# Sony strikes deal with Associated Press



## ahsanford (Jul 23, 2020)

Wow. Maybe political testimony / hearings will get quieter with silent shooting:









The Associated Press partners with Sony to exclusively provide its visual journalists with Sony camera gear


The Associated Press has announced it's partnered with Sony to provide its visual journalists across the world with Sony camera equipment to capture their assignments.




www.dpreview.com





- A


----------



## Keith_Reeder (Jul 23, 2020)

Struggling to understand why I should care...


----------



## ahsanford (Jul 23, 2020)

Keith_Reeder said:


> Struggling to understand why I should care...




1) Because deals with agencies could possibly speed changes to the types of products companies make. If Sony gets a major foothold with a news agency, perhaps their higher end features, accessories, etc. will see more investment because that camp of shooter always had _______ with Canon or Nikon. And Sony might actually have to make a larger body with a chunky grip, now that all these folks packing pickle jar lenses all day are getting hand cramp. 

2) The AP covers major sporting events, don't they? Would this not imply that we'll see an industry push in to mirrorless superteles and 1-series-like bodies?

3) It's a sign of the times. Mirrorless is starting to flip some of the most stubborn professionals. I just find that fascinating.

- A


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Jul 23, 2020)

Its a big deal because to reach it, Sony will have had to commit to support around the world at a professional level, and for several years. AB must be convinced that Sony is not going to play their old trick of dropping support whenever a breeze comes up from the wrong way, and it provides stability for Sony in a time where camera sales are poor at best. Sony likely had to really cut prices, but having your cameras out in public used by journalists around the world is good.


----------



## ahsanford (Jul 23, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Its a big deal because to reach it, Sony will have had to commit to support around the world at a professional level, and for several years. AB must be convinced that Sony is not going to play their old trick of dropping support whenever a breeze comes up from the wrong way, and it provides stability for Sony in a time where camera sales are poor at best. Sony likely had to really cut prices, but having your cameras out in public used by journalists around the world is good.




NYT's excellent political photog Doug Mills has been pushing mirrorless for years. He has cited silent shutters / e-shutters as a competitive advantage as he could be in the room with other photogs and not giveaway when he was shooting (and by extension, what he was focused on).









User Clip: Doug Mills Switches To Sony a9


New York Times photographer Doug Mills describes why he has completely switched to the Sony a9.




www.c-span.org





_"I'm using a Sony camera which is completely silent. So, I can be sitting, standing next to my colleagues and they hear me, you know, formerly they could hear me taking pictures, but now, they can't hear. They're completely silent. So that helped to make that image, because I think if I had been photographing while he wasn't speaking or something like that, somebody would say, "What's Mills shooting, what's going on," so it helped." _​
Also, the obvious: https://petapixel.com/2019/06/29/si...antage-for-photographer-at-democratic-debate/

- A


----------



## TominNJ (Jul 23, 2020)

Things not said: the AP photographers must use Sony or get fired? The photogs get the stuff free, at cost or discounted?

Or is this just an official sponsor of the AP but essentially meaningless deal?


----------



## davidhfe (Jul 23, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Its a big deal because to reach it, Sony will have had to commit to support around the world at a professional level, and for several years. AB must be convinced that Sony is not going to play their old trick of dropping support whenever a breeze comes up from the wrong way, and it provides stability for Sony in a time where camera sales are poor at best. Sony likely had to really cut prices, but having your cameras out in public used by journalists around the world is good.



I read this the exact same way—it's Sony communicating to the world they're committed to imaging. I wonder if the motivation to do this started 6 months ago when the whole "playstation is delaying cameras" thing started floating around. I'd be curious how effective it is. I don't follow a whole lot of photojournalists, but they seem every bit as invested emotionally in their gear as any other photographer. If you're used to a 1DX3 and suddenly you pull an A92 out of the AP cage at a major event it's bound to be a shock?


----------



## davidhfe (Jul 23, 2020)

ahsanford said:


> Wow. Maybe political testimony / hearings will get quieter with silent shooting:



The "clack clack clack" of a shutter will soon join a host of other sounds from bygone eras: Dial tones, clacking hard drives. Hopefully one day the internal combustion engine…

I guarantee you in about 10 years some kid will watch an "old" press conference and comment on the video "What's making all that noise??!"


----------



## ahsanford (Jul 23, 2020)

davidhfe said:


> The "clack clack clack" of a shutter will soon join a host of other sounds from bygone eras: Dial tones, clacking hard drives. Hopefully one day the internal combustion engine…
> 
> I guarantee you in about 10 years some kid will watch an "old" press conference and comment on the video "What's making all that noise??!"




Or politicians will feel blindsided for NOT hearing the shutter, get caught on photo when they thought they were off the record, etc. that they institute policies that cameras must continue to make the noise even if e-shutter is in use. That would be hysterical.

They'd call it the Prius rule. The Prius was so quiet pedestrians couldn't hear it, so lawmakers made the cars actually emit more noise. 

- A


----------



## Deleted member 381342 (Jul 23, 2020)

All those poor hands. And what a terrible industry that the photographer doesn't get to choose the equipment they are comfortable with, they are just assigned a camera and lens(es) and told to learn it, deal with it.


----------



## privatebydesign (Jul 23, 2020)

ahsanford said:


> NYT's excellent political photog Doug Mills has been pushing mirrorless for years. He has cited silent shutters / e-shutters as a competitive advantage as he could be in the room with other photogs and not giveaway when he was shooting (and by extension, what he was focused on).
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Whoever you find in one camp you’ll find an equally impressive photographer in the other. Pete Souza was a Canon user, he moved to Sony thinking it was the right way to go, he moved back after a few months and is still a Canon shooter.


----------



## privatebydesign (Jul 23, 2020)

Codebunny said:


> All those poor hands. And what a terrible industry that the photographer doesn't get to choose the equipment they are comfortable with, they are just assigned a camera and lens(es) and told to learn it, deal with it.


But agency photographers are a dying breed, even the agencies use contracted freelancers for most assignments. I’d think the agency market, that is the gear agencies buy, is a 1/10 it was ten years ago even though there are more images out there than ever.


----------



## Keith_Reeder (Jul 23, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Its a big deal because to reach it, Sony will have had to commit to support around the world at a professional level, and for several years. AB must be convinced that Sony is not going to play their old trick of dropping support whenever a breeze comes up from the wrong way, and it provides stability for Sony in a time where camera sales are poor at best. Sony likely had to really cut prices, but having your cameras out in public used by journalists around the world is good.


So it might be a big deal _for Sony_, but I'm still not seeing a reason why anyone else should care. 

And as PBD points out, it's something of a token gesture anyway, given that agency photographers are on the endangered species list.


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Jul 24, 2020)

Keith_Reeder said:


> So it might be a big deal _for Sony_, but I'm still not seeing a reason why anyone else should care.
> 
> And as PBD points out, it's something of a token gesture anyway, given that agency photographers are on the endangered species list.


Its big for potential buyers who have stayed away from Sony over concerns that they would drop camera support in a instant. Sony owners can be a little more assured that cameras are not like some of the other Sony products.

I'm not likely to switch (never say never), I've been bit too many times by Sony.


----------



## Keith_Reeder (Jul 24, 2020)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Its big for potential buyers who have stayed away from Sony over concerns that they would drop camera support in a instant. Sony owners can be a little more assured that cameras are not like some of the other Sony products.


You'd have to persuade me that this was the main reason for people not buying Sony - _and_ that what photo journalists get up to influences the average photographer - before I'd buy the idea that Sony + AP will make any meaningful difference to Sony sales.

There _will_ be people who think about this, but I'll bet it's not a significant number of potential buyers. Most will buy whatever YouTube or the guy in the shop tells them to (if they're new to photography); otherwise the support question (which is valid, no dispute about that) will just be one part of a bigger puzzle.

And - I completely believe - hardly anyone is influenced by what camera brand a news agency uses anyway:* in fact it's impossible to tell, because they always strip the Exif out of their images.*

Here's something else: AP's own blog page about "_why Sony?_"









AP to equip all visual journalists with new Sony cameras — AP Photos


Sony Electronics Inc., a global leader in imaging, and The Associated Press, the trusted global news organization, announced a new collaboration that will make Sony the exclusive imaging products and support provider for AP news photographers and video journalists around the world. AP has a disting




apimagesblog.com





Completely objectively, many of those images (from the "young flamenco dancers" onwards) are properly bloody _horrible. _

The dancers' colours are disgusting, for example - Sony's broken colour science to the rescue again - and some of them (the fisherman and the climbers, for example) are really noisy for only 1250 and 3200 ISO.

Indeed, the long jumper is hellish noisy at 400 ISO!

The 5000 ISO hurdlers image (among others) looks _hammered_ by NR.

And where's the much-vaunted low ISO DR advantage? Blocked shadows _everywhere_...

(Maybe being able to lift shadows by 5 stops to make up for a bad exposure isn't so important after all, eh?  )

If I was looking to buy a body, one look at that lot _and I wouldn't_ _go anywhere near _a Sony. They're _deeply _unimpressive images in IQ terms. They _really_ are.

But then - PJ isn't really about ultimate image quality, is it? Based on this collection, Sony seems to fit right in.


----------



## SteveC (Jul 24, 2020)

Keith_Reeder said:


> You'd have to persuade me that this was the main reason for people not buying Sony, before I'd buy the idea that Sony + AP will make any meaningful difference to Sony sales.
> 
> There _will_ be people who think about this, but I'll bet it's not a significant number of potential buyers. Most will buy whatever YouTube or the guy in the shop tells them to (if they're new to photography); otherwise the support question (which is valid, no dispute about that) will just be one part of a bigger puzzle.
> 
> ...



Fake cameras for fake news!!


----------

