Osaka Namaba station
The near future state of mirrorless market 5:
I think Panasonic engineers did the right thing, but the marketing team of the huge video company made a huge mistake revealing their near future plans the S1 and the S1R too early at the last Photokina. I think they should have announced these 2 cameras at the CES and then introduced their new 8k video camera that we believe to be announced very soon at this coming CP+ show in Yokohama.
But I am sure , still it was the biggest announcement at the last Phokokina, and I believe many others will agree with me on this one.
The Panasonic Leica L mount consortium was the biggest news from this year's Photokina followed closely by the Zeiss ZX1.
I think the L mount is great because it may be able to become some sort of universal or near universal mount system for both video and still people. I really hope it to become like that.
It is a good system even for those legacy lens crowds since the L mount has a very thin sensor protection glass unlike the Sony E or the Canon R. So for a Legacy lens hub like system, the L mount seems to be the best, in fact, for that specific use case there are only two great FF systems : the Nikon Z and the L mount system.
The Sony E mount system is also a good system for those who do not mind spending over 5k on lenses and whose main lens interests are primes. And I think it is, like the Leica L mount , also a teamed work of three major players with a very different set of strengths in terms of the lens development. But what makes the L mount even more unique and potentially a better system than the Sony E is there are 3 companies developing or plan to develop bodies for the system(with three very different types of sensors).
Sony says the E mount is an open mount system but they do not allow any one else to make a body for the system. But Leica and Panasonic team seem to be seriously considering about inviting other makers into the mount system in the future. That makes the system very unique.
So who or what kinds of people are the potential buyers of the L mount system other than typical rich Leica users ?
I think the new L mount consortium will appeal to anyone who wants a full frame MILC camera, and:
1 wants to buy from a company with 10 years of expertise building MILC cameras and lenses with the most efficient battery power management tech.
2 Doesn't own lots of Canon and Nikon full frame DSLR lenses, or does not mind using adapter solution.
3 Wants class leading video performance with the industry leading EVF tech and IBIS(I think this is the main customer group of the L mount system for now).
4 Wants the specific feature set that Panasonic offers such as extremely tough weather sealed body, very forward thinking UI, excellent non-Sony high resolution sensor, etc.
5 Doesn't have any particular brand loyalty to Canon, Nikon or Sony and want to use a variety of high end Leica glass and also hybrid high tech electronics lenses from Panasonic.
6 those mainly using legacy lenses they already have on the E mount body now but having seriously frustrated with the unnecessarily thick sensor stack glass. There are many of this kind of people in the current E mount system who might move to the L system as it has the thinnest sensor stack glass.
7 interested in adapting the Zeiss PL primes and many other PL mount primes , the E mount does not do this very well due to the tiny mount design restriction.
Admittedly, those people are pretty rare in the old bald-heads dominating online fora, but they do exist in sufficient numbers to make Panasonic's new system viable.
I mean there are many young film makers who cannot afford the expensive Arri , Alexa , Red , Sony ,etc. pro cinema cameras. There are also many people who are not interested in investing any serious amount of money into a new line of lens system, but looking for a hub for their already own legacy glass.....for those two types of people the new L is a near ideal system.
At my university, many art students ask me about this camera and I am recommending them to try the EOS R , the Panasonic S1R and the Sony A7R3 or MK3 before buying into any one particular camera system.
To be honest, the Panasonic is still not out yet, so you cannot try it out yet, but you can actually hold and shoot it at Panasonic studio Shiodome in Tokyo now. I think also in Panasonic Plaza Osaka.
And unlike Sony or Canon, they let you bring your own cameras( in my case the Sony A7R3 and R2) to compare to their new L system cameras. Both Canon and Sony do not let you do it here , so I see Panasonic is quite confident about how their new camera system will stack up against the CNS.
We tell all our students that they should try everything and test as many cameras as their bank account allows them to, to see which one actually feels really comfortable shooting with.
We tell this to them very honestly since I feel I kinda rushed into the Sony system and invested too much money into it too quickly and I am already deeply stuck in the system...I kinda regret it(if I am brutally honest with myself).
So for me, there is no other choice than Sony, TBH, but I still think I will add the Panasonic system or the Canon R in some point in the next 2 years.....not replacing my Sony kit but getting the Panasonic S1R or its successor or the Canon R MK2 in addition to my Sony. And I bet there are quite a lot of people like me out there.
So there is not a huge but relatively profitable and moderately decent sized market for Pana/Leica team still existing and they may be able to devour that market pretty quickly in the near future.
Many people say it is too late since many have already bought into one of the major FF mirrorless mount systems by now, but it is not really true considering the fact CN have just started it in last autumn and lacking any sort of serious native lenses.
The Nikon Z just has the several quite low end lenses, the Canon R has one cheap prime and three quite high end expensive L lenses.....and the Canon RF 50mm f1.2 L and the Nikon 58mm 0.95 primes are both quite outstanding lenses for sure optically but they are both very huge and very expensive.
The Canon lens is at least practical, but the Nikon 58mm f0.95 is just a show off kind of I call 'boutique lens'...it will cost about 6k US and really heavy.
So for now, if you want native mount MILC lenses, then two of the five full frame MILC competitors,e.g., Canon R and Nikon Z have to start with just a several lenses (only a couple or so of practical lens choices). Now only Sony has anything near a full lens system, and Panasonic gains a slight advantage by partnering with Leica, and with lens powerhouse Sigma who will soon announce 11 lenses for the L mount system at this coming CP + show in Yokohama.
In fact, Panasonic will already have about 16 lenses to start with this game by the end of this coming Feb when the S1R will be actually released. In addition to that their own 16 lenses, Sigma will make at least 14 lenses by this coming June, and I think Leica already has 8 lenses and they will make more than 7 in this year 2019.
So Panasonic Leica Sigma team will have at least 38 lenses by the end of this year 2019.
This means the L mount may very well end up with the most complete and diverse lens selection in the FF ILC world besides the Sony E, which has already an excellent set of native lenses.
With cameras and lenses from three different companies, and the strong possibility of offering the first full frame camera with a Foveon sensor. It is an very interesting system to say the least, I am seriously interested and I know many of our customers and students are interested in the near future state of this very exciting hybrid camera system.
Also, unlike the Nikon or the Canon power hungry very inefficient mirrorless system with very 90's style UI and menu system,Panasonic is really adept at battery power management, effective heat sink design, ODM flash systems(they've made flash units for Minolta for many years), durable video codec and very efficient cool running camera chipset design,etc.
Many Nikon fanboys claim Nikon is the most reliable system, but in real life they have serious battery issue, power management issue, excessive heat issue, etc.
They say these are all Sony specific issues , but in reality these are mirrorless specific issues not Sony specific at all.
Designing and producing a very reliable hybrid mirroless system with a big chip is very difficult and a whole different ballgame than designing a very reliable D-SLR like the D850.
This very fact is always dismissed but the superb real life reliability of the Sony E compared to the terrible reliability of the Nikon Z and Nikon One system just quite clearly proves it is a fact, rather than a myth.
Mirrorless is all about electronics , nothing about mechanics , so Nikon has really no chance winning in the battery power management game against Sony and Panasonic, who is one of the largest Lithium-ion battery producers in the world.
That's why only these Panasonic cameras have a very long 4k video shooting capability in the mirrorless world.
So their "over a decade" long mirrorless experimentation with the m43 and video cameras really count a lot for many people. I, for one, never trust Nikon as much as Sony or Panasonic. Since Panasonic has learned a lot about MILC technology, and can transfer some of the things it developed for the GH series into their new S series cameras, I am not surprised to see if their first generation cameras will almost equal to/ or better than the fourth generation Sony A7R and the second generation EOS R, and way ahead of the second generation Nikon Z.
A couple of years from now or so , when the dust settles, full frame MILC market share may end up like the below:
1 Canon - simply because of their huge full frame DSLR base and their first FF mirrorless camera is now selling very well.
2 Sony - due to their five year head start and extensive lens catalog, with their profound knowledge in video and battery management.
3 Panasonic - due to their better video performance and general strength in battery and power management area.
4 Nikon - because they have a pretty large full frame DSLR base, but lack almost any mirrorless related electronics tech in house.
5 Leica - for those people who must have a Leica, there is no alternative system to it.
6 Sigma - for the diehard Foveon fans.
Yes, you read that correctly. We think Canon will come up on the top, followed closely by Sony and Panasonic. Because it isn't about having the best specifications, it is 100% about having the best execution in manufacturing, marketing, distribution, quality control and customer service. If the best appealing spec sheet is everything , then Nikon should have been always no1 in sells , but they've never become the no1 in ILC......so what forum fanatics request or think what actually sell very well is not what actually sell well in the actual camera market. Typical Nikon fanboys never see this fact, since they are too narrow minded to think everyone else simply share the same needs and wants set requirements as theirs. So they assume every body else is as DR fanatic as they are, or everybody else really preferred the D800 over the 5DMK3 or the A99 or the A7R at the time.
Actually, most of the ILC markets throughout the world rejected the D800 and that clearly showed us what we camera DR fanatics really wanted was not what most of camera markets wanted at the time.
Canon has consistently proven it can be the market leader with a growing market share despite some what lagging behind in cutting edge feature set.
That is a hard concept for gearheads to grasp, but it is the truth. Most of people just find Canon or Sony system more reliable than Nikon. And it is not just my guess or any one's guess, but a fact.
Remember how many flawed cameras Nikon has recently released ?
The D600, the D800, the D800E, the D750, the DL, the Nikon One , those were all flawed cameras or recalled bodies.
The typical forum consensus Nikon is more reliable or built better than Canon or Sony is a big myth , almost an urban legend, IMHO.
When the Z was first rumored and actually revealed, everybody in any camera forum across the world talked about it, but just 3 weeks after that sensational announcement of the Z7, the Panasonic Leica L mount consortium literally robbed every hype from the Nikon.
Then, we got the amazingly futuristic Zeiss Z-X1, which completely shut the Nikon up.
And there have been many Z7 failure reports in Japan, China and even in EU, so I think the Z7 might struggle against the Sony,the Canon and the Panasonic badly(in therms of sells).
Now 4 months after the Z7 launch, there are really too many rejected or returned Z7 cameras at out shops and all major camera shops here have the same problem.
Our German friends , Thai friends, and Hong Kong friends seem to have the same unsold Z7 issue.
Sure all Nikon fanboys tell us that the Z is the best mirrorless system with the biggest and best FF optimized mount available today. It's supposed to be able to beat the Sony A7R3, let alone the EOS R. But we do not see many many used A7R3 or A7MK3 now, we had many but those were all sold out as many potential Z and R buyers got hugely disappointed or realized that both Canon and Nikon have nothing special up in their sleeves(at least for this and the next few rounds).
And there is another huge issue for the Nikon system: the XQD card.
This very unpopular card choice really hurt initial sells of the system, that card has made the initial cost of entering into the system quite high.
Canon at least did not make this kind of a really silly marketing mistake with the R.
Many review sites like DPR criticized the EOS R overpriced compared to the A7MK3 and the Nikon Z6, but in real world, most people would disagree with those silly superficial reviews.
The initial cost to buy into the Nikon system is actually much higher than the rest due to Nikon's silly card choice for the Z7 and Z6.
The XQD cards are expensive and we need many of these to make the system actually work for us, we also need an XQD card reader which is also very expensive compared to a SD reader which most of computers already have(so it costs us nothing actually).
Personally, despite of all its flaws , I kinda liked the Z7 and once seriously consider getting it , but the initial cost of buying a few XQD cards and a new card reader, ect. really made me realize it would be too costly to move to Nikon from Sony.....I mean I have collected over 200 SD cards now, all my cameras (both stills and video) use SD cards.
All my Laptops and Tablets have an SD card slot.
My Sony, Panasonic and other cameras all share these SD cards. And there is no place I can sell used media cards.
And I am sure other people also study this very carefully and conclude it is too wasting to invest into the Z system.
I think this choice of XQD card for the new Z really hurts Nikon , the Z7 and Z6 are not moving now any more , in the first few weeks the Nikon Z6 sold well, but once many people figured out the hidden cost of the system and it is actually an expensive camera due to the odd card choice of Nikon for that body, many people stopped buying it.
Honestly, at least the Z6 really needed a SD slot. Its specification and performance do not require the odd card system. The fast SD cars are fast enough for that kind of specs.
Even the Z7, as it is a relatively slow landscape type body, does not need the odd XQD card to perform as its spec sheet promises it to.
The Sony A7R3 is almost as good as the Z7(spec wise) but it does not ask you to invest into the odd card system.
Having said all that, I realized that now Nikon has got a big thirdparty supporter: Techart.
Their new adapter makes the Nikon Z system like an almighty legacy and mirrorless lens hub. Techart has just announced a new E to Z adapter and I think that might help Nikon system sell better. And they say they will also develop a RF to Z adapter.
This means the Nikon Z will be able to take almost all mirrorless lenses plus old legacy D-SLR lenses. So it may end up as an ultimate lens hub.
But ironically enough this also proves that now the Sony lenses are not very risky to buy, at least less risky to buy than the Z lenses since even if Sony fails or just decides to quit their Alpha system altogether , we can still use these FE mount lenses on the Nikon. The Z mount is going to be able to take all rival mount lenses , that means they have the biggest lens selections in the near future.
However, that also means their lenses can not be reused on any other system and the most risky lenses to buy.
So it is really risky to buy the Z mount lenses , while it is quite safe to buy their camera body and adapt some other companies lenses to it.
This might mean , if the Z mount cannot become one of the most popular FF mirrorless systems in the world in the next 2 years or so, it may not be able to survive long, it may become just like the Nikon DL, the future of the mount seems to be quite bleak.
But if they could make it popular in the next two years or so, then it may be able to become the most popular camera system since it can take almost all other mounts lenses.
Personally, I think its fate will really depend on how fast the XQD cards price come down.
I hope their new system succeed , but I am not very optimistic about it as we see the quite poor sells numbers for that system.
Nikon was considered to be a great camera maker in the 90's (analog era). But now in this digital era, it is the least reliable camera maker in the world. How many recalls have we got? How many suddenly aborted cameras they produced recently?
Many people no longer trust Nikon and especially the XQD card that will quickly become obsolete very soon.