F55: Sony Pro Community Forum (Gone)

Grug said:
Time will tell. However the level of thought and user-focussed design that's gone into Venice, honestly suggests a shift in approach by Sony (to my eyes at least).

I get the impression they're finally catching on to the very needy, and very specific requirements of their pro users.
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I was also getting that impression when the Venice came out. The camera seems to get most things right. The footage in the short film looked the best out of any Sony camera not called F35. It looked great. But these recent events seem to indicate old Sony is still the same. As you say, time will tell.
 
markfpv said:
For the same reason, that a Panasonic rep (i.e. Mitch ) might post in a Canon thread here. Perhaps educate, inform or simply offer a differ point of view.
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But that's VERY different. DVXuser is not a company forum. For Sony to post on Reduser would look unprofessional, out of place and quite frankly desperate. I think even when reps posts on threads concerning competitors products here is somewhat strange. But Reduser is a company forum. It's a no no for Sony or any other competitor to post there.
 
Tom Roper said:
1.) A never ending feature request. The more Sony gave, the more people demanded. They were never satisfied and sometimes whined openly, "Why can't Sony give me free features to make my F5 like the F55?"
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You know, if that's the reason I don't blame them. The whining bothered even me and I don't have to deal with it. People buying a camera where they know what it can do. But then deciding it's not enough and Sony should give them more. It was more annoying than people calling S35 a crop format here. The truth though is Sony does that because they can! Apart from the very high end that competes with the Alexa, Sony is still killing it for the most part. Nobody will stop buying their products and they know it. People will whine and complain but will still give their money to Sony. If people would just drop Sony till they would change their attitude, Sony wouldn't act that way. But that will never happen and Sony knows it. Beggars can't be choosers. Besides the owner op market is not even as big as the broadcast market.
 
I think thats true.. right now they are on the crest of the wave.. the fs7 dominates totally.. their A series dominate in the market.. and the Venice could well be a winner.. as icing on the cake.. they would be leading in all divisions ... I doubt there is any malice or contriving going on.. just totally useless middle management .. no big surprise .. there are some Sony FB sites.. its the same thing ..users asking /answering questions.. there was never much input from Sony anyway.. and towards the end none at all.. its gone.. they dont care.. sad but true..
 
After much upheaval, Sony is now a mishmash of different wholly-owned subsidiaries. Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc. is who we're now dealing with. Sony's newest internal marketing mission as described in their annual report:

"Sony’s mission is to be a company that provides customers with Kando, which means to move people emotionally, and to inspire and fulfill their curiosity. To realize this mission, Sony plans to continue to conduct R&D based on the spirit of innovation and challenge detailed in its Founding Prospectus, and create new customer value at the “last one inch,” or the very closest point of contact with its customers..."

I would argue that the latter part of that Sony initiative appears to be a work in progress, at least in our division.
 
there was never much input from Sony anyway..
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There was some however, friendly and personal. They apprised us of upcoming features and updates. Some of it wasn't always 100% correct. Support for the FZ mount lenses for example. Was there *ever* more than one lens made for this mount? It's amazing to think, a mount so strong you could use it to attach a PL mount, and have it support a T2.9 300mm Red Pro Prime without a lens support.
 
Sttratos said:
You know, if that's the reason I don't blame them. The whining bothered even me and I don't have to deal with it. People buying a camera where they know what it can do. But then deciding it's not enough and Sony should give them more. It was more annoying than people calling S35 a crop format here.
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That level of whining is why I rarely visit Blackmagic’s official forums...or the bmcuser ones. It’s also partly why I bought an FS7II. There’s less whining and more creative discussion between professionals (and less typical consumerism) when you spend above a certain dollar amount investing in a camera system. That’s not to say Alexa and Red owners can’t act like little children, but at lesst those crowds know that “crop factor” is just Canon 5D marketing hype.
 
Now that they can't hang out on the Sony forum, where will those self-aggrandising know-it-all-shoot-nothing types go to impart their 'faux wisdom'?
 
Tom Roper said:
There was some however, friendly and personal. They apprised us of upcoming features and updates. Some of it wasn't always 100% correct. Support for the FZ mount lenses for example. Was there *ever* more than one lens made for this mount? It's amazing to think, a mount so strong you could use it to attach a PL mount, and have it support a T2.9 300mm Red Pro Prime without a lens support.
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Nope, there was only ever the one FZ lens.
 
I think we have seen the last of the FZ mount.. now that Venice is native E mount !!.. Im sure any new f5/55 will be the same.. with PL bolted on the front..
 
Donny 123 said:
I think we have seen the last of the FZ mount.. now that Venice is native E mount !!.. Im sure any new f5/55 will be the same.. with PL bolted on the front..
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It's a shame, if it works out that way. FZ is a great "neutral mount". I even have the FZ mount for my HDx35 II, so I can mount it straight on my 55 without going through the PL. Heck, I guess if I really wanted to, I could mount my 17-120 to my 55 with the FZ collar I have on my HDx35. I'd just have to use a cable to power the lens and pass data, then.

In my opinion, Sony's execution of a quick-change mount system, with the FZ, is still better than anyone's else's out there today, that I have seen.
 
Interesting, there are more adapters for the FZ mount than there are FZ mount lenses. I don’t like taking the PL adapter off, heard so many stories about the pins getting sheared off (thanks to the forum-Gone!), but I guess it would not matter, all my glass is PL mount with no electrical anyway.
 
It's funny, I have a friend here with an F5 and he didn't even know it came with a PL adapter(or I guess more correctly, didn't know what the PL adapter was that came with it) until I told him, because he only uses EF mount glass. He has added an FS7mkII recently and I'm on a 5 camera shoot with him next week(F5's, F55's, F7's). We're all using 17-120's and instead of shooting with my lens on my 55, they asked if we could put it on his 7, because I can swap it to EF and he doesn't have a PL adapter for his 7.

I've seen a few guys that have or shoot with 17-120's or Cabrio's get burned because of the broken pins. Usually they can still power the lens, but they can't punch to record from the grip.
 
Run&Gun said:
It's funny, I have a friend here with an F5 and he didn't even know it came with a PL adapter(or I guess more correctly, didn't know what the PL adapter was that came with it) until I told him, because he only uses EF mount glass. He has added an FS7mkII recently and I'm on a 5 camera shoot with him next week(F5's, F55's, F7's). We're all using 17-120's and instead of shooting with my lens on my 55, they asked if we could put it on his 7, because I can swap it to EF and he doesn't have a PL adapter for his 7.

I've seen a few guys that have or shoot with 17-120's or Cabrio's get burned because of the broken pins. Usually they can still power the lens, but they can't punch to record from the grip.
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The "newer" PL adapters have shorter and stronger pins.. due as you say, to alot of sheared pins !
 
What the broken pins problem did behaviorally for me, was stop me from by purchasing an EF to FZ adapter. I'm not going to take the PL adapter off now to just check the pins, although they were fine the last time I did. I shoot now with the PL primes exclusively, but it would have been nice to pop on a lightweight EF zoom, or...the defunct, orphaned child bastard SCL_Z18X140 which by most accounts was a really nice lens on the F3, and that even with the F55 Community Forum (GONE!) you seldom could find much comment from Sony about it, other than "support was coming." Of course it never did. And you have to wonder why they abandoned FZ, or allowed it to be stillborn.
 
It seemed like it was the Sony Pro Community F55 Forum (GONE!) that kept relevant the F55, by providing all those firmware updates that completely transformed the camera into something beautiful at the end, even the menus! What other camera could you have purchased 4 years ago that today is capable of shooting 4k 120 FPS 16 bit raw? Or free 480 mbps XAVC-I recording? 2k OLPF? Support like that I wondered how Sony could not question what they were doing. Their business is to sell cameras, and this sort of advanced capability would seem to be an obstacle standing in the way of replacement sales with newer models. Only just now the Venice is the only other model capable of this, right? There was even a false color lut somebody made, and the ease of creating and loading such luts, was an advanced feature. Listening to the user base to add noise reduction to the Cine-EI modes. All these things, and now the F55 is still listed at MSRP higher than ever. I have no idea who if anybody would or is still buying it, but they probably sold a lot of them, and still used in several high end productions, Netflix Originals, The Crown, Black Mirror, Sense 8, The Blacklist, Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Mom, to name a few.
 
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