Sony Appears to Respond to Canon Crop Move

Sony, one of the more reactive firms relative to competition, appears to be moving up the release of three crop lenses a week after Canon made a splash with its first advanced amateur version of a crop sensor camera in the RF mount. Sony rumoredly plans to offer a 10-20 f/4 zoom, along with a 15mm f/1.4 G prime and an 11 mm f/1.8 prime.

Reflecting today’s pricing realities in a low-supply world, the lenses will cost $850 for the zoom and the 15mm f/4 and $600 for the 11mm f/1.8; a bit more expensive than would have been expected for lenses that cover only a crop sensor  a couple years back.

Sony’s main E mount crop body, the a6600, is a small-form body designed to fit more into the traditional travel camera use case than a sport or action shooter. Canon previously pushed its M mount system for crop bodies, rigidly observing design guidelines to keep the cameras extremely small, making them mostly useful for travel cameras. The new Canon announcements seem to make the M mount redundant, with a low-end R10 taking over the smaller camera role, and the R7 taking over the sports/action category from where the 7D Mark II left off back in the DSLR days.