Various sources have told Sony Alpha Rumors that an A7S is coming on Sunday “in Las Vegas”. It isn’t hard to figure out what is starting in Las Vegas this weekend. If the rumours are true the Sony A7S will be at NAB 2014 – the largest video, broadcast and cinema trade show of the year.
Is Sony about to give us a ‘full frame GH4’?
Both Rudi at Slashcam and I think this could well be the case. Why announce a stills camera update at NAB? By coincidence a few days ago when I picked up the Sony A6000 a Sony manager mentioned 4K and A7R in the same sentence. Apparently he was told by one of the company’s Japanese engineers that the A7R had 4K capability all along but not the heat dissipation or power economy to make it go continuously and reliably.
Processors get more power efficient all the time and cooler… The GH4 runs incredibly cooly, isn’t too expensive to manufacture and preserves battery life as if it is recording plain old 1080p!
Usually the “S” stands for superior and we know Sony have plans for 4K DSLRs and mirrorless cameras in the pipeline to help encourage their big push into consumer 4K. Note consumer not just pro! Sony already have some well established pro 4K video and cinema offerings.
At the start of the 1080p era Sony were instrumental in pushing HD as well. Sony need people to go out and buy 4K TVs to revitalise a huge industry.
So far all this is speculation and it should be treated as a rumour, but an E-mount full frame 4K mirrorless camera would be at the very top of my shopping list.
Let’s see what happens as the NAB show gears up from today onwards. Sunday is just a few days away and I think we’ll be hearing a lot more, and not just from Sony…
