From the start of the mirrorless camera era Sony was quick to come out with both many cameras and many lenses each year. This allowed Sony to quickly make improvements in a way that I never saw Canon or Nikon do during the DSLR era. Sony also allowed/encouraged third parties to make lenses for E mount which has given Sony users a great assortment of cameras and lenses now to work with.
New Sony A7RV with the 200-600.
Since the Sony A7IV and the last announcement that I can remember of a 16-35 PZ lens that still seems to be unavailable anywhere, Sony seems to have been very quiet. Now on the sensor front, there seems to be some interesting stacked sensors for APS-C and some high resolution sensors that are showing up but no Sony cameras are coming with any of this updated hardware. They were also the leader in autofocus technology but now Canon has caught up (and surpassed them in some ways) and Nikon is getting close as well. Fuji still has some work to do :)
Here are some of the things I would like to see from Sony in the next couple of years and things that I think might be just around the corner.
Sony needs to come out with a new APS-C higher end camera. Something to compete with the latest stacked sensor Fuji and something to compete against the new 40MP Fuji and the latest APS-C mirrorless from Canon. There is little doubt in my mind that a A6XXX or something similar with a stacked sensor and Sony’s autofocus would be a fantastic seller (and one that I might actually pick up assuming full frame stacked sensor cameras are going to continue to be out of reach of most pocket books).
Sony has some great super telephoto primes and an amazingly useful 200-600 but I think they need to get into the second tier telephoto primes hopefully using some sort of Fresnel optics (assuming they can come up with a method that isn’t the same as Nikon or Canon and end up in a patent war. Nikon has built some game changing DO/PF type lenses. Canon was the leader in this area but really since the 400DO II for EF I don’t know what they have been doing. Lenses in the 3000-7000 USD are ones that nature photographers like me would consider much more often than a 12000-14000 USD lens. Currently I actually bought the Canon R5 mostly to use on the 500F/4 since I can’t afford to shell out for one of the Sony super-telephotos (or the latest Canon for that matter).
While I really love the Sony A7RIV, it is time for an update to the high resolution end of the camera line. I know that currently it is still just as good as anything out there from Nikon and Canon but the low light performance of that sensor is starting to show its age. I’m sure there is a new one in the works, the question is are they going to increase the resolution or improve the low light capabilities…or both? The next camera will likely also end up doing 8K video, which is a nice addition for a high resolution camera. The latest Canon cameras are all coming out with mechanical shutter frame rates up and around 15 fps. This would be a nice addition since these cameras are much too slow at getting the information off the sensor in electronic shutter to be of much use. The last addition that would be interesting and would bring these cameras a little closer to current medium formats is having 16 bit colour depth. Update - the A7RV is out, I now have it. Although it doesn’t meet all the hopes I had for it, the updates to the autofocus, back screen, viewfinder and processing have just made it a much more useful camera for nature photography. I still use the A7RIV for landscapes since the quality of the sensor output is identical but otherwise this is a great new camera. Would have been nice to have a bump in number of shots per second but I can live with this for now.
I would like to also see more power zoom (or at least video oriented) lenses for E mount. The 16-35 is one that I will be buying as soon as it is available but as a nature photographer a telephoto PZ would be amazing. Something like a 100-300 range would be a great all around lens for some of my video work. If it was reasonably close to parfocal it would be even better. Update - I now have the 16-35 PZ lens and it just makes the statements above even more true…Sony lets get more of these.
My last one is more for the wish list. I would really like to see Sony come out with a medium format camera to compete with Fuji. What would be even better would be to partner with Fuji on the lens mount and the two of them really corner the market on the affordable medium market front. This would also allow both Fuji and Sony to get a great set of complimentary lenses out for the mount. Currently Fuji is where I would like to go for high resolution landscape but the lack of lens options is keeping it limited. This may also open things up for Sigma and Tamron to start building for that mount. I think that there is a chance for the “small” medium format to take over a larger portion of the “Full frame” camera market in the next 5-10 years.
Lastly, Sony does need to come out with some new entry level cameras. Currently they have an ok line up but since there is nothing new, people are starting to look at the latest from Canon and Nikon and forget about a Sony camera that might be competitive in many respects but because it is 2-4 years old they think it is out of date (and in some ways they are correct). Replacing the A6000 series with a new line up would go a long way to at least make it look like they have new stuff for people wanting to get into photography now.