss continued in the lens lineup – although whether we’ll be seeing new designs or just older ones in a new mount remains to be seen.
Still, with a list price scraping $1000 for the Alpha, I’d probably look to Pentax first, with its K100D now outfitted with in-body anti-shake, as well as a nice lineup of pancake primes (21, 40, 70).
That’s if it’s even worth the bother. The problem I have with the current dslr market is that the need for backward compatibility with existing lenses has eliminated a good opportunity to truly break new ground with camera design. I think Olympus is the only company that isn’t hamstrung in some way by the need to support older lenses. Yet even though they’ve demonstrated an ability to think different (live-view slr) they haven’t really capitalized on the opportunity to create smaller, lighter cameras. Their lenses are as big and bulky as their competitors, when we should be going in the other direction. I’m hoping that the Leica-Panasonic partnership in the 4/3rds camp brings something more to the table (some nice, compact zooms or primes would be nice for a change).