Sony Dear Sony. Would you mind fixing your cameras firmware thread.

BlueBill

Rookie
Sony like all other camera manufactures seem to be very shy about putting out firmware updates. I'm starting this thread with a wish list for your Sony Alpha cameras.

1. Automatically disable RAW when a mode doesn't support it, of course re-enable it when RAW is supported.
2. Add the two shot background blur as seen in many of Sony's Cybershot P&S cameras.
3. Add FTP and or WebDAV to your in camera WiFi photo uploader app (are there any third party Sony app developers?)

Feel free to add your thoughts and suggestions.

Don't worry I'm not holding my breath for Sony to actually respond, but note to Sony: doing firmware and feature updates will cement brand loyalty.
 
1-user selectable minimum shutter speed in auto iso mode;
2-film bracketing (or color space or whatever the heck call being able to shoot normal, b&w and vibrant at same time);
3-user selectable aperture in pano mode
 
...glad I use Fuji and Ricoh...



Sent from another Galaxy

Do Fuji & Ricoh send out firmware fixes or actually add updated features? How often have they done this? For which models?

edit: Kudos Fujifilm, some firmware updates add features and may actually gasp be a full OS upgrade! Sony are you listening?
 
Yes, for the GR series (Ricoh) and the Fuji X series, regularly. Examples - when I bought my X-E1 it did not have focus peaking. Now it does. When I bought my GR it didn't have a 47mm crop mode - now it does. Both manufacturers have introduced a plethora of improvements through regular firmware updates, including for cameras that have been out for a year or more. I am not being sarcastic, I genuinely have no complaints, only praise for both manufacturers - they listen to their users and introduce improvements on a regular basis. Your experience with Sony is not the rule.

Sent from another Galaxy
 
1. Automatically disable RAW when a mode doesn't support it, of course re-enable it when RAW is supported.
2. Add the two shot background blur as seen in many of Sony's Cybershot P&S cameras.

1-user selectable minimum shutter speed in auto iso mode;
2-film bracketing (or color space or whatever the heck call being able to shoot normal, b&w and vibrant at same time);
3-user selectable aperture in pano mode

Some great ideas. For me min shutter speed is the biggest want. Right now I'm stuck using the RX100 in Pet mode to get 1/250. Background de-focusing would be cool but pigs would fly before that happened.
 
I'm actually going to Sony's Toronto head office for a NEX meet up on Monday. Although I expect any conversation about firmware enhancements will fall on deaf ears I'll ask anyway.

I'm not familiar with the minimum shutter speed limitation. What is it and where would it be handy?
 
wow thats great and so good of you to want to discuss with them.

as to your question, when using the 'auto iso' feature, most other companies allow the user to set a specific minimum shutter speed they want to use before the camera moves to the next highest iso. presently, sony has it so the camera makes that decision, eg, on the rx1 its inalterably set to 1/80 second. so at whatever aperture i'm using, if the scene calls for metering of 1/60 second, camera will automatically go to the next iso that will yield 1/80 or faster SS. if user wants 1/125 or 1/300 or 1/25, or anything but 1/80 as their minimum SS they cant use auto iso.
 
This is basically what a good, customisable Auto ISO logic system should look like:

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Incidentally the one shown above was added as a firmware update to an existing camera.
 
Sony like all other camera manufactures seem to be very shy about putting out firmware updates. I'm starting this thread with a wish list for your Sony Alpha cameras.

1. Automatically disable RAW when a mode doesn't support it, of course re-enable it when RAW is supported.
That was my biggest gripe in the NEX-5N and it's still there in the RX100. It was a real pain in the NEX (see what I did there??) because of the menu system; not such an enormous irritation in the RX100 as you can have RAW/JPEG on the Fn menu - but still annoying. As someone who spends a lot of time programming, I would consider this a bad example of not thinking through how the end-user might actually use your software.
 
Ahh, brilliant. What camera is that and where did you get the add in firmware?

That's the Samsung NX300. At it's releases the option to customise the Auto ISO logic was nada, nothing, so this was a big change. Firmware updates for Samsung are available from their various websites as I guess all the camera makers do. As far as I know the ability to choose from such a large range of minimum shutter speeds and also to adjust how the camera calculates a minimum shutter speed based on focal length is also shared by some higher end Nikons. Possibly some other brands/cameras as well but I'm not sure.
 
At least with the A7 (assume A7r also), Sony now gives the ability to use Auto-ISO in Manual mode. This is working well for me, though, I wouldn't say no to a firmware upgrade with a minimum shutter speed Auto ISO setting (something like my GR).
 
At least with the A7 (assume A7r also), Sony now gives the ability to use Auto-ISO in Manual mode. This is working well for me, though, I wouldn't say no to a firmware upgrade with a minimum shutter speed Auto ISO setting (something like my GR).

Yeah, they do that with the RX1 also. But it requires much more monitoring and adjusting than a good minimum shutter speed setup in A mode. Take your pick - if you shoot in A you constantly monitor and adjust the ISO, if you shoot in M you constantly monitor and adjust the shutter speed. With a good minimum shutter speed provision for using auto ISO in A mode, you simply set the parameters and the camera does the rest. For my purposes, a good auto ISO implementation in M mode isn't nearly as useful as in A mode. It's the next best thing, but it's a very distant next best...

-Ray
 
Seems my NEX 6 when in JPG+RAW mode doesn't complain about RAW when shooting sweep panorama. That's a good thing. I'll still mention all the other issues to the Sony rep on Monday.
 
I'm sort of with Bill on this even though I am now an A7 convert.

What the Sony needs is good old TAV mode, as far as I am concerned.

LouisB
 
I'm sort of with Bill on this even though I am now an A7 convert.

What the Sony needs is good old TAV mode, as far as I am concerned.

LouisB

I'm not sure what good "OLD" TAV mode is like, but the RX1's manual mode can work pretty much just like the TaV mode on the current Ricoh GR, except that it also allows you to set a floor and ceiling for the auto ISO, which you can use or not, at your discretion. And exposure comp is fully operational in manual mode with auto-ISO, so I think it's basically the same thing. I'd still really like a minimum shutter speed in Av mode with auto-ISO, but the manual mode auto ISO implementation is about as good as it gets in my experience. I'd assumed the A7 / A7r did this the same way. The RX10 does. The RX100 and Nex models don't, however, with no auto ISO in manual mode, or at the very least no exposure compensation...

-Ray
 
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