Help me understand the Sony Hype please

[palwx123]

The only thing you need to do is focus on improving your skills. If you like your camera just produce the best result of it. 50D is a good camera, it is a standard.

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[Dao]

OP, you are fine with your camera. You did not make a wrong decision for buying the Canon (even if you bought the Nikon, Sony, Pentax or Olympus). I bet you won't see much difference at all if you switch to a different camera (or different camera brand).

Stop worry about the camera just focus on how to get a great photos from your camera. (Or any other camera).

As for Sony, it is good that Sony is in the DSLR market. I do believe some of their DSLR cameras and lenses are not bad at all. Hoping Pentax can join so that Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax can compete against each others equally. It may not be good for them, but I am sure it is going to be great for us as a photographers.

[philbrown0]

If any of you were in the professional broadcast business you would find Sony products all over the place. And Sony more than other companies tends to trickle down their engineering to the consumer products. They aren't so hot at consumer formats-Blu Ray is their first successful one in many years (Mini Disc anyone?) but their consumer products are first rate. I have an NEX5N and it does an excellent job and I'm a long time Leica shooter.
Phil Brown

[BuS_RiDeR]

Sony = Hype... That's all. Yes, they do make good products. But, they are over-priced compared to others's that are playing the same game.

[MBasile]

Pop quiz for ya all. If brand is so important, what brand was used to take these?

matthewjordansmith.com

Clients include:
Olay
Wells Fargo
Profo
Oprah
Mandy Moore
Samel L Jackson
and many more high end celebrities

EDIT: When you brand snobs are shooting Aretha Franklin's album cover art, you can start talking again

[Tomasko]

Sony = Hype... That's all. Yes, they do make good products. But, they are over-priced compared to others's that are playing the same game.

Nah, you're mistaking that with Apple If Sony products are overpriced, what would that make of Apple products?

[BuS_RiDeR]

Sony = Hype... That's all. Yes, they do make good products. But, they are over-priced compared to others's that are playing the same game.

Nah, you're mistaking that with Apple If Sony products are overpriced, what would that make of Apple products?

Sony... Apple... Same S**t different day.

[Frequent Traveler]

Pop quiz for ya all. If brand is so important, what brand was used to take these?

matthewjordansmith.com

Clients include:
Olay
Wells Fargo
Profo
Oprah
Mandy Moore
Samel L Jackson
and many more high end celebrities

EDIT: When you brand snobs are shooting Aretha Franklin's album cover art, you can start talking again

Nice work btw!

[Garbz]

Pop quiz for ya all. If brand is so important, what brand was used to take these?

The band does not make a picture. But its still damn important.

Brand = reliability, usability and support. You pick established brand if things like their professional services are important, their 100 years of design and usability refinement are important, if all their experience with manufacture of the reliable mechanical components are important, or if their interchangeability, and long list of accessories are important.

Or you could buy from Sony, a company that buys is way into markets whenever it sees a dollar to be made, a company who has shown to be quite incompetent at doing something as simple as securing customer's financial data, a company that has a long history of nefarious "features" in their products, treating customers like criminals, doing whatever they can to not honor warranties, suing customers who try to do more with their products than Sony sanctions, oh my personal favourite, the company who nearly sued itself (and effectively already has indirectly) over releasing a product that worked on competitors hardware but not it's own. Not to mention that Sony pretty much needs to employ people full time to handle consumer complaints at things as basic as advertising something about a product, delivering said product, and then after the fact removing the feature in question.

Sure brand doesn't matter for the picture, but no amount of washing will ever stop me feeling dirty if I become unfortunate enough to send money in this particular company's direction.

[Frequent Traveler]

What most people don't know (or are not even remotely informed about aside from other un-informed users or even worse the narrow-minded, biased users) is that the Sony Alpha camera's are, in large part, designed by former Minolta engineers. Most of the konica/MINOLTA engineer team was hired by Sony when they bought the patent/manufacturing rights for the Alpha mount. Even if that bit of trivia registers, the point of fact is glossed over and missed.

While i'm not a Sony Corporate fan, i do like the (Minolta designed) Sony SLR cameras (not a convert to the SLT side). Yes, Minolta is dead - gone the way of the Dodo, but the innovative aspect continues on with Sony - another innovator (for the good or bad...).

In any event, haters will always hate. If someone is honestly into photography (and not photography *gear* - a big difference), the brand doesn't matter as much. I doubt Annie Leibovitz is as profoundly concerned with high ISO ratings and/or l/mm or other such gearhead data. She just gets the photo.

It's a good thing there is an internet where the fanboy folks can really illustrate what's important to them (you know them by their comments - what they usually talk about and how they speak about photogear different than their sacred brand).

[fotopro63]

I am a pro and I use Sony. Preordered the A100 and did the same with the A700.
National Newspaper Association "Best of" awards: 1st place sports photo, 2008; 3rd place sports photo, 2009. Idaho Press Club awards: Photo Essay, 3rd place, 2008.
I was a Minolta user before they sold out, decided to see what Sony would do because I didn't want to ditch all my glass and accessories. So far, so good.

[EchoingWhisper]

I think that Nikon is the most stable among all camera brands. Sony have nice technologies but their lineup isn't good enough. Their presence will only drive more competition and causes Nikon and Canon to do better, which is good. Any brand in the market is good, if they really sucked, they wouldn't have survived.

[SkyBlue]

Stick with your instincts, you picked Canon for some reasons