Sony today announced their most expensive camera yet, the Alpha flagship Sony A1.
The short bit: 50mp at 30 fps via an Exmor RS stacked sensor and dual Bionz XR processors. The A9 type of no blackout, fast refresh. using a 9.44m dot viewfinder. Yes, 8K video (up to 30 minutes with heat management).
Basic marketing tag: the only camera you ever need, the one that does it all.
Sony threw pretty much everything at their new top-end camera. Read the A1 specs to see just how much that really is, but effectively the Alpha 1 puts the ball squarely in Canon and Nikon's court to respond (and they will before the end of the year, probably sooner).
You're probably now seeing why I've been writing about 8K and 45mp being a new bar you have to pay attention to. I'll be writing about what this new camera means more generally soon.
That said, one of the more interesting aspects of the camera is the Xperia Pro smartphone hookup (about time). The US$2500 phone is not just 5G capable, but features a 4K HDR screen and HDMI in, plus fast camera connections (including FTP via USB). Sony is really the only one of the camera makers that can make this kind of link directly and control the full stack of things being done; the other camera makers would have to link up with a smartphone maker to do some of the same things as the Alpha 1 and Xperia do together. And every high-end camera should be doing that, which is something I've been saying for 13 years now. This smartphone hookup is the only thing that I'm not sure how Canon and Nikon will respond to.
