Yesterday, November 14, 2019, Sony released a repair recall for one of their professional lenses – the 16-35mm GM. The f/2.8 lens was released back in 2017, and since then it stood our for it’s high build quality and sharpness.

The phenomenon

Sony says that “some SEL1635GM FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM E-mount lenses may cause the camera to not operate correctly when the lens is attached”.

Sony “will repair your Affected Lens, free of charge, until March 31, 2023”.

Affected are lenses with serial numbers between 1800502 and 1823192 but not all lenses within the serial number range are affected.

On October 3, 2019 Sony announced the second iteration of their flagship full frame camera – A9II. Looking at the specifications we get the impression that it is just an incremental upgrade over the A9. Or is it?

On July 17 Sony announced the 4th generation of their Alpha 7R camera. This came a bit as a surprise because everyone expected any of the new A7SIII, A9II or A7000 models first. Instead, Sony surprisingly launched the A7RIV. Yes, we all know what is the “big deal” of this new camera – the 61 Mpx, which gives us better details, ability to print bigger, better opportunities for crop, and may be the new sensor will give us better dynamic range and lower noise, despite the higher resolution. The technology changes, right?

You can find the specifications everywhere, so I will not waste your time by listing all of them here again. For those who want to read them, here is a link to the Sony official Product specifications page. Instead, I would like to share with you my own thoughts about this announcement, the overall Sony strategy, and of course if I think A7RIV is a worthy upgrade over the A7RIII. Stay tuned… start in 3, 2, 1…