Sony removes remaining DSLTs from its website suggesting the A-mount is all but dead

Uh....a class action suit based on...what? Sony discontinued a product. No manufacturer ever offers a guarantee that any product will be sold forever.

@pocketpixels: Honestly, the "all but dead" expression was not out of line. They were clearly referring to the entire line, and did not in any way say or imply that the camera would ever stop working. However, a statement from Sony clarifying their stance on the DSLR line, and how long they intend to support would to a long way.

1/3 light loss is hardly visible for the eye. The difference is like base ISO 125 instead of ISO 100.

Those using auto exposure will often miss with more than 1/3 stop, and still judge the exposure for their files to be just fine.

A linear mind trying to cope with a logarithmic world.

If it were up to me I'd eliminate the mirror all together.

;-)

Nikon isn't lying though. They are simply being honest about how far behind they are compared to Sony.

Or do you prefer me to say "Nikon could definitely make a variation of the FTZ which support AF-D lenses, but Nikon simply couldn't care less about Nikon photographer's previous investments!"
By the way, I don't think the above statement is true

@ KevinStarr: What about Contax, Rollei, Petri, Miranda, Konica, Exacta, Topcon, Zeiss, Voigtländer, Bronica, Yashica, Mamiya, and many others? That's how production and marked works.

Kamera Express in the Netherlands still sells the A99ii.

@BrianK2 - "Loyalty is a one way street with Sony, and it isn’t moving in your direction"

That is not correct, Sony for instance supported Betamax for 40 years, before they finally stopped making tapes.

Sony has made 5 different adapters for a-mount lens to e-mount body, which is far more support for old formats than any other camera company has ever done.

The reality of this age is that many companies have had to make changes.

Nikon for instance set the standard when they totally abandoned the Nikon 1 series cameras, abandoned their rifle scope business, and cut back a lot of user support: https://www.dpreview.com/news/5564430488/nikon-is-killing-off-its-authorized-repair-program-in-march-2020

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/nikon-is-exiting-the-rifle-scope-business/

Canon permanently shut down their main service facility, and laid off a bunch of employees:
https://fstoppers.com/business/do-canons-layoffs-and-service-center-closure-signal-retreat-photography-354140

Please don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel about Sony!

Nikon offers zero AF support for their screw-driven lenses on adapters. How is that better? Does Canon support their early EF lenses on their adapters? There are a lot of asterisks for both.

But Sony has given the BEST support ever to Minolta glass owners by actually producing cameras all the way into 2021 ;-)

Because Nikon will make new DSLRs or make new F mount lenses?

FYI Sony is on their 3rd generation of full frame adapters and some cameras are compatible with screw-driven AF lenses.

So naive...

Nikon? Compatibility? So AF-P and E-type lenses work on every F-mount body? So every Nikon D3x00 and D5x00 is able to focus their current screw-driven AF lenses? And Nikon has an AF adapter to focus those same lenses on Z-mount?

The latest Sony A-mount lenses completely work on Minolta Alpha 7, 5, and 3 film cameras. The cheapest Sony A-mount bodies autofocus the entire lineup of Minolta AF lenses back to 1985.

Agree that Nikon has had its moments, but if you're a full frame user, overall, comparability has been pretty good, and - my opinion - a lot better than most.

My Sony A7RIV will autofocus a $140 original MSRP 1985 Minolta 28 F2.8 using on-sensor phase-detect over most of the frame with Eye AF and Real-time tracking at 10 FPS and correct the distortion, lateral CA, and corner shading.

I will agree that with Nikon Z mirrorless, there are different levels of compatibility with their different types of F mount lenses from the past. With their more recent releases, there is pretty much seamless compatibility. With other older lenses there are some compromises.

But that being said, can we please stop bringing up the Nikon 1 product line as some sort of example regarding Nikon? That was a failed experiment and we all know it and it is not indicative of Nikon and their approach to their main camera system. The Nikon 1 was never meant to substitute for their F mount system or eventually replace it, as the Z system is.

Sony isn’t allowed failed experiments. (I’m talking SLT. Though many wouldn’t even say that was a failure.)
Only Nikon is allowed failed experiments.

All the talk about abandoned users in the context of the end of the a-Mount is ridiculousness.

One could say Canon R5 is a failed experiment in heat management.

Oh the irony.
Someone defending A mount by joking another camera overheats in 25-30 minutes.
Did we forget the A55 and A33 history? Did we forget they were unable for stills and video when they overheated in as little as 10 minutes (the Japanese manual said 7).

@Rand does the A* cameras that you pointed out shut down for an hour due to overheating ?

If no then not the same issue.

Besides sony was given tough time for overheating for years.

Rand that was almost a decade ago...

Yet another new member from Canon camp commenting Sony story.

If you owned an A55 already and I have you already knew this.
https://www.popphoto.com/app/uploads/2019/01/17/3NBR5OU75PQ26IYDRUBPBFW5LI.jpg
I don't have experience with E mount, but with A mount the camera would die. There was nothing you could do to take photo or video of any kind for a good 20 minutes. And then you'd be lucky to get another 5 minutes of video.

A mount cameras are the only cameras I've heard of that overheat and die shooting stills too. Also in a matter of only a few minutes.
https://www.dyxum.com/dforum/sony-a33-or-a55-overheating-when-shooting-stills_topic90880.html
So if you are defending A mount by saying other cameras overheat, the joke is on you. I've never hear of one that dies in 7 minutes or dies taking a few photos.

Rand i never heard sony camera overheating in 7 minutes too.

There are reports of canon r5 overheating and not able to shoot still too from multiple people.

Anway overheating is non issue on current sony cameras.

While r5 is current camera. So the joke is on people buying it for 4000$

Ps: the same thread you linked has users of sony cameras saying they never had overheating problems on their cameras. So even in year 2012 you could not find the issu es.

Let me quote you from the link (talk about clicking on the link):

"That's sad, i'm having an a55 too - never had this problem (never use it for video).

Do you have the latest firmware one the A55?

What kind of memory cards do you use? (it's due to the fact you where using fast burst that i'm asking myself why this happened) - and one of the things to check is the writing speed of the memory-cards."

Constantly overheats?? Really, same link.

"Those are from 2012, so you lied, right? You blatantly lied for all to see."

The thread shows user with A55 never had camera overheating.

You are the one claiming that all A55 overheats and it is a problem.

Here is another quote from the link:

"reality is it shouldn't happen, I had both and never had this problem.

Yes it maybe lens related and a process of elimination may prove this."

"The person who never used the camera for video never had it overheat during video. OK."

Here is what you claimed:

"A mount cameras are the only cameras I've heard of that overheat and die shooting stills too. Also in a matter of only a few minutes."

You were claiming stills.

Make up your mind.

You also dishonestly ignored the people in the thread who had their camera not overheated btw.

Ignore him. Registered last week. I’m shocked. He probably will be gone soon.

@Mike he is another one from train of users who come and vehemently start to dis sony brand. (interestingly all of them support canon).

The synonym for real commitment and backward compatibility in DSLR world is PENTAX.

Regards,

Tibor

It's funny seeing this discussion thread devolve into an argument about whether discontinued A-mount cameras had overheating problems about a decade ago.

It just shows you how easy it is to get off track with some debates and how once it does the combatants just dig in determined to make their point. (And I've been there too!)

Is that the reason Nikon killed DL series 4K capable lineups? They hyped the announcement and kill it before a single product is sold?

@ Cian3307: There is a major difference between the end of a brand, and a discontinued product line.

@ Cian3307: How would this be different from other discontinued camera models, or mounts, as long as the maker still is in the business? Also, there are brand-independent repair shops.

Some failures are greater than others. For example, Leica and Nikon are still going with their mounts, introduced in the 50s. And I’m willing to bet that the Z Mount will be around a lot longer than the tiny E Mount 😉

@ darthrevan: Guesses about the future is mostly wrong.

The "tiny E mount" as you name it, was developed to seve as a multi system mount for compact aps-c and full frame cameras, and high end camera systems for professional video and movie production.

My guess is that your view on mount size is based on feelings, not math and facts. Or do you really think engineers on the level of modern camera production would not me aware what they were doing.

Sony even officialy said the mount was large enough for full frame cameras short after their NEX cameras were introduced, more than 20 years ago,

Time will tell. We are both guessing mate. Me about the longevity of the tiny e Mount and you about me. Neither of us know. Time will tell. What we do know, is the A Mount is dead, and relatively speaking, really did not last that long....

@ darthrevan: You forgot about the Minolta heritage, with introduction of the A-mount and a breaktrought in autofocus technology.

The time span for the A-mount is about the same as the Canon FE mount and the updated Nikon F mount. New A-mount lenses are still offered by resellers.

@ darthrevan: Original F mout did not have electrical contacts and aperture control. There was a major revision of the mount, making older lenses more or less unuseable on newer cameras.

This attempt to make the mount more future oriented, and also to keep backward compability, had it's clear drawbacks. That's why Canon, with a new mount, took over the marked domain.

Sony will start with a new mount that "opens up" from a maximum lens aperture of f:0.63 (same as the Leica L mount) to match Canon at f:0.62 or Nikon at the maximum of f:0.58?

Now when Sony has the E-mount 50 mm f:1.2 lens with faster autofocus, better sharpness and less vignetting than the others.

No, I don't actually see that what you suggest will happen.

Slowly yes dslrs would become niche market.

" Sony stopped to produce reflex cameras years ago already"

In all fairness, the SLT's were still reflex cameras. Just not in a way we were accustomed to with regular (D)SLR's, because the "reflex" was from mirror to PDAF sensors, rather than mirror to OVF (and PDAF sensors).

There are many comments that suggest that if Sony were to release a mirrorless E mount camera with the same type of form factor as their A-mount cameras, that it would be well received.

I wonder if Sony would ever do that.

@riveredger: By sudden, I mean without any official warning. It's not the first time in the photography industry (Nikon 1, Canon FD, Samsung), but if Sony mirrorless were not doing as well, then I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they pulled the plug on all cameras.

Yeah, it's not like Sony warned us this change was coming. They should give time lines, presenting their long-term plans to discontinue products. Why not a whisper? There are A mount fans out there who would have appreciated a little info. Maybe they'll switch to Z mount now, rather than E mount.

The only reason to use old tech is for nostalgic reasons. The quicker people embrace new tech, the better it is for the collective group.

With LAE5 that's not a big problem. It adapts A-mount lenses with phase-detect AF

errr, could you remind me how many A-mount lenses has Sony developed from scratch in the last 10 years? According to dyxum.com the last one was in 2013 (Zeiss 50mm 1.4). It's been pretty clear for a while that the A-mount was on its way out.

Sony bought minolta so lens tech comes with it. Minolta lenses are well regarded so there is no reason to design lenses too.

lens tech has come on in the last 10 years or so. It's not a static technology. Canon and Nikon have released new lenses in that time. I'm not knocking A-mount or Sony, just saying that it was increasingly clear that Sony would drop the mount. As others have pointed out, it doesn't mean A-mount cameras and lenses will stop working. Indeed the ergonomics of the A-mount bodies is far better than the current FE bodies (I speak from experience having used A77, A580 etc. for a number of years).

I think the OP was suggesting that the Sony "party" would be more for celebrating their MILC success with E mount, and that this would be a way to diplomatically let people know that A-mount is officially ended.

But of course, that brings up the question of what the heck does it mean for a company to throw this type of "party?" It is going to be a virtual event, with guests hosts like Tony Northrup? :) Maybe bring on Ken Rockwell for a blast from the past? End with a more contemporary figure like Manny Ortiz? I would so love for someone to make a skit on this theme :)

Companies normally let discontinued products go away very quietly and so I can't say Sony is doing anything different than most.

TRU that would be a comedy of errors!!

The business reality of it is that pre-announcing the discontinuation of a product line makes it harder to sell off the remaining stock.

Maybe EF lenses and possibly, maybe M43 lenses. Those are the only ones you might count on lasting. Those are the only lenses supported by a good number of camera systems and also the most cameras, including drones and professional video. Most of the rest become 'dead' when only one company decides traditional ILCs going the way of the typewriter.
I like that M43 is smaller and open too. Google, Apple, Huawei, and anyone else can make cameras with the mount if they like.

M mount is far more universal, you can't use MFT on good backs.

Cars last forever too, they say. After-all, you can buy a 1967 Mustang today, right? Of course, when was the last time you kept a car for more than twenty years? They DO wear out. So do lenses, and when they've worn out, guess what happens to them. No, Sony probably won't fix it for you. Nikon probably won't fix one of their old lenses either. I doubt Canon will fix a ten year old lens either. A five year old L lens, maybe. They won't have parts for a twenty year old lens, let along one you bought a "lifetime" ago. Today's lenses, with all their electronic components, are unlikely to last much more than ten years without giving trouble, unless you rarely use them outdoors. They're like computers, and mine is on it's last legs, after ten years of good service. Electronics have a limited life span.

Well Sony never pull the trigger on advertisement and promotion of A-mount as they did it for e-mount... So sales figures are just the reflection of this.

Anyway, for E-mount it is clear to me that Sony is also lagging on APS-C. Limit Sony would find a way to ditch APS-C on emount, they would do it. Fuji is far more a mature overall system for APS-C.

I still have my A58 and bought it because it was so far more advanced of a camera at a bargain compared to Nikon D3100 in 2013

I agree.