Sony Brings the Hammer (and not in a good way)

Taking a page straight from the Canon playbook Sony released the much-anticipated Sony A7 V. Well, the reaction has been....uh....mixed. Because in November Canon faked out Sony by NOT using the dreaded Cripple Hammer on their competing R6 III. For those who don't know the "Cripple Hammer" is the infamous habit of corporate executives to over-ride the camera engineers and intentionally cripple a camera feature in a camera model for fear that it might otherwise be too competitive with another model from the same manufacturer. The "Cripple Hammer" has long been associated with Canon, who probably has too many models in their lineup.

The feature in question now is called "Open Gate"; a strangely worded phrase to mean that the camera is capable of recording video using the entire sensor, rather than merely a cropped section of the sensor that is in the familiar 16 by 9 wide format. In this age of vertical format video (due to phones). Many creators are having to do a second crop (from an already cropped image) to get a vertical format. A crop-from-a-crop results in reduced resolution and more work for the editor. So Canon came out with Open Gate on their model and Sony DID Not. Yikes.

But it gets worse. Sony has said that most users are not interested in this feature. Well maybe they weren't five years ago, but now they most definitely are Sony. This attitude strikes as either out-of-touch or simply arrogant. Sort of, "We will tell you want you actually need peasant." This from a camera that cost more than most of the cars I have purchased. Nope this is a major face plant. You brought out the Cripple Hammer while your competitors were taking a hammer to your market share.

But WAIT (infomercial voice) there's more! Sony takes their sweet time about releasing new models. It took FOUR years for this letdown. In about the same span Canon release two new models. That's 2-to-1 for the math challenged. Will Sony be able to add this feature with firmware? Even if they could (which I doubt), their attitude says they won't. It's going to be a long four years for Sony users. - Jack