Sony’s Oshima Spills to DPReview on A1

DPReview’s Barney Britton interviewed Sony’s Deputy Senior General Manager of its Camera System Business Division New Information, Maasaki Oshima. Barney ferreted out a few new learnings:

• The new sensor and the integration of the new sensor was the piece of tech that held up the project the most. [Editor: this could explain why Sony’s A9 II update disappointed many in seeming to be a minor, interim upgrade.]
• Sony believes 8k will be a normal need in the future
• Sony does appreciate the potential benefits of a global shutter, but indicated it’s practical now only on smaller sensors
• The mechanical shutter is a completely new system – in fact a combination of two systems with different drive mechanisms; a spring system and a set of electromagnetic actuators
• Sony is (again) indicating that its cameras are sealed differently and better now – starting with the A7s III and the A1
• Oshima indicated that he watched the previous DPReview TV hash session on the ability of the A1 to venture into computational photography, noting that he couldn’t reveal plans “but fast sensor readout is advantageous.”
• The big continuing work on autofocus appears to be centered on getting more object types understood by the deep learning algorithms