One of the largest, and well respected press agencies, Associated Press has just announced an exclusive partnership with SONY for all their photographic needs (Still & video).
While I can see, from a purely ‘mechanical’ point of view, the advantages with everyone using the same basic setup, I can’t help thinking that this sort of exclusivity can only lead to the AP photographers being tied to the whim of SONY who may or may not ‘lsiten’ to it’s user base regarding future developments – with a captive audience, there is always this risk.
The current situation is far from ideal as the market is changing rapidly with the advent of the mirrorless camera, and that’s why I think it’s good to ‘use’ this competition between manufacturers to get the very best from any particular innovation, or more, proposed innovation.
Canon, Nikon and Sony make some extremely good picture making machines – but all with sublte différences that professional users use to their advantage. The simple fact that you can all share batteries or lenses if you’re all using the same camera only really comes into play at sports events covered by numerous ‘pool’ photographers (The Olympics comes to mind – however, both Canon and Nikon go to great lengths to provide professionals covering the Olympics with enormous amounts of ‘loaned’ camera Equipment – will Sony do this?)
This is obviously terrifc marketing for SONY, and I wish them well – however it would be interesting to get the point of view of a few of the AP photographers pool…