It also proved very competent with the Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 OS lens, the adaptor providing power for the OS which is fully functional, and also for auto exposure, leaving only manual magnified focusing to tackle. The OS Sigma has an internal motor for focusing on Alpha, not screw drive though it sounds and feels like it. It’s not HSM and almost certainly won’t be friends with any AF enabling update of the NEX/Lens Mount Adaptor firmware.

One lens I have obtained a coupled of sample of to experiment with, even if it means dismantling one. That is the Minolta Vectis 80-240mm f/4.5-5.6 APO, a miniature version of the 100-300mm APO made for 35mm, in the APS Vectis mount. This mount is all-electronic like the Vectis, but probably very different in the voltages required and the command protocol. But who knows? Maybe an AE adaptor with power for manual focus might be possible.

Using a Zenith 39mm (Leica type SLR) thread T-mount the Vectis 80-240mm nearly focused OK attached to the Leica adaptor of the NEX, but the bayonet was only just able to fit in a doctored T-mount and the combination with the NEX Leica screw adaptor was clearly a little too thick.

Using a Leica thread lens reversing ring (don’t ask, from my box of miscellaneous old rings and things – 49mm filter to Leica screw!) and duct tape, I was able to fit one of my two 80-240mm APO guinea-pigs to the mount within 1mm or so of correct register (38mm). It’s only taped, but solid enough. I do not want to cement the bits together at this stage.

Effectively it’s got a Leica screw mount taped as close to the Vectis lens mount as anything will allow. There is plenty of room to make a proper Vectis adaptor, with or without contact arrays at both ends and a chip to convert the signals. Without that, the lens is stuck forever at full aperture. If power could be supplied to the correct pins to enable the focus-by-wire action, that would complete the job with this Vectis lens – but other Vectis lenses don’t even have a manual electronic focusing option. As it is, wrenching the front tube round focuses the lens. Just like it did when you were fitting or removing the lens hood, a frustrating rotating front unit.

As it stands, the 80-240mm Vectis APO f/4.5-5.6 is a really neat size of lens for the NEX and Sony could do far worse than remake this in an OS version for NEX. At full aperture, performance up to 200mm is very good but a familiar softness (like the 100-300mm APO D at 300mm etc) creeps in at 240mm. For 1996, the lens is pretty amazing.

80mm wide open, http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/127009628/original.jpg for original

240mm wide open – http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/127009627/original.jpg

Close focus at around 135mm wide open (because the lens can not be stopped down):

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/127009626/original.jpg

Around 100mm, same conditions apply:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/127009625/original.jpg

And at 240mm close focus again:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/127009624/original.jpg

This lens has some really good qualities, considering it is not even mounted correctly and is definitely not correctly set up for register, which alters the way the zoom/focus correction functions. It could no doubt be made to look better by picking a flat target and a medium distance, rather than homing in on garden close-ups with too much depth for the wide-open setting.

But the bokeh effects are not too bad, the point of focus is well defined, and the lens has few vices considering the imprecision of its mounting!

- David Kilpatrick

Toru Katsumoto presents his team’s latest offering (he holds a silver NEX-3)

The entire system with accessories is to be available in June at once, no waiting for anything except the 18-200mm lens which will arrive a month later. Edit: the brochure says ‘October’ for the 18-200mm, at the presentation it was said that it would follow in a month or so. October is four months or so.

The full rollout includes – NEX-5, NEX-3, 16mm /2.8 pancake lens (NOT stabilised), 12mm wide angle and 10mm fisheye adaptors to fit this lens (£100/£120 and thus reducing the cost of w/a ownership greatly), 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS, 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS, stereo mic (no 3.5mm jack input is provided), GN7 mini flash free with each camera fits the same top thumbscrew secured accessory socket as the mic, optical viewfinder for 16mm only (£130!), and a range of bags, straps, etc plus of course spare batteries (new tiny type, £65, or bundled with aforementioned as an accessory kit for £85). The system is made in Thailand in a new Sony facility, but one fisheye converter on view was marked made in Japan.

While both use a new 14.2 megapixel sensor based on the live-view capable CMOS of the Alpha 550 and 450 DSLRs, the NEX-3 is wired to record 720p HD MPEG4 video only. The NEX-5′s main selling point to justify a higher price is 1080i HD video. It uses the AVCHD recording format, which is considered the most professional standard for consumer HD video crossing into TV and film potential uses, but also widely reviled for its incompatibility with many software players. However, NEX-5 also has an optional 1440 x 1080 MPEG4 mode which remains to be tested for the quality of HD it produces (it is a ‘stretched pixel’ mode not a cropped format).

They also offer recording to both SDHC and MemoryStick Duo Pro cards, but it remains to be seen exactly what cards they are truly compatible with; Paul Genge said ‘any modern card’ for recording time to a maximum of 29 minutes 1080i HD (more for other formats). Sony’s brochure says SD Class 4 or better. Canon claimed Class 6 SDHC cards would work with the EOS 550D/Ti2, but buyers quickly found hardly any Class 6 cards were reliable. The 1080p Canon HD video stream actually demands the best cards you can get, Class 10 SDHC.

There is no electronic viewfinder in the range on launch, composition is entirely on the new TruBlack 3 inch screen which is a match for the A550 in articulation but 55% brighter and with much higher contrast and a glass surface.

For the buyer, the body will immediately impress as it is ultra-slim, and it will easy for salesmen to remove lenses and actually show that the sensor is much bigger than the Micro FourThirds models from Olympus and Panasonic. The new Sony NEX system lenses use silent ultrasonic focusing motors and an electronically adjusted aperture. They also incorporate equaly silent floating group in-lens image stabilisation for the two zooms, with 10X efficiency Active Mode on the ‘sports and travel’ 18-200mm.

Everything from the body to the lens is communicated electronically – there are no mechanical links, and the lenses are designed to make no significant noise at all when focusin during video shooting. This is the big selling point of the NEX models; because the system has been entirely designed after the concept of V-DSLRs appeared, and is only marginally connected to an existing SLR system, no baggage has been hauled in to the design.

Click this picture for a Level 9 JPEG saved from a FULL SIZE NEX5 fine quality in-camera JPEG, taken at ISO 200, 1/8th, with the 16mm lens – the evening dinner for the European press at the Ivan Mestrovic museum-gallery in Split. Camera held on a wall for stability.

Even so, the NEX bodies will be able to operate with certain Sony lenses (or Minolta AF fit lenses). I took along both screw drive (11-18mm, 16-80mm) and in-lens motor (SAM 30mm and Sony G 70-300mm SSM) Alpha lenses in case there were adaptors to hand. The only one was a prototype – and Paul Genge said that despite all efforts, the plan to make SSM and SAM lenses work on the Alpha adapto LA-EA1 with AF confirmation had not been possible. At launch, Alpha lenses can be used with manual focus only but with aperture control possible, and full EXIF data transmission.

The NEX-5 is magnesium alloy, the NEX-3 is polycarbonate and not so elegant. The lenses used machined aluminium bright silver and matt black ‘zebra’ design, mostly silver. The lens mount is a bayonet, slightly smaller than Alpha with a mere 18mm back focus. The dual card format slot is a single, auto sensing slot not two slots.

Both cameras shoot 2.3fps with full AE and AF (25-zone full sensor area selectable points or wide zone), 7fps in speed priority mode (preset focus and exposure). They have a true high resolution sweep pan based on multiple still frames, not a video capture, which can produce JPEGs up 23 megapixels with incredible sharpness and quality (220 degree pan). There is also a video-based 3D Sweep Pan mode creating 3D Bravia compatible scrollable stereo images.

Face detection and Smile Shutter are built in; the screen is not a touch screen, but uses a clever new interface combining elements learned from mobile phone design with traditional scroll wheel and button control. An 80-subject user guide with comparison images is built in as an eBook which also pops up selected subjects as Tips. Full conventional control is also provided.

HDR uses 3 frames, and manul control allows up to 6EV difference (plus or minus 3EV) to create in-camera HDR merges. RAW shooting, RAW+JPEG, and the usual still modes are covered and the file format is ARW2.2 similar to current APS-C Sony Alpha DSLRs.

Paul Genge confirmed that the next generation of Alpha DSLR bodies would follow the NEX-3/5 and use the same video and BIONZ, but from his comments about the problems getting SAM/SSM lenses to work with contrast-detect AF, perhaps not the same AF option with live view. We shall see.

A new camcorder, similar to a HandyCam in design, will be launched in October featuring the NEX mount and lenses and adaptable to the A-system lenses. This is a definite statement, along with a firm commitment to develop the DSLR Alpha system and that the next generation of Alpha bodies will have the same video capabilities as the NEX models.

Here is the camcorder on display in proto-mockup form with NEX lenses and the E to A mount adaptor.

- David Kilpatrick

So, here is the size difference. You can see the scruffy Sony rubber grip, but that brand new Sigma with even the a few days’ handling also picks up dirt. You are looking at a lens with a 72mm filter versus 62mm for the Sony, and it feels far bigger in the hand or on the camera. The zoom action is also pretty stiff if the lens is opposing gravity – trying to zoom in while tracking an aircraft or bird in the air above you needs a strong twist, as does zooming back if you are aiming down from a high viewpoint. However, the Sigma on the level has a good feel. I just wonder what time will do to the mechanism. The zoom lock only works at 18mm, as expected. It is positioned very close to the AF/MF switch which in turn is above the Optical Stabiliser on/off switch. With the camera to the eye, I sometimes operated either one of these when trying to hit the zoom lock release, most often the AF/MF switch.

Although the Sigma is HSM, do not confuse this HSM with the version found in the 70-200mm f/2.8 Sigma, or with Sony SSM. The focusing ring moves, to start with, and has no direct manual focus over-ride. To use manual focus you must switch the lens from AF to MF using the lens switch, not the switch on the camera body, or indeed the AF/MF toggle-hold button. All body controls for auto or manual focus are disabled and you can not turn the focus ring on the lens unless you switch to MF on the lens itself.

It is similar in operation to Sony SAM though the HSM motor is in a different class to whatever Sony has chosen put inside their SAM lenses. Focusing is moderate in speed for long travel (a typical HSM thing) but very fast indeed for tiny incremental adjustments. It is quiet as well. I would not swear that the Sigma is faster than the Sony with its mechanical drive, but it is much smoother in use. It certain gives the impression of being faster, and focusing is extremely accurate on our A700, A350 and A380 bodies alike. The focusing ring only needs about one-eighth of a turn from ‘beyond infinity’ to the closest (45cm, 18″) setting. The zoom ring uses a quarter turn and is well marked from 18 to 135mm with focal lengths 18, 24, 28, 35, 50, 80 and 135. Between 135 and 250mm there’s barely 15mm of scale and attempts to set a guessed focal length like 200mm could be wildly inaccurate.

Apertures appear to be f/3.5 until just under 24mm, f/4 from 24 to 35mm, f/4.5 to around 48mm,  f/5 from 50mm to 75mm,  f/5.6 from 80 to 135mm, and from then on f/6.3. These are not sudden jumps, of course, just the closest the camera can report to a continuous change in maximum aperture. This is a good result, especially at the wide end where having a true f/3.5 from 18mm to 23mm is unusual.

The lens itself comes with a petal hood, good quality front and rear caps, but no case. Why would you need one? This lens, if you buy it, will live on the camera all the time. The lens hood will reverse on to the lens, but should always be fitted properly for shooting. This complex zoom is no more flare-prone than any other, but it does have a very large front element which is not recessed.

When collapsed to 18mm, ideally locked to prevent zoom creep wearing the mechanism out prematurely, it’s a chunky but reasonably compact lens, comparable in size to the CZ 135mm f/1.8 or 24-70mm f/2.8 zooms for the Alpha system.

You can see here that even on the Alpha 700 body, not a compact design, the Sigma can also be an impressive weapon – perhaps attracting the wrong attention from security guards, community police, concert and sports venue staff or parents convinced you are the bogey-man or bogey-woman. Extended, it is as large as the Sigma 70-200mm (which does not change size). The double extension is very firm and not wobbly in the slightest – this is a well made lens, very solid with a metal mount.

Lens Construction – 18 Elements in 14 Groups
Angle if View (1.5X Format) – 78.5 – 6.5 degrees
Number of Diaphragm Blades – 7 Blades
Minimum Aperture – f/22 to f/40
Minimum Focusing Distance – 45cm
Maximum Magnification – 1:3.4
Filter Size – 72mm
Dimensions – Diameter 79mm x Length 101mm
Weight – 630g
SRP – £559.99

I took three cameras – the Alpha 900, Alpha 700 and Alpha 380 – and three lenses – the 70-300mm Sony G SSM, the Sigma 70-200mm EX DGII Macro HSM, and the Sigma 18-250mm EX DC HSM optically stabilised superzoom. The subject was a Scottish Under-15s cricket match held just over the road from my office, but time and the evening light dictated carrying all three together. While juggling bodies and lenses one combination, the Alpha 700 with 70-300mm G, was omitted. The Alpha 380 got tested with all three lenses. The Alpha 900 didn’t get used with the 18-250mm as it’s an APS-C lens.

But, it could have been. Although the Sigma does not auto-switch the A900 to APS-C crop mode, I could have selected that on the camera menus manually. The question being answered is one posed on the Photoclubalpha Forums. Does a crop from the A900 match using an A700 or A380? Is it better or worse?

Alpha 900 full frame 24 megapixel cropped to 10.7 megapixel results

Here is an A900 shot taken at 200mm using the 70-300mm Sony G SSM, at f/8. It was necessary to use manual exposure at preview as metering simply didn’t work with the cricket whites – 1/1250th seemed best at ISO 320. Cricket needs exposures of 1/1000th or shorter, and the lens is f/5.6 maximum aperture, benefiting a lot from that one-stop down closure to f/8. So although the sun is out, this is a situation where ISO 320 is only just high enough. It is slightly tilted, and the framing has plenty of space to allow an APS-C crop which corrects that:

Clicking this image will open a pBase file page with the option to view full size. Exactly what is full size? It is 10.7 megapixels, or 3960 x 2640. This compares with the 4272 x 2848 of the Alpha 700, and the 4592 x 3056 of the Alpha 380. There is no real doubting the quality of the Alpha 900 file, which is here processed without using sharpening, noise reduction or any lens corrections in Adobe Camera Raw. A strong tone curve and a small adjustment to white balance and black point bring the image closer to in-camera JPEG tonality.

Here is an Alpha 900 shot using the Sigma 70-200mm EX DGII HSM, again at f/8 and the same settings exactly, with the full frame:

You will notice that the batsman is more or less central in both shots, one to the right, one to the left. Single-frame AF and lock (shutter pressure) was used with the central f/2.8 AF cross sensor. Space must be left to the front of the batsman to see the ball enter the frame – this is a possibility with the fast shutter reactions of the A900, and the extra frame area. Jerking the camera in a pan movement would risk losing sharpness even at 1/1000th or faster. Therefore, the APS-C crop is not from the central sweet spot of the lens, but one edge, and in the conversion below I have used no CA correction, sharpening, or NR etc.

Once again, click the image to go to the pBase full sizer option. There is no doubt, after shooting a few dozen of these cricket shots with all three cameras, that the Alpha 900 enabled me to time my single exposures almost perfectly every time. The extra space round the subject gace more room for the ball to be shown in-frame, and to see it arriving even if the bulk of the camera prevented my ‘second eye’ observing the bowler – I had to time by sound as well as vision. In nearly all cases, the sound of my shutter firing reached my ear before the sound of the ball on the bat.

To experiment, I did try some 5 fps sequences as well. These were fascinating in that they showed the speed of reactions of the batsmen moving off for a run when the ball was only a yard or two off the bat (they could tell whether it was going in the right direction!) but in most cases no single shot was as accurately timed as a one-off. Within three frames, the ball could be six feet in front of the batsman, disappear behind the bat and appear six feet behind. To capture something as simple and static as a young amateur batsman in action, something more like 15 frames a second would be needed. I also tried 3 fps and the Alpha 380′s modest 2.5 fps. That mainly missed the moment entirely!

Here, finally from the Alpha 900, is a full frame taken with the 70-300mm SSM lens set to 300mm – using the benefit of 24 megapixels fully:

Here, my timing was a little early because I had to use judgement with no chance to see the ball entering the viewfinder. Again, click to visit a full 24 megapixel file from this shot. The 70-300mm SSM G is very free from CA and the ‘neutrally processed’ image is very clean. Because of the shutter speed involved, SSS was turned off for all these images. If I was shooting sport with the A900, I would always use full frame, and never use the manual crop option. The chances of getting some action within the frame, rather than too close to the edge or cut off, give the full frame a real value.

Now we move on – to the Alpha 700.

Sony is causing me problems because I prefer to buy products to test – it removes the ridiculous one or two week windows allowed for loan review kit, which often coincide with some very busy period making it impossible to give the gear adequate attention, and in Sony’s case would be many weeks after first availability as the consumer magazines take priority. There is a threat that three more Alpha models will appear this year (the Alpha 500, 550 and 850). I’m running out of cash to keep up with this!

The Alpha 380 is a replacement for the 350, a 14.2 megapixel compact DSLR with Live View. I already own a 350 and find it useful because the excellent resolution is combined with an impressive dynamic range and unusual colour palette. The pictures from the 350 have a unique appeal, and in some ways the CCD sensor is better than the CMOS of the Alpha 700 for landscape and pictorial work with fine detail, assuming you are able to shoot at ISO 100.

I had to hand over just under £600 for my 380 with 18-55mm SAM kit lens. SAM stands for Smooth Autofocus Motor, and what it appears to mean is electric motor not sonic wave-type drive. Instead of being focused via the body motor and drive coupling – which the 380 retains – the lens is operated electronically for all functions apart from aperture closure.

There was an expectation that the SAM 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6 would equal the latest Nikon and Canon lenses of the same specification and leave behind the reputation of the 18-70mm Konica Minolta/Sony kit lens. It does not feel as good as its rivals; it is a plain, lightweight item. Optically, the corners are soft at 18mm unless stopped down; the SAM focus motor is nearly as noisy as a screw drive lens when it starts up. The front rim rotates during focusing; there is no focusing scale; the mount is plastic. Redeeming qualities include very good performance from 35 to 55mm. Within this range, it’s sharp wide open and has good coverage corner to corner, together with virtually no chromatic aberration. At 18mm it is poor wide open because of corner fall off, and around 24mm it’s if anything slightly worse.

Good points include the closest minimum focus around, 25cm or a 0.34X subject scale, and class leading flare resistance. Click the 18mm, f/16 image below to view it full size (processed from raw and without sharpening of any kind, or any CA correction or de-fringeing). You can just find the flare if you look had, and the sun was immediately out of picture top left with no lens hood.

Light sources included in-frame throw up no reflections, and the rear of the lens is extremely well blackened with some kind of matt coating on the plastic. A lot of attention has been paid to killing internal reflections and boosting contrast. You can probably tell from the studio shot below how dense the matt paint applied to the plastic round the rear element assembly is. Note added Aug 9th – looking at one other review of this lens, it does not appear to have the same matt finish applied to the plastic as in my sample.

The close-up ability makes it the closest focusing lens in the entire Alpha system except for the Macro 100 and 50mm designs.

Above, you see the Sony SAM 18-55mm at 55mm and closest focus, used with the pop-up flash, to the left; and to the right, the Nikon 18-55mm VR at its closest focus. The coin is a GB pound coin, and is gold in colour – the Sony colour rendering is more correct. They have made the flash pop up higher on the A380. Combine this with the smaller 18-55mm lens, and no hood supplied – result, one third life size macro shots with full flash illumination and no shadow cast by the lens/hood.

The end result is a lens which will produce very good looking snapshots and really does not need the lens hood which is no longer supplied. Sony has cut costs; you don’t get a proper rear lens cap, just a ‘milk bottle top’ as it has been dubbed, and you don’t get a lens hood any more. I bet it’s all down to market research – they went out and observed users, only to discover that over 50% of users leave the lens hood on, backwards.

Here’s an 18mm wide angle close up in the field (literally). Click the image for pBase full size (again, please note, NO sharpening or corrections have been applied – you see exactly what the lens and camera produces).

And here is a 55mm version. Basically, this little lens is pretty good to use. This shot is wide open at f/5.6 too. All the example pictures in this article reproduced this size can be clicked to visit the full size original and view the EXIF data.

Why so much focus on the lens?

Well, the camera body was already known before delivery to be a cut-down version of the A350 in terms of size and dedicated controls. The 18-55mm lens is the first of a new line of SAM optics, a brand new design. It is supposedly more a Sony product than earlier kit lenses (just as the 16-105mm is). While the lens is definitely a better performer you certainly don’t need to replace a proven 18-70mm with it (they vary, and so it appears do the new ones, as other reviewers have not found the same edge-of-field softness from 18-28mm as I have on this sample). The new SAM 30mm ƒ2.8 macro and 50mm ƒ1.8 portrait lenses look more interesting, and they may well have quieter motors. Note added Aug 9th – apparently they don’t, just as basic.

18mm, good geometry, hand-held 1/80th with SSS – it’s not stunningly sharp and even at f/8 some fall off can be seen. But CA is very well controlled (bright sky edge to arch shows a trace) and distortion on this subject is acceptable.

18mm at f/8 again, here you can judge the uncorrected CA a bit better and also see how well the Alpha 380 has handled the grass texture (something which many popular DSLRs turn into mush). The trees against the sky are also a good test, here the new lens is doing better than a typical 18-70mm Sony under the same conditions.

Here you can see where the lens falls down at 18mm – that curved horizon and the curved base of the interpretation sign. But the sharpness (at f/10 in this case) is really pretty good and stopped this far down the corners are as good as the centre.

Here, the 55mm performance at f/8 shows up pretty well. Bear in mind if you go to view this full size that it’s focused on the seated people and re-composed. There is some loss of sharpness to the corners mostly at the top, indicating a slight field curvature which benefits the tub of flowers in the bottom right.

If this lens was significantly better from 18-28mm wide open, felt better built and the SAM motor was not so noisy when starting up and parking it would be a closer match to the competitors’ designs.

My experience with the lens was influenced by the A380 finder. The Nikon D5000 finder is similar in size, but whether it’s down to eyepoint or brightness, is slightly better to use with the identically specified Nikon 18-5mm lens. The A380 finder should be similar to the A350 but it seems to react to small apertures by getting very much dimmer. As you zoom the 18-55mm from 18mm to 55mm, on a sunny day, it looks as if the sun has gone in suddenly. This has had me checking to see whether the sun really had gone behind a cloud. The dimming effect is more noticeable than on any other DSLR finder I’ve used.

This lens is an excellent match for the Alpha 900, not only in size (comparable to the Sony 70-200mm SSM) but in the Zen black finish and overall heft. I make no apologies for testing the lens mainly in the A900, because it is in overall field coverage that the optical advances have been made. Both the Nikon (due to be replaced) and Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 designs are biased to APS-C/DX format, sacrificing some peripheral field resolution especially when pulled in to close focus range at 200mm.

The Sigma design not only has closer minimum focus (1m versus 1.2m for the Minolta-Sony design) but a much flatter focus field at this distance. While peak central resolution lags slightly behind the marque lenses, edge and corner sharpness is way ahead for studio product, flower, small animal, found object, large insect and similar close-range work. It can be argued that this type of work is irrelevant to a fast 70-200mm zoom. Well, not for me. I prefer my lens once fitted to handle all distances acceptably.

While the field is extremely flat, distortion is present, as can be seen in this carefully lined-up 200mm close focus study. But this is by no means excessive distortion for 200mm, especially at close range. Some correction in Photoshop deals with it anyway:

What you see here is ‘where the Minolta-Sony 70-200mm SSM could not go’ on the A900. The focus was not quite so close, and the loss of outer field sharpness made subjects as technical as this unsuitable. Nice soft flower shots with blurred outer fields were no problem, but they are fine with the Sigma 70-200mm too. It has good smooth bokeh, with a hint of ‘colour bokeh’ linked to a fairly high level of chromatic aberration. This is a sharply rendered deviation in image size between R, G and B channels and once corrected from raw using ACR or Lightroom is invisible. Despite the APO designation the Minolta 70-200mm is not free from CA either.

Users have made comparisons with the Tamron 70-200mm, which is claimed to be sharper wide open at 200mm. It may perhaps be so at infinity, but I have used it on the Canon 50D and obtained fairly noticeable halo effects at f/2.8, getting worse at closer focus. A typical example here shows the Tamron’s wide open sharpness on the EOS 50D at ISO 200:

The Tamron bokeh is very wiry, unlike the smooth Sigma bokeh, and personally I find the aberration halo harder to live with than the slightly soft wide open image of the Sigma which is free from this kind of ‘glow’.

The Sigma lens uses a total of five ELD/SLD (low dispersion) elements within a complex 18-element design, and that indicates a high order of correction as their target. Assembly quality constraints probably account for any shortfall, and I have no reason to consider the Tamron assembly any more or less consistent than Sigma’s.  I don’t have any exact or similar Sigma comparison, but here is a good example of a close-up at full aperture – not in ideal lighting, or it would not have been shot wide open:

This is a 100% detail of the file without any sharpening applied for web. The full picture is:

This may also give you some idea of the bokeh of the lens, and the extremely limited depth of field at f/2.8. Both Tamron and Sigma are the same price in the UK. I bought the Sigma, after testing it earlier on Nikon D3, which allowed me to see how it handled the close-up range. I also bought the 2X HSM converter (though I notice that almost two months after I did so, there are still posts around claiming that no compatible converters are available!). I have tested several third party converters with the HSM lens, and none work – not even the 8-contact digital Teleplus models. They transmit the functions, but the lens hunts and jitters wildly. The actual Sigma converter seems essential to handle the protocol correctly.

How good is the converter and lens combo? If you study the Sigma MTF charts, you’ll see that the central (APS-C) area is still much better for MTF than the edge, and that 200mm is proportionately less good than 70mm. Well, adding a 2X converter will only blow up that ‘better’ central area – but it’s also only of use in the 100-200mm range of the lens (200-400mm with the 2X). Surprisingly, the converter seems to exceed theoretical magnified resolution. Work around f/8-f/11 (sensible with any converter) and very fine detail gets resolved. It’s most effective for close work, producing an overall 1:1.75 scale from the lens’s native 1:3.5, already an impressive close up ratio.

It’s at 300mm, f/11, with the converter. But that is not really the main use of 2X on a 70-200mm. Take cricket (or if you are from a non-cricketing nation, puzzle about the appeal of cricket!). The photographer can not be closer than the boundary line, which means that on full frame, a 600mm is the perfect lens for shots of the batsman or bowler. Here is a 200mm view:

This is all you get by way of scale from the closest possible viewpoint. It’s on the A900, so of course an A700 would show a larger crop. ISO 320 and f/5 allowed 1/500th shutter speed by early evening light, this was in the last few balls of the match. I do not use motordrive (continuous 5fps + C-AF), normally single shot, and to get this and my other sample pic I only took two frames. These are all I shot. I passed this match as the last three balls were being bowled. Here is what the Sigma produced at 100%:

That’s from raw without any sharpening for web. What may surprise is the next shot, taken with the 2X converter and bumping up the A900 to ISO 640:

Again, the very fast response of the A900 – about as close to a real-time SLR like the old Contax RTS as you can get from an AF DSLR – helped a single timed shot catch the right moment. Here is a 100% size clip from the 2X converted image (400mm equivalent):

You can see there’s a bit of hazy glow here at one third of a stop down (f/6.3. But in the original TIFF before saving the file for web viewing, the Sabre name on the bat is better rendered. Putting it simply, the 2X converter is adding to the lens, not just blowing up what you might get if you shot at 200mm and used Genuine Fractals. I now use the converter a lot. I also hang the entire rig off the A900 body. I checked repeatedly to see whether the near 1500g weight was pulling on the lens mount spring, and it doesn’t. I support the lens most of the time, but don’t worry if I need to strap-dangle it for a while. It is not too big, with or without converter, or too heavy to hang loose.

Here is an example of the lens used in the studio, at 200mm, stopped fown to f/18 (I need to get my studio flash heads changed for ones with lower power options). It shows the Gold, Silver and Bronze ‘Oskar’ awards given by the Master Photographers Association each year in their annual awards, and was commissioned for their trade and member flyer literature and website. The 200mm angle stacks up the three statues neatly.

This is also destined to be made into 2m high pop-up displays, which the 24MB file from the A900 will handle perfectly.

The Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 new design is, as far as my money goes, the best current 70-200mm short of the Canon 70-200mm (which is not available in Sony fit!). I have now been using it on many different subjects, and it’s had plenty of chances to reveal weakness. It has not done so. It is perhaps a touch less crisp centrally than the Sony equivalent, but it is well under half the price (in the UK, more like a third of the price). The HSM focusing is considerably faster than Sony SSM, and this is not always a good thing as the lens has no focus limiter and can do a quick 100 yard sprint if it does miss the target. It’s as quiet as the Sony, and the whole thing feels pretty solid. The rear zoom control falls under the hand very neatly, placed close to the camera, and the focus ring is soft-decoupled so you get full-time DMF and no risk of interfering with the AF unless you want to. Additional note: I have been testing the 18-250mm Sigma OS HSM for Sony, and the HSM in this does not decouple, no manual adjustment is possible without switching to MF. Do not assume that because the 70-200mm HSM allows ‘DMF’ or ‘full time manual focus’, all other Sigma HSMs for Sony will do the same.

It comes with an excellent semi-rigid padded fabric case, shoulder strap, tripod mount (detachable, 1/4 inch thread only) and deep lens shade. The front rim is non-rotating and accepts 77mm filters.

No lens of this type is small but believe it or not, it is 1cm shorter than the Tamron and over 2cm shorter than Nikon’s black beauty.

It makes a great landscape lens as well as a portrait, sports or concert lens – I have yet to try it in a concert situation and prefer to use small glass!

So, to sum the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 HSM up:

It focuses closer than any other 70-200mm except the Tamron, and maintains a flatter field across full frame at close range. While performance of this lens will be perceived as comparable to the Sony 70-200mm at longer ranges, it offers a significant improvement at closer portrait to ‘macro’ distances.

The HSM focusing is noticeably faster than Sony’s SSM. It is incompatible with third party teleconverters even if eight contacts are present. When used with the dedicated Sigma converter(s), focus speed is not reduced and in absence of any focus limiter this can result in overshooting and hunting with difficult targets. The lack of a focus range limiter is the one single omission which reduces the functionality of the Sigma most.

Central resolution wide open at 70mm-120mm is of a very high order, with a slight loss towards the edges accompanied by visible CA. From 120-200mm, the centre and edge sharpness is more consistent but lower overall and CA is strong, requiring both red/cyan and yellow/blue corrections (typically around -40 in ACR, slightly less Y/B than R/C). Stopping down to f/4 brings the 120-200mm quality more into line with the 70-120mm range, and by f/5.6 sharpness exceeds the A900 sensor requirement across the frame at any focal length. Benefits of using aperture f/8, f/11 are mainly from increased depth of field. Settings smaller than f/11 (f/13-f/22) lose crispness as diffraction limits resolution.

Bokeh is excellent especially for close-ups at 200mm, with some visible colour effects tinting focus transitions before and behind the focus plane. Colour transmission is slightly warm with a yellow bias, not unlike old Minolta glass. Contrast is high at 70mm to moderate at 200mm at f/2.8, improving to very high at all focal lengths by f/8. Distortion shows very slight barrel at 70mm changing to variable but low levels of pincushion between 100mm and 200mm, a neutral point being somewhere around 85-100mm depending on focus distance. Vignetting is present, mainly affecting the extreme corners of the image only at the long end; it is not completely removed by stopping down.

Optical performance with the 2X converter tested is better than would be expected, with minimal CA (see below) and very slightly increased pincushion distortion. The converter is best used two stops down (working aperture f/11) for critical sharpness, or 1/3rd stop down (f/6.3) for acceptable results where the widest aperture is demanded.

Raw shooting is strongly advised to get the best from this lens, as the CA and vignetting can be fully corrected usin Adobe Camera Raw (in CS4 environment, sadly not in Elements) or Lightroom. It is possble to remove the CA from JPEGs using Photoshop’s Lens Distortion filter. Just to clarify, I also found CA was present from the Minolta 70-200mm design (equally removable) and that the Minolta Apo D 2X converter markedly increased CA.

The f/2.8 maximum aperture automatically switches on the central f/2.8 AF sensor of the Alpha 900 and 700, improving focus accuracy and speed of lock-on by 2X (the same applies to the Canon version used on Canon semi pro and pro bodies). There is no benefit on A100-A380 or KM7D/5D models. This does not affect low light focus limits, the f/2.8 sensor has exactly the same light level sensitivity as the regular sensors. It only affects accuracy (rangefinder base). Our lens does not need any micro AF adjustment on the Alpha 900.

Lens Construction: 18 Elements in 15 Groups
Angle of View: 34.3 – 12.3 degrees
Number of Diaphragm Blades: 9
Minimum Aperture: f/22
Minimum Focusing Distance: 100cm
Maximum Magnification: 1:3.5
Filter Size: 77mm
Diameter 86.6mm; Length 184mm
Weight: 1345g with tripod collar attached
SRP: £799.99 inc VAT (UK)

Walkaround tele

I have never been a real fan of 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms. I had the original 80-200mm f/2.8 AF Minolta which was wonderful, but at a time when I needed to work with rollfilm and 35mm together and tried to keep my 35mm system small and light (eventually opting to use two Minolta CLE bodies and abandon SLRs completely for travel). In 2006, I bought a Minolta 70-200mm f/2.8 SSM and converter, but the 105mm-300mm equivalent crop of the Alpha 100 and 700 made it a special purpose lens. Also, the £2000+ price at the time (now officially £1849 in the UK, but sold by SonyStyle for £1549) put me off just fitting the lens for everyday use.

The Sigma and Alpha 900 combined have changed that. The 900 is ‘medium format’ as far as results go – there is no need to carry two systems, or indeed two bodies, though any responsible digital photographer should always have a second DSLR available when travelling or working on assignment, if not two spares. The lens is the same price as my 70-300mm SSM G and gives noticeably sharper results though lacking the range. So, for the first time, I’ve started leaving the 70-200mm on the body and using it every day. By the way, those are Miniature Dobermann Pinschers encountered during the Kelso dog show week and quickly grab-shot as their owner walked towards me.

- David Kilpatrick

Footnote: since posting this review, I have looked at the dPreview test. I try to avoid looking at other tests before writing, as it can prejudice my assessment. I can only suggest that dPreview have never used other 70-200mms at ‘macro’ range, as the problems they identify simply have not been apparent in my shots. Maybe the 2X converter magically corrects the aperture-related focus shift, but I suggest there is a more subtle reason. They tested the Sigma on a Nikon body. Nikon does not use f/2.8 AF sensors – all their sensors work at a virtual aperture of f/5.6. Therefore, the focus is always correct for f/5.6 only. Yet they found the f/2.8 results apparently agreed with the AF, which is impossible using the Nikon body! Sony A700 and A900, Canon 5D, 5D MkII, and all 1D series have f/2.8 sensors which means they focus perfectly at full aperture.

This should mean that I would experience an even worse focus shift on stopping down at close range. This has not happened. The colour bokeh they mention is present, but it is cleared by normal CA adjustment. They appear to have found a fault with the lens at macro (minimum) focus when the truth is that is exceeds the performance of all other 70-200mm designs at this range.

This an f/2.8 closest focus shot from the Minolta 70-200mm SSM at 200mm, and it was taken on an Alpha 700. The curvature of field is clearly visible (softness to the outer zone), and I can assure you, it gets much worse on full frame! I did not come to reviewing the Sigma in ignorance of the weaknesses of other more expensive lenses. You can believe whatever test sites, equipped with targets and standardised lab procedures, that you wish. I used to do that stuff 20 years ago for magazines, and eventually realised that it did not tell the whole story very well. Today I take a few pix and look at them. Simple practical results can tell you more than any amount of procedural testing. That is not to say you should ignore chart-testing, and I hold a couple of German tech-lab test experts in high regard.

In reply to one of the comments below, I am adding this simple diagram which shows the effect of a curved focus plane combined with an out-of-parallel sensor. The curve, and the angle, are both very exaggerated here (a sensor 2 degrees out of true would be useless). The grey represents the acceptable depth of focus at the sensor plane – if the black line, the actual focus plane of the lens, falls within this grey zone the image will look sharp. You can see that the effect of the curved field and the out-of-true sensor in this case produce a small zone of poor sharpness to the right as seen, but with improved sharpness at the extreme right (this would be degraded by other aberrations, so the image might or might not appear equal to the middle or the adjacent zone). At the left, you will see that the curved field deviates considerably from the sensor plane and falls well outside the depth of focus. Combined with aberrations and vignetting, this will show a markedly unsharp ‘end’ of the picture.

You won’t find this diagram in textbooks because it is not part of received knowledge. It is based on observation and deduction. If any optical expert would like to challenge it, please go ahead. You may also wish to consider what happens with any lens with a curved field (that means most lenses, at one focus distance or another) when an AF-sensor module is not perfectly collimated – these can also be set at an angle. – DK 16/7/09

Backing this up was probably the best line-up of personnel you could expect to find. Paul Genge, running the live demonstrations, is beginning to reveal himself as a bit of a spiritual successor to a man he never knew – Minolta’s legendary Dick Bryant. He is discovering photographers for Sony, and nurturing them. In conversation on the stage, he made the business of presenting work easy even for those like Gustav Kiburg (kingfisher) with English as a second language. As Duncan McEwan said, Paul put his interview and demo partners totally at ease, and the result was a four-day programme of shows which worked perfectly.

This shot gives a very wrong impression of the audience! Most of the time it was impossible to get to a place to take a shot, so I had to wait until my second day of the show and at the very end of the day. Michael Wayne Plant was demonstrating tungsten lit beauty portraiture with the Alpha 900, and the aid of a large Bravia screen tethered shooting arrangement:

This is what an HDMI connection can do! Paul is pointing to the screen and asking Michael whether he always sets RAW+JPEG; Michael is about to reply with praise of Capture One v4 software, which he actually uses to give his raw processed shots a unique look (something very easily done by saving presets in C1).

Other guest speakers included Duncan McEwan and Gustav Kiburg, featured in the last edition of Photoworld. Here we have Gustav showing me his superb stack of A3 mounted prints, made by a Netherland photo lab using Fuji Pearl base paper (a kind of opal-metallic base, which looks amazing with those feather colours):

On the last day of the show, Gustav learned he had won the Photo of the Year from Dyxum.com, the Dynax-Maxxum AF system enthusiast website – http://www.dyxum.com/dforum/forum_posts.asp?TID=43032

Like all my shots here in the Stand, the portrait was taken using the HVL-F58AM flipped up for bounce with the little reflector card pulled out – an effect quite different from direct flash. On the stand, there was also an exhibition of prints:

And, of course, there were the 16-35mm and 70-400mm – the most sought-after new lenses – to be handled and viewed through on Alpha 900 bodies, plus many staff including Bernard Petticrew (ex Minolta) manning desks with more examples of the gear.

It was also on sale at the show, primarily through two dealers – Cameraworld and Jacobs. At the Cameraworld stand, I encountered this visitor carefully noting down the prices of stuff against his selected list of items. After he went, one of the sales staff said if he’d handed the list over, they would have knocked even more off the total!

This is a shot taken on my £90, 25-year-old Sigma focus confirm M-AF mount 16mm fisheye (like the uncorrected shots above) put through Pantools transform to cylindrical perspective. That’s a 70-400mm in the top right for £999 and a 16-35mm for £1099 next to it. Did I buy? No! I will admit these lenses are too big and serious for a roaming snapshooter like me (in my zoom lens guise). For serious stuff in the studio, primes do even better, and I have those.

But I did find in Cameraworld’s cabinet a 1.4X Teleplus 300 DG converter, secondhand, labelled “Mount?” and £60. It was clearly an Alpha mount, so I asked to look at it, and sure enough it even said M-AF on the side. £60 was handed over, and on returning home, I found that this high-end converter fits my 70-300mm SSM lens and permits AF without technical problems. The f/8 working aperture at the longer end requires reasonable light to focus, and for the focus limiter switch to be on.

Jacobs’ stand was even more packed with bargains:

I know you will be frustrated by this – all those boxes and no prices you can read! Try clicking the pic…

But here’s a late edit to console you – you might have been looking at the Calumet stand, with its desultory handful of beaten up old Alpha 100 boxed kits selling for prices no-one would contemplate today:

(about 50% higher than prices for similar new, pristine boxed A200 kits!)

As ever, I didn’t have enough time at the show – but not because two days is not enough. With the number of stands, and the people I know, it would be easy to spend two weeks doing what really is needed to learn about everything new.

Duncan McEwan said he had been on the Sony stand nearly all the time – hardly any chance to see the show. On the third day, they printed up a sign and opened a counter area for the featured photographers to talk to visitors. While the big draw on the Sony stand could have been equipment, it ended being photography, and photographers.

Here’s a goodbye shot of Duncan and Gustav – and those figures you can see in the background are other photographers from the lecture programme, talking to people over the counter.

Focus on Imaging ends at 6pm Wedneday February 25th, one day remaining after I post this. Though the show offers are only available at the show, I can not imagine that any dealer like Jacobs if telephoned would refuse an offer based on reading a report of the show and seeing their stock.

I also bought a £300 Alpha 350 body from Cameraworld (£299 at Jacobs, my error!) and an FA-HS1AM flash adaptor for some tests I need to run. I failed to buy a £99 vertical grip for the Alpha 350 from Jacobs, I just was not looking hard enough – and I had to resist buying one for the A900, and adding a second HVL-F58AM flash to my kit. Judging from the bags leaving the show, others had more money to budget than I did!

- David Kilpatrick, February 24th 2009, back in Scotland after a four and a half hour drive.

For over a hundred years, camera makers have tried to reduce the size and weight of equipment; to make focusing errors disappear, and pictures become sharper without needing a tripod. In the early years of the 20th century rollfilm began to replace plates; in the 1930s 35mm film took over from rollfilm, though it was to be 40 years before professional use matched amateur enthusiasm. For the snapshooter, sub-35mm formats like half frame, 110, Disc and the Advanced Photo System (APS) then attempted to supplant the full 24 x 36mm 35mm format.

The Vectis S-1 SLR – a film format, in its non-panoramic form, called APS-C . That gave its name to the sensor size Sony call DT and Nikon call DX.

When digital SLRs arrived, many formats were tried out from full frame to quarter-frame but something very similar to the APS-C (Classical) format proved economical to manufacture and offered an acceptable trade-off when used with existing lenses. Though it only used the centre 16 x 24mm of the full 24 x 36mm coverage, this central zone was and remains a ‘sweet spot’ getting the best sharpness from many optics.

Losing recent advances

The loss of wide angle coverage which resulted meant that new lenses had to be designed just for this format, though the mount fitting was inherited from existing systems. This was a challenge because the back focus distance involved demanded extreme retrofocus zooms. But it also improved the results, forcing the lenses to be more ‘telecentric’ and project the image from a greater distance on to the digital sensor. This, for technical reasons, improved the all-round quality centre to edge.

The Sony SAL 18-250mm – a DT lens with a range that has never been achieved on full frame.

While SLR bodies did not shrink to match the 0.66X reduced imaging area (1.5X factor), they could be made as small as any film body used to be – or beefed up and given professional features like 5 frames per second motordrive, which you will find in the Sony Alpha 700. Sensors improved to the point that unheard of ‘fast film’ speeds produced fantastic results. ISO 400 was no longer fast; ISO 1600 is an everyday setting and ISO 6400, never achieved by any film as its normal rating, arrived for action shots. Low light is best tackled using lower settings, but that’s another subject!

The Alpha 900′s big mirror hides a large focal plane shutter – over 35mm size – and full 35mm size sensor.

Now, along comes the economic possibility to make full frame digital sensors just five years after the first wave of consumer-enthusiast ‘APS-C’ format DSLRs. In that five years, whole ranges of lenses have been developed offering unprecedented zoom ratios and features. There never was such a lens as a 24-160mm* or a 42-450mm* for film, but digital SLR users quickly got used to just this kind of range. Once, if you bought a typical zoom like the Minolta 24-105mm D you thought it a big step forward to get close-ups at 0.18X – that’s less than one-fifth life size, on full frame. The digital replacement, Sony’s CZ 16-80mm, manages 0.24X which is better than one-quarter life size, but it does that on a 1.5X factor format – meaning it’s the same as a 24-120mm (more range) focusing down to capture one-third life size on film.

The comparison is 0.36X versus 0.18X and that means the digital lens, on the digital format, actually shoots close-ups at twice the output magnification (for the same size print, in case any pedants are reading this).

*A 16-105mm and 28-300mm when used on APS-C

Depth of field

Throughout the domain of the APS-C DSLR, the small sensor format has transformed things. For the same angle of view, a full frame film camera needs 1.5 f-stops more stopping down to get the same depth of field (sharpness in depth). So, a shot which would be sharp enough from foreground to background at f/8 on an Alpha 700 must be shot at f/13 on full 24 x 36mm.

This shot was taken at f/11, 60mm focal length. Click it to open a full 24.6 megapixel image and see just how limited the depth of field is when examined so closely!

Is that a problem? Not on its own, but it also means a shot taken at 1/125 (which freezes most facial expressions and slight body movements, if not action) would need to be taken at 1/40 instead. There is a big difference. Wind moving foliage, people walking, many slow movements in the real world are sharp at 1/125 but blurred at 1/40.

So, to regain the benefits which have been conferred by the small digital sensor, any full frame digital sensor really needs to offer equal quality at three times the ISO sensitivity figure (or 1.5 stops), just to enable the user to get back to the same actual depth of field and motion-stopping shutter speeds. This means a full frame DSLR must be as good at ISO 400 as an APS-C model is at ISO 125.

This shot was taken at the same place, but with a focal length of 22mm and aperture of f/25 – an extreme case of stopping down, with 1/8 shutter speed and tripod. Click to view the full size version.

Should that be pixel for pixel, or allow for reducing the image size? I think it needs to be absolute not relative. There is not much point at all in full frame unless you can genuinely make a bigger print or a sharper print, which means using extra pixels if offered.

There is only one good reason for wanting full frame other than this – if you actually want less depth of field. If differential focus effects, isolation of a portrait subject from a background for example, are important to you then the Alpha 900 will deliver this more readily than the Alpha 700 (or other APS-C model) under similar flash or lighting conditions.

The effects of differential focus work beautifully with colour. Since this flower was blowing around and vibrating, I need a fast shutter speed (1/250th) with the 100mm macro at f4 after sunset. I underexposed at ISO 200 and pushed the processing from ARW using ACR 4.6, by 2.3 stops plus extra brightness, vibrancy and clarity (but not saturation). It’s a noisy result without anything more than ACR default NR but I like the colour and the bokeh (remember it is effectively at ISO 1000). The A900 viewfinder makes shooting this type of subject a real pleasure even in poor light. Click to open a larger version.

The focal length factor

If you buy into the Alpha 900, you are committing yourself to a whole different range of lenses. If you buy the forthcoming 70-400mm zoom, it will not offer the same reach the 70-300mm model does on the A700. You have the option to use a cropped APS-C mode, which produces an 11 megapixel file, or to crop any full frame as you wish. That in effect more than restores your telephoto reach.

One benefit of full frame – if you don’t keep your subject dead centre in the frame, you can crop in and get as big an image as APS-C. Click on the shot for the full size 70-200mm SSM image. 1/1000s f/5.0 at 200mm, ISO 400.

But if you are shooting with a long lens and want 24.6 megapixels, the cost in size, weight and money may be prohibitive. The difference between a 200mm f/2.8 and 300mm f/2.8 shows this perfectly. The Minolta APO G 200mm f/2.8 weighed just 790g, was 135mm long, and took 72mm filters; the 300mm f/2.8 APO G of the same period weighed 2310g, was 240mm long, and needed 114mm filters (but a rear 42mm filter slot was provided).

The 200mm f/2.8 covers exactly the same field of view, at the same maximum aperture, on the Alpha 700 as a 300mm f/2.8 does on the Alpha 900. The 200 focuses to 1.5m; the 300mm can’t get any closer than 2.5m and at closest focus, produces a smaller subject scale than the 200mm does. Fortunately the last Minolta and current Sony APO G (D) SSM version can manage 2m and now beats the vintage – discontinued – 200mm for magnification.

My 17-35mm KM D lens is restored to a genuine 17mm view – and through the large bright finder, precision composition is made easy. ISO 200, f/11. Click on picture for full size.

At the other end of the scale, the wide-angles, your choices are limited. A probably superb CZ 16-35mm f/2.8 will be available in January 2009 at around three times the price of the existing 11-18mm which serves (though lacking in speed) for APS-C. And, if you consider the 10-20mm Sigma useful on APS-C, you could simply opt for the 15-30mm Sigma on full frame; it’s exactly the same range and slightly faster! Or you could choose the 12-24mm Sigma, which has no 8-16mm equivalent for APS-C.

The Alpha 900 looks entirely at home with the 16-105mm SAL DT, but in practice, it’s not… practical!

Should you try an APS-C lens on the A900? Sony say it will give incorrect exposure metering unless you use centre weighted or spot. I say that you really can’t see the APS-C frame markings in the viewfinder against most subjects. For action shots, you have little chance of being aware of the frame zone. And you can’t turn the cropping off (except with some independent lenses which the camera fails to recognise as needing a crop), and the raw file is cropped too.

For walkaround zooms, you must look at rather older designs – the 28-300mm Tamron in place of an 18-200mm or 18-250mm. Is it really worth the compromise? The whole point of walkaround zooms is convenience, and the Alpha 900 increases size and weight. The resolution and overall performance of a 28-300mm may not fit well with the full frame.

With macro lenses, the 1:1 aspect is again changed back to where it was pre-APS-C. Of course, it is still 1:1, but relative the print size the magnification on full frame is less impressive. Remember, 1:1 on the Polaroid 20 x 24 inch camera is a head and shoulders portrait – and 1:1 on a video camera is the head of a butterfly. Macro is a field where the super-bright, large viewfinder of the Alpha 900 really pays off and 24.6 megapixels can be very useful, but if you want to match the stunning closeups people have been getting on the Alpha 700 and Alpha 350 you must add an extension tube to your macro lens.

The 100mm f/2.8 Macro AF works well on the Alpha 900, but on the 700, only half this area of subject would have formed the entire picture. Click on picture for full size.

However, I should not play Devil’s Advocate all the time. The large finder of the Alpha 900 also transforms wide-angle views with lenses like the 17-35mm Konica Minolta D, to the point that you feel you have regained true wide angle composition. No matter that the 11-18mm at 11mm is just the same on the Alpha 700; it’s small, vague and dark as a compositional view compared to what you see through the A900. The 900 returns the 16mm f/2.8 fisheye lens to its true coverage and look.

It allows lenses like the Sigma or Tamron 14mm f/2.8 designs to do their job, as with Sigma full frame ultrawide zooms. Lenses like the 200mm Apo G f/4 Macro from Minolta, which is almost too long for comfort on the Alpha 700, become far more friendly. The 50mm f/1.4 is a standard once again, the 35mm f/1.4 and 28mm f/2 get their status back; so do the 28mm f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8 and Minolta 24mm f/2.8. The 85mm f/1.4 designs frame better for portraits and the 135mm f/1.8 and STF lenses can at last be used in a normal sized indoor studio.

My 50mm f/1.4 restored to its normal view! This is the Alpha 900 used for a 13 megapixel direct in-camera JPEG at ISO 1600, with +1 over-ride set to get the correct tonal quality for the shot. Sharpness (and all other parameters) set to 0 default using Standard sRGB style. Auto WB. High ISO NR set to Normal. Since this was shot with cRAW, it is a FINE quality JPEG not Extra Fine. Click to image to see the JPEG.

The flash dilemma

If you use on-camera flash, or the wireless system, the Alpha 900 will cost you real money. It has no built-in controller for wireless remote flash units, and no onboard flash. The affordable HVL-F42AM makes a decent if bulky substitute for the missing pop-up, but can’t control remote flash. The only flash which will do so is the HVL-F58AM, a superbly made and presented bit of gear but one of the most expensive camera top flash units on the market.

Your existing Minolta 3600HS(D) 2500(D) and 5600HS(D) guns, or Sony HVL-F36AM and HVL-F56AM equivalents, can be wirelessly controlled by the HVL-F58AM but only at their native power values. No controllable ratio can be set. Nor can they be assigned into ‘Groups’, a function used by ratio-lighting setting. The HVL-F42AM can be, and so can additional HVL-F58AM guns. Examine the possible costs, and you will realise that one of the expensive 58 guns is sacrificed to act as an on-camera controller from the start. It would be easy to spend £1,000 setting up a two-head wireless flash kit for the 900.

With reluctance I’ve bought a 58, because I have a 42, 56 and 36. The 58 will be most useful for solo flash on camera work, bounced light for groups, and so on. The other three can form a reasonable ‘studio’ with some control possible via the (wasted) 58 in controller mode.

But – I have also found on eBay a little Minolta 2000i flash. It’s incompatible with digital TTL and has no manual controls, so it will always fire at full power. That’s GN20 and coverage for a 28mm lens only. It has a low profile, unlike the digitally compatible Konica Minolta 2500D flash which is a mini bounce model. I’m quite capable of working out manual exposures for GN20 (f/2 at 10m ISO 100, f/4 at 5m, f/8 at 2.5m, f/16 at 1.25m, f/22 at 0.75m). For £14 it will make a neat standby in a pocket.

And then there’s the filesize!

The final question, once you appreciate that moving up to an Alpha 900 also means living with more assertive shutter-mirror action and a larger body to handle, is all about what it consumes and what it needs to support it.

First of all, Sony claims 880 exposures per battery charge. I believe this is an error; it is more than the Alpha 700 (750) despite running twin processors and having exactly twice the data to push through. I have not yet managed much over 250 exposures per full charge, shooting RAW+JPEG, and see little chance of reaching 880 under any circumstances.

A detailed image like this can be 24MB just an an Extra Fine JPEG. As JPEG+RAW, this one used over 40MB of card space – 25 shots per GB. cRAW compression saves 12MB per shot (24MB file versus 36MB file). This shot shows that at f22, the minimum aperture possible, diffraction is not ruining a 17mm view on the A900 with its relatively large pixel pitch. The point of focus is easily found, in the first third of the boat where there is some rope above very sharply detailed textured boat floor. f22 is not enough to keep the prow sharp, or the background view. Remember, when viewing this on a 96dpi monitor, you are viewing a ‘print’ over five feet high close up! Click image to go to the full size file.

You will need exactly twice the card space for the same number of shots. So, if you use 4GB cards and find they fill up on a typical day, you’ll need 8GB. However, the Alpha 900′s very clear and large viewfinder helps you avoid poor framing or timing, and the general feel of the camera promotes craftsmanship rather than random snapping. If you can begin to put yourself more into rollfilm technique mode, you may even end up being more economical with the gigabytes.

Bridge will create thumbnails for raw – with Alpha 900 images, the process of creating these (in similar programs too, like Lightroom or C1 Pro) to high quality is longer than for smaller image sizes.

Finally you have to process and archive your work. Programs like Bridge and Photoshop use hard disk space for scratch memory and cacheing previews; you can be sure that doubling the data size of every shot converted to a thumbnail, previewed to high quality, and processed in Photoshop will double the workload on your computer processor and the demands on temporary or cache hard disk space. Even if you have an efficient setup with 3-4GB of RAM available, it’s the reading and writing times for the original images and everything associated with them that will slow you down.

If you have a recent computer system, all will be well. But you may have a slightly older system which had coped perfectly with A100, A200, D5D, A700 and even the 14.2 megapixel A350 files. Start work with the A900, and it just loses that edge. So, be prepared to have to upgrade your PC or Mac in addition to the relatively minor investment needed in external HD drives for archiving files.

The package

All these factors add up. Each one alone is not too hard to reconcile with your plans for future DSLRs – but when you take them as a bundle, it can be a heavy bundle! I have not even considered the possibility that to get the most from the Alpha 900, new Sony and CZ lenses may be neeed. Though the body costs £1,800 a set of 16-35/24-70/70-400mm will add £3,000 and your ideal flash kit £1,000 more. Computer upgrades could cost you another £1,000 and so could that HDTV you covet for viewing the images at their best!

If you already own an Alpha 700 with 11-18mm/16-80mm/70-300mm you will gain one or more f-stops of aperture across much of the range, and some genuine telephoto reach. You will lose the great benefit of APS-C, a top grade general purpose zoom offering a far more useful long end than the 24-70mm does on full frame. Don’t imagine the 24-105mm can do this job; I have one, and there is no comparison. The 16-80mm CZ on APS-C is a much better lens all round than the Sony SAL 24-105mm on full frame.

The 70-300mm G SSM is a wonderful lens – free from CA and sharp corner to corner wide open – but it’s essential a consumer grade design, with distortion even at 200mm turning the horizon into a dish. Click to view the full size file.

But you may already own a 24-70mm CZ; you may have a 70-300mm SSM G which will do a moderately good job on APS-C, though with a ‘consumer’ level of distortion and vignetting. Like me you may have older 17-35mm or 28-75mm lenses and find that they work well; or real vintage stuff like the 70-210mm f/4, original macros and 50mm f/1.4 which perform even better. The Alpha 900 could reward you for keeping or acquiring such lenses by showing you what they are really designed to do.

Point of no return

This article is intended to stop you in your tracks, but not to stop you entirely! I have to own and use an Alpha 900. I could not run this website or Photoworld magazine without doing so. I also have to keep my earlier equipment. The A350 sits there with a 16-80mm on it now. The A200 has the 16-105mm. The A700 has been passed to Shirley who prefers one lens to do everything, so it now has the 18-250mm.

So what do I do? I use the Alpha 900. I use it because once you have done so, there is no going back. Buy it, and your APS-C gear will be forgotten. Your cherished CZ 16-80mm won’t get a look in, even if you can’t afford a CZ 24-70mm and end up with a budget alternative like the 28-75mm D on your new full-frame. The accuracy of the focusing before you even consider using the micro AF adjustment, or try manual focus, will make you unwilling to return to the vagueness of the APS-C focus points again.

After making a 20 x 16 Epson Stylus Pro 3880 print on Ilford Galerie Gloss premounted exhibition board media, I realise why I will be shooting with the Alpha 900 in future. 17-35mm Konica Minolta f/2.8-4 D lens at f/22; lighthouse added from a second shot, as its real position is to the left outside this composition. Click the image for a full size file. You re welcome to download and print this if you would like to see for yourself!

You will keep using the Alpha 900, and you will probably travel with it even if at first you put your lighter and more versatile kit aside for vacations and trips. Commonsense tells you that the extra depth of field from the APS-C format makes it much better for sports, family, pets, theatre, concerts and all those 90 per cent of your images where a little more in sharp focus can only help. But you’ll use the Alpha 900 instead. You may even end up with worse pictures sometimes, and be aware of it, but still unrepentant!

To conclude – you will have moved on to a different system. It may still be Alpha, and the changeover may be smoothed by Sony’s attention to keeping memory card types, battery, remote controller, cable connections, filetype, lens compatibility and the user interface consistent.

No skilled photographer who takes the step up to the Alpha 900 and full frame digital will regret it – but you need to take that step in full awareness of everything involved.

- David Kilpatrick

Unique features and key points for the Alpha 900

Full frame 24 x 36mm capture
Good compatibility with many older Minolta and Konica Minolta AF lenses
100% viewfinder at 0.73X magnification (2nd largest of all DSLRs made)
Fully corrected eyepiece allowing clearer vision of the focusing screen
20% brighter viewing image than any other DSLR
24.6 megapixel image, the highest resolution of any DSLR
5fps continuous shooting, the fastest for any DSLR over 18 megapixels
SteadyShot image stabilisation through sensor piezo movement applies for all lenses
Oversized reflex mirror gives maximum brightness and coverage for tele and macro lenses
Shutter speeded 30 seconds to 1/8,000 with X-sync at 1/250
PC X-sync socket
Alpha dedicated wireless flash system with channel, ratio and group control possible
A genuine 5 frames per second capture rate (tested)
True mirror lock-up mode, 2 second m/up timer and normal 10 second self timer
Viewfinder eyepiece backout blind
Intelligent Preview first stops the lens down for screen depth of field viewing then shows an adjustable capture on the LCD screen
Top LCD provides shooting settings summary and changes context for adjustments
Three Memory positions on the simple PASM/Auto main mode dial, like the Dynax 7D
Two memory slots with extremely fast read/write on the main CompactFlash drive
1920 x 1080 HD output and 16:9 capture mode
True cropped RAW mode for APS-C lenses (11 megapixels, 1.5X factor)
Magnesium alloy body
Weathersealed with gaskets on all controls and labyrinth design for card and interface doors
Capable of full style adjustment range in both AdobeRGB and sRGB modes
Extra Fine JPEG mode available as an alternative to raw
USB tethered shooting software supplied for both Mac and PC
Full image browsing and raw conversion software supplied for both Mac and PC
High ISO NR includes OFF option as well as Low, Normal and High

Nick Sharples: Thank you Fujio-san. I hope that leaves you in no doubt about our commitment at Sony to excellence in digital imaging, and how importantly we consider the launch of our flagship Alpha digital SLR; so it gives me great pleasure to invite Toru Katsumoto, senior general manager of our digital imaging business group, to introduce our new flagship Alpha digital SLR.

Thank you, Nick. kon-nichiwa – good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming today and I am very glad to be here together with you again. My name is Toru Katsumoto, senior general manager of Alpha mount camera division. Today the outside is very wet unfortunately, so before my presentation, because I am Japanese, I would like to teach you one Japanese word which is hare. hare is the word for weather which means sunny but if you say hare-nohi it means a sunny day – actually, it then means a day someone does a very special, honourable event in front of many people. And also, we can say hare-butai which means “sunny stage” or “bright stage” as this is, for that very important event. So today is hare-nohi or sunny day and this is hare-butai or bright stage for myself and Alpha. So even if outside is wet and dark, where we cannot say sunny in English, but we Japanese can say hare or sunny and bright, even this kind of day… so it is very bright!

So I will start the presentation. Having entered the digital SLR business in 2006 with Alpha 100, Sony has been making continuous effort to fulfill a self-imposed mission of respecting the tradition of this style of SLR camera, while making an aggressive challenge for new avenues of enjoying photography. Following the launch of the Alpha 100, which took over the Alpha mount system, we introduced the middle range Alpha 700 camera in Spring 2007.

In Spring 2008 we have launched the entry class Alpha 200. Coming on the heels of the Alpha 200 to expand our offerings were the Alpha 350 and Alpha 300. Both products are for freestyle shooting, thanks to the Quick AF Live View feature, which resolved two mutually conflicting requirements – easy shooting by live-view of the subject and quick shutter response, while retaining the digital SLR picture fully. I am very happy to remind you that the Alpha 200 has been awarded the Best Entry Level DSLR of TIPA, and the Alpha 350 has been recognised as the Camera of the Year 2008/2009 of EISA together with the 70-300 G interchangeable lens. I believe these are the proof that Sony’s DSLR system has been gaining widespread acceptance.

As you know we informed you in PMA 2007 that Sony was developing the Alpha flagship camera, and we gave you the information in PMA 2008 that the flagship camera will come to the market by the end of this year. Ever since we entered this market it has been our pledge to offer a broad product portfolio that accommodates varying requirements from entry level customers to high end camera enthusiasts. The flagship model is an inevitable addition to current DSLR offerings, to fulfill that pledge.

Today I am happy to introduce the new Alpha flagship camera! (Video with Music). (Wow! from audience).

And – this is the Alpha 900, it’s very light! (he lifts the camera to show it off). This is the Alpha 900, the high end product of Sony DSLR cameras. We hope this product will be used by enthusiasts who enjoy the art of photography where memorable scenes and moments are expressed.

The moment the photographer looks into the viewfinder of the camera, he or she will view the potential of super high resolution picture quality deriving from the sheer performance of the camera, and is bound to be inspired to capture the greatest pictures than ever before.

Another focus was to make the camera’s body light, whilst achieving all these features to facilitate frequent and spontaneous use in various photo opportunities. Thanks to its world’s highest 24.6 megapixel resolution of the 35mm full-frame size CMOS sensor, named EXMOR, and the fastest imaging processing powered by dual BIONZ image processors, the Alpha 900 is capable of creating superb images with stunning reality and naturalness.

The Alpha 900 is also equipped with the built in image stabilisation unit to handle the world’s first full-frame size image sensor offering a wide degree of photo expression. The camera is also armed with the 100 coverage large bright viewfinder with enhanced optical characteristics. Once you look into it you find yourself being pulled into the world on the opposite side of the lens. Our engineers have done a fantastic job of packing these high performance features into the easy-to-handle 850 gramme lightweight body, making it possible for customers to always carry it around and capture every great scene they may encounter.

In addition, today I would like to introduce two brand new lenses, one is the 70-400mm ƒ4-5.6 G SSM, an addition to the G lens line. Another is the Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T-Star 16-35mm ƒ2.8 SSM, an addition to the Carl Zeiss lens line. Both lenses boost high standard depiction performance which lives up to the reputation of G and Carl Zeiss lenses, while ensuring a smooth operation thanks to supersonic motor. Combined with the existing lens portfolio which includes Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T-Star 24-70mm ƒ2.8 SSM launched this Spring, and also the award winning 70-300mm ƒ4.5-5.6 G SSM, we can offer diversified lens products which extract the full potential of the Alpha 900.

We are very excited to inform you that our digital SLR cameras body portfolio has come of age with the addition of the Alpha 900. With these five camera bodies we are going to address ever-growing demands from every spectrum of our customer base, ranging from entry customer to professional enthusiasts. Needless to say we will keep reinforcing our interchangeable lens system and accessories including flashes and others.

Sony is committed to satisfying increasing demands from our customers with the steady-growing Alpha system. Well I wish you can enjoy the rest of the event today and Edinburgh experience tomorrow, so I hope tomorrow will be the Scottish version of sunny day.

And finally I found out the very good souvenir this morning from breakfast at the restaurant… which is this one, Alpha colour camera table napkin! So don’t forget to pick up tomorrow morning. So let me invite the other engineer Tsusue-san, he’s the head of design group of Alpha 900 and he will speak  about the other engineers question to complete this Alpha 900 presentation. So please give him a warm welcome – Tsusue-san, please!

To view the next section, go to Part 3

Vintage 500mm - but new 85mm Zeiss

Sony’s stand was my main focus, hoping to learn of new products for 2007. However, in this I was disappointed. As predicted accurately in June 2006 by Paul Genge (former Konica Minolta product manager, then in charge of the Alpha system at Sony UK) nothing new was revealed. (Note: the 16-80mm Carl Zeiss was already known to be on the way along with the 85mm and 135mm. We had even been told about a new 24-70mm at the June launch in Morocco, though no indication was given that it would be a Zeiss and have SSM focusing when it finally arrived.)

The Sony stand at photokina 2006

Sony made the odd decision to flood the press and dealer area with orange light

I will confess I found the Sony stand uninviting, with its massive parallel high walls and dividers. It was a stark contrast to Canon’s mainly white, gauzy, light-suffused open stand with its curves and sense of space. It was not helped by the functional black exhibition-hall floor blending into the black walls, and by having one entire side as a blank solid wall (without even any pictures on it) facing other stands.

Inside the Sony stand

The Alpha 100 pictures on show were plain and poor, snapshots taken by celebs or obscure art-reportage by a lesser known Magnum photographer. All failed to highlight any of the best qualities of the Alpha 100, and were oversized prints showing noise, tone-breaks, poor colour balance and sharpness.

Sony lens hands-on area

However, the lens display with 70-200mm and 300mm SSM lenses was excellent, with a well-lit target studio subject:

The studio target for the tethered camera and lens line-up

Discussing a lens

Staff in deep discussion make a good foreground to the model set

Manning levels were exemplary with well presented Sony staff almost matching visitor numbers, and not waiting to be approached, but coming forward to help anyone venturing on to the stand:

Staff engaged visitors with enthusiasm

The consumer-level digicams, it struck me, were better presented than the Alpha 100 with more professional and adventurous images showing off the qualities of the gear. Sure, we know that camera phones and pocket digital cameras do impressive macro – but so does the Alpha 100. I really don’t mind if Sony’s management read this, because I think that the work of our own readers as shown in the Gallery of this magazine better expresses the potential of the system than anything seen on the Sony photokina stand.

Other stands

As Photoworld magazine is no longer supported by Sony – or connected with Konica Minolta – I was free in 2006 to talk to other makers. Of prime importance, given that Sony confirmed no SSM (Super Sonic Motor) lenses apart from the 70-200mm ƒ2.8 and 300mm ƒ2.8 inherited from Minolta were yet on the horizon, I visited the Sigma stand.

16-80mm prototype no 00000000

Here, I was surprised to find that Sigma UK had not been pressing Japan to make HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) lenses for the Alpha mount because they believed Minolta/Alpha did not support in-lens sonic motors! I parted company after a very interesting chat to three of the senior UK executives, leaving them with a firm message for Sigma Corporation. We want HSM lenses for the Alpha mount.

Sigma has perhaps shied off making these because SSM (or HSM) is incompatible with any film Minolta AF SLR body prior to the Dynax 7, and even the classic Dynax 9 must have had a factory conversion to use these lenses. While Sigma can make a single HSM version for Canon and it will work – I think – with all previous body generations, they would be obliged to have non-HSM and HSM variants of lenses for ‘Minolta’.

Carl Zeiss 135mm f1.8

But now we have SONY – in big letters – on the lens boxes instead. This is not the Minolta M-AF mount. It is the Sony Alpha mount now, and Sony has never made a single SLR body which is not fully compatible with SSM.

So, Sigma, let’s have that new 50-150mm ƒ2.8 in Alpha mount and let’s have it in HSM. I have been using my 70-200mm SSM and I know what a massive difference it makes.

Tamron is launching a new 18-250mm ƒ3.5-6.3, no bigger as far as I could tell than the 18-200mm. This lens is, of course, the basis for the Konica Minolta and Sony branded 18-200mm (Sony owning a share of Tamron, and Minolta having worked with them for many years) and there is a possibility we shall see it as a Sony option in future. If not, it will be available from Tamron in M-AF fit in 2007.

(These paragraphs were written in 2006 – Sony did adapt the Tamron 18-250mm design, and contrary to their own statement, new SSM lenses were being developed; Sigma has since this meeting confirmed that they intend to release HSM lenses in the Alpha mount; Sony has given notice that SSM will be the future for all higher end lenses).

photokina 2008

Dom and rail bridge Rhine sunset

It is normal for exhibitors to stick with around the same stand area and position at successive photokina shows. I hope that Sony has gone for a better position (their stand was approached up a flight of steps from the front through hall entrance doors which hid most of it, and appeared to face a sort of hinterland at the back). I also hope they have learned something about lighting, because the predominantly dark and orange design of their stand made it feel like a city street at night.

Canon's 2006 stand - light and airy

I’m sure they will once again have a studio set and a line-up of cameras, but this time it will be mixture of Alpha 900 (name yet unconfirmed) and other models with lenses including the 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G SSM and the new 70-400mm f/4-5.6 G SSM, as well as the Zeiss 85mm and 135mm. These tethered set-ups usually only feature long focal lengths.

We can expect to see, and maybe even to handle, final working examples of an entire range of lenses only previously shown as mock-ups. These should include a 16-35mm ƒ2.8, a 24mm ƒ1.4, a budget 35mm ƒ1.8, the important 24-105mm ƒ4 for the full frame kit, but probably not the rumoured 400mm ƒ2.8. There may be SSM updated versions of the CZ 16-80mm, the 35mm ƒ1.4, CZ 85mm and 135mm, and standard 50mm ƒ1.4 (which we were told way back in June 2006 would one day be replaced by a Zeiss).

While it’s always good to be the first with pictures up on line, and reports, photokina is a very large show and with just two days to cover it we may not be able to get pages up on this site until the 25th. But if we are able to, we will go live with pictures from the press pre-opening day (Monday 22nd) giving you the rest of the entire public opening time to decide if Cologne is worth a visit.

For tickets to the show, visit

http://photokina.en.koelnmesse.info/

60 Years of Peace - a major exhibition which filled some the corridors of the Messehalle complex. Photokina is not just about gear, there are hundreds of galleries and displays of photography to see.

– David Kilpatrick

Timeline recap: the Alpha 100 and new lenses were on sale by the time of photokina 2006, after a June 2006 launch. The Carl Zeiss 16-80mm arrived in spring 2007, followed by the Alpha 700 in September 2007. The Alpha 100 had ceased manufacture before the launch of the 700, and existing stocks were planned to cover up to Christmas 2007. The Alpha 200 was launched in January 2008, followed by the Alpha 350 in February and the 300 (announced, but production delayed) in April 2008.