Sony Alpha 900

Today I received the new Alpha 900, a 24Mpx full frame beast from Sony. While the specs showed promise and the cam delivered in final resaults, there are things I dislike in this cam.
It starts with the design. Thin(er) and deeper grip (while you might thing this is a good thing, it's not really. You have to work more with your fingertips, then the whole fingers and until you're not used to this, it does make it awkward to have a good grip on the cam), proprietary hot shue, awkward compact flash slot (CF slides out only about 5mm from it's slot. While this might make it a bit more secure, it's also a pain to get it out if you're in a hurry or have gloves on. It's almost impossible.), button layout, two hand start (on/off button is on the left side of the cam, so when you pick it up and hold it with your right hand, you can't turn it on as well, have to use the left hand as well), way to basic top LCD screen, strange preview options for main LCD screen, etc, etc.. Cam with a good lens, something like 24-70 2.8, is heavy, really heavy. Optional grip would help to hold it, but would also add more weight.

There are good sides as well, the viewfinder is big and bright, a joy to work with. The actual speed of the cam, from processing files to focus is impressive. 25Mpx RAW + JPG and it hardly broke a sweat in normal photo conditions. It offers dual memory slot Compact Flash Type I & II + MemoryStick Duo, but sadly no saving options like duplicate or backup.
Images are mostly great straight off cam. It does produce a bit warmer tones, but that can be easily fixed. Same with auto white balance.

Once you get used to the buttons, the menus, have the settings to you liking,.. it's easy and fun cam to use.

Nikon D700 quick ISO test

Here it is, my precious, the Nikon D700 :)
First day since I got the demo model, weather sucks, so I did some ISO tests.

All shots done on a stand, 50mm 1.8 lens at f11, 1/250, flash into umbrella
All done with ISO NR OFF, jpg fine, cropped to 1500x1000px, save with PS CS3 default "save as" option, quality factor 10.

More will follow..

ISO 200


ISO 400


ISO 800


ISO 1600


ISO 3200


ISO 6400


ISO 12800


ISO 25600



Similar to D3, D700 works great in high ISO. Even when the noise is visible, it's really nice and soft. They really did a great job with this. Remember, all this are with NR OFF.

Sony Alpha 700

After I finished with the Nikon D3, I received Sony Alpha 700. It's a strange feeling when you have a pro camera and then switch to middle class camera. Everything seems odd and strange.
Personally I don't like Alphas design (or Dynax for that matter). They seem odd, long, brick like to me with too many buttons. The height of the body is low(er), so it's a bit hard(er) to have a good grip in it if you have big(ger) hands. The grip itself is quite good, it's bigger then most cams have. The shutter button is positioned way on top, so you often have to stretch the finger quite a bit to reach it, especially if you used the command wheel before that. Steady shot (VR) is a good thing, LCD is very nice as well.
Alphas have the same optical sensors that Canon and Nikon have adopted, the ones for focus, shutting off the LCD when you position the cam close to your eye, rotating menus on LCD screen. I don't like that. The rotating screen didn't perform that well, sometimes it got "stuck" in one position and I had to really turn the camera hard so it would flip. I turned off focusing sensor straight away, it was annoying. It wanted to focus anytime the sensor was triggered, either by looking through the viewfinder, by moving the hand too close to it, piece of clothe or neck strap. Same goes for shutting off the LCD when focusing. In a way it's useful, bright LCD can be annoying when trying to focus in dark places, but you can turn any LCD off by pressing the shutter button. Do we really need a sensor for that?!? It's really annoying when you're looking at something on LCD, then trying to wipe the dust or rain drop off and it shuts off because the sensor was triggered.
But anyhow, all those things don't really effect the picture, so you have to make up your own mind if you like the design of the camera or not.
As for the picture quality of A700, I have mixed feelings. Sometimes it did a really great job, even when I thought it wouldn't, sometime it made a mess even with the most basic setup. Metering cosed quite a bit of problems, most of the times it underexposed, but that can easily be fixed really.

Example: mode A, ISO200, matrix metering, f8, 1/200
Too dark, by full stop.

Here it performed much better. Correctly exposed the church and the sky was well exposed as well. ISO200, f4, 1/2000, matrix metering.


This setup caused some focusing problems. Small object on simmilar background.. even 1.4 lens didn't help much. But it did manage at the end and I'm happy with the result.


As for the ISO tests, I'll post them later. I can say, up to 800 there practically no noise. Beyond that the noise reduction is a bit heavy for my taste, it did make the image smooth, but lost quite a bit of details along the process as well.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the image quality. The main negative issue is (what it appears) standard underexposing. But that can be easily fixed. Dynamic range is good and colors are well saturated and presented even straight out the camera. ISO noise is good in the lower settings, a bit to much reduction at high settings (have to ask yourself, how often do you even use ISO1600?). There's no Live View, personally I don't miss that.
Sony seems to be getting a firm grip on things and is moving up the ladder really fast. With all new gear announced to come out this year, Nikon and Canon have a new, strong competitor. And that's a great thing, mostly for us consumers.