We are less than a month away from Photokina expo September 16 – 21, 2014 in Cologne Germany. That means all sorts of speculation and rumors are reaching the web with some credible to the absolutely far out ridiculous. Here are a few rumors that we have received from sources that claim are the real deal and could be somewhat credible. However these could all be speculative at best take them with a pinch of salt.
Canon EOS 7D replacement Rumor Specs:
Today Sony announced the Sony Alpha a5100 which fits between the a5000 and a6000. The flagship feature is that it has a mixture of phase and contrast AF points totaling a whopping 179 points for phase mode and an extra 25 zones for contrast, all combined 204 points. According to some early tests this camera might bridge the gap between full DSLRs and mirror-less when it comes to focusing. Current high performance DSLRs still are better than mirror-less due to the phase nature of their AF sensors. If this camera can put up a fight there will be less and less craving for large mirror box DSLRs in the coming years.
Sony a5100 key Specs:
It might sound too good to be true but the recently announced phone processor from MediaTek a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company, the MT6795 is capable of some impressive things when paired with the right camera sensor.
MT6795 Specs:
As many of you know the edgertronic hi speed camera is still in the #1 position on our HSC Camera guide. It offers professional slow motion features in color for $5,495.00 and in Monochrome for $5,695.00. At HD 1280*720p resolution it offers 700 fps and records in a high quality implementation H.264 codec. Up to 17,791 fps at reduced resolutions.
Mike Matter the CEO of Sanstreak Corp, the company behind the edgertronic has some info on recent developments:
We have finalized the analysis on the Sony a7s and the Panasonic FZ1000. We have placed the Sony in 4th place and the Pana in 5th place in our HSC Camera Guide. Even though the a7s is only 720p it has less aliasing than the FZ1000 at 120fps and the resolution seems very close. The Sony full frame also has noise characteristics that are much better than the 1″ sensor on the FZ1000.
All in all the Panasonic GH4 in 3rd place is still a better quality slow motion camera with conformed slow motion in camera to 24p and while a bit soft at 1080p it delivers about 14% better resolution than the a7s.
New reports from early adopters of the FZ1000 claim that the super slow motion mode in the camera is limited to 120fps at 1080p and the modes that offered higher frame rates are gone from final shipping units.
Slow motion modes announced in June: