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Comment by dofm | Hacker News Reader

I am deeply ambivalent about Sony.

I have had three mirrorless Sony cameras (albeit two secondhand), and I think they made what is one of the low-key best hobbyist cameras of its class ever [0], and I don't even much mind their current camera software, which I installed somewhat reluctantly.

But back on the distributable content side, this is a company that hacked customers' PCs with a rootkit. They are a big enough and clumsy enough company to make bad decisions regularly.

[0] the NEX-6, a true joy that I would recommend to anyone who wanted an old knockabout camera even now, though even fourteen years since it was released, its used prices hold up almost too well because I am clearly not the only person who thinks it is lovely

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I guess it's worth pointing out that Sony (the conglomerate) isn't one company. It's a whole lot of companies. The gaming related part is called Sony Interactive Entertainment (headquartered in San Mateo, California). Movies are done by Sony Pictures Entertainment (headquartered in Culver City, California).

The ones making cameras are Sony Corporation (headquartered in Tokyo).

As far as my understanding goes, the Japanese part is pretty good, while the people in California have lost the plot.

> the people in California have lost the plot

I say this constantly about many topics.

Californians are a super different breed

> I have had three mirrorless Sony cameras (albeit two secondhand)

Wait wait wait. Secondhand you say? We need to dig into that now. Was it a purchase by a binding agreement? Was it an original camera or did the owner made a 3D-printed copy? We have more questions, hold on... :P

I have the receipts. I've always retained them for the deposition. :-)

(It is, of course, not really out of the question that the first sale doctrine will always completely cover things like subscription-upgradeable cars and cameras)

Sony broke the Canon/Nikon duopoly of professional, digital cameras. They put out a mid-level mirrorless camera and rode it out. Today, I see Sony kits everywhere like on sidelines, press pools, and studios. But I'm not a Sony investor, so maybe like you, there's not much personal interest beyond "Wow, they made a great business decision."

They did something really different actually: they put out a product that wasn’t ready and allowed the market to shape how it was used.

More or less the pure fantasy of digital cameras: a sensor in a box with a computer, screens and a lens mount. The nearest thing to no lock-in at all that doesn’t need to be mounted on another camera to work.

But the initial reviews of the first two NEX models were devastating because it was a very unfinished concept.

They had the sense to listen to complaints, implement decent focus-peaking as soon as possible, not to get too much in the way of people who were prepared to buy one to experiment with, and fix the product iteratively.

So now we have what even micro-four-thirds could not have achieved: larger and larger lens-mount-ambivalent capture boxes that don’t suck too badly.

They still IMO are not great sculpted finessed cameras, but somehow a couple of them have real charm.

The fact that the same brand is stuck to it as was stuck to digital media whose producer was so desperate to control its uses it would essentially commit crimes to do so, has always struck me as unusual.

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Buy and enjoy their cameras while avoiding their software as much as humanly possible.

Oh, I do. I mean part of what is so great about these cameras is their everyman quality — plus secondhand availability.

There is a Sony mirrorless camera at essentially every secondhand price point you can imagine.

At heart, I am a Nikon guy. My wallet, though, is a proper little Sony fanboi.

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