Originally posted by aleonx3 This doesn't make sense, you mean Nikon (as a customer) has a first dip into Sony's new sensor before Sony put it in it's own A7R later?
That's a complete misunderstanding of Sony.
Sony camera business is a relatively unimportant department within Sony and shortlisted to be sold out.
OTOH, Sony semiconductor (with imaging sensors as their most important segment) was promoted to strategic role. They have more than 50% market share worldwide in imaging sensors and are a multi billion dollar business.
That's like thinking Intel not giving a chip to Apple because Intel
may want to build a few computers themselves ...
The D800 sensor went to nikon years ahead of Sony using it (the D800 was delayed at least a year), The D810 sensor isn't used anywhere within the indistry elsewhere (and it is a much better sensor with almost twice the full well capacity).
And the new stacked image sensors will be sold too.
I assume one of the driving forces behind the new stacked sensors (which contains an embedded image processor) is to get an even bigger share of the camera components market. It will be more difficult to adopt for Nikon or Pentax because it requires substantial changes to their firmware. But given the significant advantages, they'll do so sooner or later.
It makes no sense whatsoever to assume that Sony poses any restrictions on sensor supply to camera vendors.
---------- Post added 11-06-15 at 22:06 ----------
Originally posted by thibs I don't agree. Lossy RAW means useless RAW. How can this be RAW if it is no RAW? No Thank you. RAW is already manipulated enough as it is.
sRAW though, combining pixels, saving space and computing power but, at least potentially, allowing better DR is a WAY better possibility IMO.
I strongly disagree.
It is true that the compression scheme used by Sony is unfortunate. It can produce visible artefacts in post-processed images. However, it is reported that Sony management recognized the fact and promised to escalate the matter to engineering for a (possibly optional) solution. Not easy because it requires all raw converters to adapt.
On the other hand, most of the bits within a raw file are random for physical reasons. It can be proven mathematically that no information is lost if only their statistical properties rather than every bit are stored. And random bits be restored upon load.
It is possible although I am unaware of anybody actually doing it (maybe, I should publish a paper about it?).
But the religious beliefs that RAW must remain uncompressed (or lossless compressed) are lacking a real reason.
sRAW, on the other hand, are a complete mess and it is these formats which should be eliminated. Nikon sRAW esp. is a ridiculous format.