The Sony A9 E-mount we told you about not so long ago might be fake

Jul 26, 2014 07:01 GMT  ·  By

The rumor mill is often hectic with the information it provides us, and as we have seen countless times before, it turns out to be unreliable at times.

Not so long ago, we were telling you that a Sony product going by the code name WW023482 had been spotted on the website of Indonesian agency Postel.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the mystery camera was apparently the Sony A9 – a high-end mirrorless camera. The codename that came attached to the product is quite similar to the one used to identify earlier products such as the A7, A7R, and A7S.

Well, it appears that everything is getting completely turned around a few days later. According to a new source that naturally decided to remain unknown, cited by Sony Alpha Rumors, the upcoming Sony FE-mount camera is actually a low-end shooter, not a high-end one like it was previously claimed.

And by the looks of it, this new information does fit in the picture of the current Sony camera portfolio much better. After all, the A7R is already a high-end model, and for the time being there’s no valid reason why Sony would want to replace this product just yet.

We should note that the camera embeds a 36.4-megapixel sensor, and to bring out a camera with a better technology seems quite unlikely at this point.

But now that we have this information claiming that the new mirrorless camera will be a low-end device, we can correlate it with an earlier patent that was filled by Sony.

The company previously patented an interchangeable lens camera with a full frame sensor that gives off NEX-5 series vibes, so our new mirrorless might be just a new member of this particular family.

The new source goes on to mention that the new camera will be quite minimal compared to its larger brothers. In all possibility, the new camera might even arrive without a built-in electronic viewfinder.

So, given what we currently know, it has become pretty evident that the A9 name won’t be used as a commercial name for the camera uncovered in the Postel database.

A new designation will probably be chosen for the upcoming device, but we currently have no indication which one this might be.

Surely, rumors of new Sony mirrorless cameras coming this year have been with us for a while now and the A7S has already been launched, so if another one comes out in time at Photokina it shouldn’t come as a surprise.