[obican]

 

    However, there is one overriding factor in Sony's favour........ the lack of moving mechanical parts, the A9 has only the mechanical shutter to cause problems, the rest is essentially electronic, if you shoot eshutter for example there's no shutter/mirror  life issues and nothing really to prevent you blazing away on the shutter like a maniac.

 

All is not that well in Sony-land, mostly due to their excellent team (of interns who work for 3 months and go back to school I presume) responsible for the software.

 

Let me tell you a actually rather common bug that you won't read in the reviews. The dreadful EVF/LCD sensor.

 

It is well known and documented that this little sensor is horribly excited and switches over to EVF if a truck passes by behind the camera, two streets away. There is more to this story though. The sensor responsible for the switchover never shuts off.

 

Short of removing the battery, there is no reliable way of turning that thing off, it drains batteries continiously, especially if something is blocking the sensor (like putting down the camera with the lens pointing up or inside a bag). This is why most owners report battery drain overnight and very sub-optimal battery life during shooting, because their camera is drawing current from the battery even when it's turned off if the EVF is against your body or the camera is inside a bag.

 

There are reports of uninstalling and reinstalling the Remote Control App (Wireless control via phone tablet etc) fixes this. However, in order to do that, I have to update the firmware which will bring me more problems because now the aperture won't stay open during focusing due to another feature implemented via firmware.

 

You see, Sony may have no moving parts but they have still found ways to make the camera owning experience frustrating, especially when you consider Sony won't fix any issues related to the older but still in production cameras like the first A7 series.

 

Service won't be able to do anything because this is purely a software issue. 

 

 

Meanwhile, my Hasselblad and girlfriend's Rolleicord with all those moving parts are spending time in the hands of a qualified serviceman to ensure a few more decades of contuniued performance.

 

It's not the lack of existence of moving parts, it's the mentality pretty much all modern companies have. The mentality that the customer should be forced to get rid of their gear for new ones as often as possible, by any means necessary.