New Sony PL Primes - Pricing

Hey, if these lenses are decently done, 28k isn't bad. It's hard to break the market if you don't have the name recognition. But besides name recognition, there is also piece of mind with Cooke, Zeiss and Angie. You know they will be around to support their products... with Sony, you may see them abandon cine lenses all-together, so long as these lenses aren't smashing successes. I mean, look at the first ones they released. Despite whether you think they are good for the money, you must admit they orphaned those lenses pretty hardcore. With a big company like Sony, orphaning a product line for the sake of the bottom line can be expected. This is why I like buying my lenses from people who make lenses. They have passion and commitment because you are buying their flagship product... not some side project which could be canned at the sneeze of a bad quarterly stock report. Ya know?

I hope they do well. The price actually makes me more excited to see these lenses. It's high enough to assume that they mean business... unlike round one.


Sorry to hat-trick this thread. I need to learn to multi-quote.
 
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Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Hey, if these lenses are decently done, 28k isn't bad. It's hard to break the market if you don't have the name recognition. But besides name recognition, there is also piece of mind with Cooke, Zeiss and Angie. You know they will be around to support their products... with Sony, you may see them abandon cine lenses all-together, so long as these lenses aren't smashing successes. I mean, look at the first ones they released. Despite whether you think they are good for the money, you must admit the orphaned those lenses pretty hardcore. With a big company like Sony, orphaning a product line for the sake of the bottom line can be expected. This is why I like buying my lenses from people who make lenses. They have passion and commitment because you are buying their flagship product... not some side project which could be canned at the sneeze of a bad quarterly stock report. Ya know?

I hope they do well. The price actually makes me more excited to see these lenses. It's high enough to assume that they mean business... unlike round one.


Sorry to hat-trick this thread. I need to learn to multi-quote.
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No c'mon this time Sony is serious and means business!! :happy:
 
A couple things.

Our industry is miniscule. I'm talking super-tiny. In 2006 (before RED shipped) I said to someone high up at Canon that if they would take their L-series primes and make a set for $20K list we could sell 1000 sets in a year. Without blinking he replied that it wasn't enough. 5000 lenses and $20,000,000 in revenue and it wasn't enough for Canon to bother with the effort. This past August Canon surpassed 80 million EF mount lenses shipped, and it only took then 10 months to get from 70M to 80M. One million lenses per month. That's sobering.

So for Canon to say no thanks is not surprising, and Nikon does similar numbers. So I really don't see it in their radar to bother with PL glass. They're just not that kind of company.

The Sony lenses are not as bad as some say, at least when you forget about the mechanics and just look at the glass. So if Sony fixes the mechanics as they say they have, that should be something to pay attention to. But you should all also remember that Sony will sell a bunch of their lenses if only because people will buy them along with the camera as a single purchase. And unlike some of the other brands, you won't have to wait for months on end for the lenses you want to actually get in your hands. Many are on constant backorder, but Sony has the manufacturing ability to overcome this. And sometimes, no matter what lens you do or do not want, what matters is what lens you can actually get when.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Many are on constant backorder, but Sony has the manufacturing ability to overcome this. And sometimes, no matter what lens you do or do not want, what matters is what lens you can actually get when.
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Does that mean I should cancel my Fujinon Cabrio order I made with Abel during NAB 2012 and order something else? hahahahaha!
 
Mitch Gross said:
A couple things.

Our industry is miniscule. I'm talking super-tiny. In 2006 (before RED shipped) I said to someone high up at Canon that if they would take their L-series primes and make a set for $20K list we could sell 1000 sets in a year. Without blinking he replied that it wasn't enough. 5000 lenses and $20,000,000 in revenue and it wasn't enough for Canon to bother with the effort. This past August Canon surpassed 80 million EF mount lenses shipped, and it only took then 10 months to get from 70M to 80M. One million lenses per month. That's sobering.

So for Canon to say no thanks is not surprising, and Nikon does similar numbers. So I really don't see it in their radar to bother with PL glass. They're just not that kind of company.

...
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But Mitch, didn't Canon wind up listening to you? They are making cinema lenses now.
 
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BobbyMurcerFan said:
But Mitch, didn't Canon wind up listening to you? They are making cinema lenses now.
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Well, to my knowledge Canon did already make cine zooms, just for 2/3" format. In any case, in 2006 no one would even believe you if you told them that the market would evolve to be the way it is now, Canon s35 lenses in an incredibly niche market filled with well-established competition really would have seemed strange then, but it's not nearly as out-of-reach now. We're talking about entry prices dropping from six figures to five.
 
Lot's of points here that ring. I guess the main thing is support of a lens. Yes that is super important and thats why you want to buy from people who MAKE lenses for a long time. How will you service your lenses if no one knows how?? Sony dropped the ball on their first 3 lenses really fast which worries me about the longevity of the new primes.

I guess my whole point was this... Sony doesnt have a name for glass, Sony has a bad rep already from their first attempt, Sony has priced their set high enough that you'd most likely want the bigger named lenses with much more history behind them, and Sony's prices are such that even on the "cheap" end they still have competition with Red Pro Primes and CP.2's and Super speeds, so how are they thinking they have a market with these prices?

Thats all I really had to say. I'm sure people will buy them, but will it be 15 years from now us saying, oh yeah I love the look of Sony primes? And in 15 years are their value going to hold true, and gigs feel comfortable with them being hired for features/tv? Heck look at old Cooke lenses, still being used on major projects all the time. Old Angenieux zooms, all of these are still being used MANY years later. They just stuck. I even see RPP's have a good nitch that people are comfortable shooting with them on bigger projects. Is Sony going to be able to do that?

It took Schneider 3 tries before it got its PL primes right, and they make good glass! So how will Sony do?
 
FilmDude said:
It took Schneider 3 tries before it got its PL primes right, and they make good glass! So how will Sony do?
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Actually, it took them only a 2nd try to get it right. There is little or no effective difference between the 1st and 2nd generation (an extra brass ring inside).Version II was done so that they could remarket the lenses with an extra push after an issue with their first distributors. So really the only real difference is when they went to Mark III.
 
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