Sony has no intention of notifying you what is in their camera updates

I followed up with Sony after some question marks on the battery warnings they “hid” in their firmware updates. My issues were simple:

  1. If this was to help users identify fake batteries, why is there no option to turn it off? There are plenty of after market batteries that are affected by this.
  2. If Sony were honest about helping users, why haven’t they notified users of the functionality change in their firmware description? After all, this was an “honest” attempt to help users.

Whilst I  do have an issue with manufacturers limiting third-party batteries as a whole, I have a bigger issue when they add the functionality through updates because what has worked perfectly is essentially handicapped by firmware. I also have an issue when they secretly embed this in an update, which can’t be reversed and don’t include the information in the firmware. That strikes me as pretty underhanded.

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My solution to the Sony third party battery problem

There has been a lot of fire and brimstone over the new Sony firmware that gives users an error message, sometimes at critical moments would could ruin a photo opportunity. Whether or not Sony intended it to manipulate Sony users into buying OEM, or whether it was simply Sony “helping” the public find “fake” Sony batteries is besides the point…it’s a massive inconvenience to Sony users who use third party batteries.

Some people may remember the “Don’t buy Pansonic” movement that kicked off when Panasonic disabled third party batteries. It’s a dangerous move from Sony, but they may expect to get away with it legally because they still allow the batteries to be used – they just give the users an annoying message to deal with everytime they start the camera.

Where Sony thinks they made a smart move is the cost to move systems is a lot higher than the cost of a battery, so whilst users won’t be happy, they also won’t have a choice.

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Sony and Fujifilm? What’s your battery story?

Fujifilm and Sony have both embarked down a path which concerns me. For the first time we are seeing camera manufacturers warning users not to use third-party batteries in their cameras with a nice little warning message popping up on their cameras.

Now I have no issue if there are legitimate concerns, but excuse me if I have a health dose of scepticism when it comes to believing them for a couple of reasons:

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