Photoclub Alpha

As expected, Adobe has again ‘broken’ the continuity of support for users of earlier versions of their Photoshop CS and Elements programs; the new ACR release to handle the forthcoming EOS 5D Mark II (which Canon tell us is not likely to be on sale in the UK before January) will require an upgrade to CS4 (minimum £300 in the UK) or Elements (no upgrade path offered, just buy a new copy every time they do this). Lightroom users, as has happened before, must wait for their own update.

For any large circulation magazine to create a page section which folds out to view a A2 size is too expensive to consider - but Photoworld, subscribed to by enthusiasts and printed in a short run of only 1,600 copies, goes out on November 5th with a foldout sample image.

Following the review on dPreview - more than anywhere else - Sony’s extremely poor JPEG engine with its associated wide radius chroma blur and strong luminance smoothing noise reduction has proved to be a dog well capable of biting its master. Definitely a dog, anyway. But this performance is not what the camera can really achieve. In fact it’s perfectly capable of delivering good high ISO shots in typical situations.

DxO Labs today has announced the availability of DxO Optics Pro v5.3, a new release which includes support for the Sony cRAW format missing from previous versions. They also say that new RAW conversion technology “turns the promises of very high ISO (up to 25,600) into reality”.

If you are on the verge of making a decision, I’m here to help your think clearly – even if it means breaking some cherished behaviour patterns. I am going to help you think of the Alpha 900 not as a logical progression from the 700, but as a different camera system entirely.

Duncan McEwan spoke, in his usual very steady and friendly manner, about his experience of using the Alpha 900. He showed a selection of images taken - remarkably - over a period of just 10 days preceding the event, using a 24-70mm CZ and his own 70-200mm Minolta SSM. Here is his own ’script’ for the presentation, with a small selection of the images.

AWARD winning event photographer Keith Trainor – winner of the first ever UK Event Photographer of the Year title in the annual British Professional Photography Awards – hits the road with Sony shortly in the UK to bring a profitable, high energy new line of business to established photo studios and new business entrants.

OUR final production Alpha 900 body arrived on Saturday September 20th, and went along to photokina 2008 on Monday 22nd where it was used in a routine way - without flash - to take whatever pictures were needed for magazine reports. Sometimes it can be better just to use a camera on whatever difficult or poor subjects the world throws at you, than to devise impressive test situations.

SONY has, one week after the leak of a final version of Firmare v4 for the Alpha 700, placed authorised download links on their support websites along with an updated Image Data Suite 3 which can handle Alpha 900 raw files. Quick download links are given here with key features.

Part 3 of the conference presentations, transcribed from a recording by Shirley Kilpatrick. This section deals with the revolutionary new adjustable focusing screen and viewfinder which enables error-free 100 per cent viewing, and the reasons Sony chose to make a 24.6 megapixel full frame sensor. To start reading with the first Part, go to Part 1.

The Alpha 900 - and indeed the Alpha 700 with new firmware v4 - offer a three-bracket sequence at a 2 stop interval to enable HDR blending, usually from static tripod-mounted views. At the Edinburgh Alpha 900 launch, I braced myself firmly against an open window, leaning out over the street, and tried an example hand held.

Transcribed by Shirley Kilpatrick from audio record of the conference. For the opening speeches, see our Part 1 of this report.

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.

Here, for some light relief, is an Alpha 700 + 24-105mm Minolta D documentary on the press dinner thrown for journalists from all the countries of the European region when they gathered in Edinburgh for the Alpha 900 launch!

By Shirley Kilpatrick - transcribed from recording made during the conference in Edinburgh.
(This is a close transcript of speeches delivered by Sony execs, with photos).

TODAY Sony’s Alpha 900 was unveiled to European journalists at a press conference held in the Caledonian Hilton Hotel, in the very heart of historic Edinburgh shadowed by the Castle and looking out over the west end of Princes Street gardens. The price for the body only will be £2,100 inc VAT from Sony Style Europe and the camera will be delivered in October - SonyStyle begin taking orders on September 10th.

Sony chose the anniversary of the Battle of Flodden Field (September 9th, 1513) for the launch conference and the anniversary of the last battle fought between England and Scotland as two nations (Pinkie Cleugh, near Edinburgh, September 10th 1547) for their field trip… the English press were made most welcome!

Duncan McEwan, Scottish regional organiser for the Photoworld Club and a regular contributor to the magazine, played a key role in the launch as one of the European beta testers who has been using the camera over the summer period.

Duncan has used the A900 with the 24-70mm and 70-200mm SSM only, and tells me that his main interest was to see whether it did what he wanted - not to compare it with the A100, A700 or any other camera!

Sony has released - without announcement - a new firmware version for the Alpha 700 which includes an OFF function for high ISO. This is presumed to be in advance of tomorrow’s press conference, where the Alpha 900 will be revealed. Journalists could be expected to ask questions about the NR, and the lack of firmware upgrades to the Alpha 700, and they have acted just in time for this launch and photokina to remedy the situation. Article with image samples and download links:

You can download a Sony press conference video from IFA Berlin show via this link:

http://www.gginternet1.co.uk/sony01/

It is mainly about HDTV Motionflow, LED technology, Reader, OLED (Organic LED) screens, Handycam, the electronic Picture Frame, something called Sountina which appears to radiate sound from a column speaker - etc. It features Fujio Nishida, President of Sony Europe; Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer making jokes which fell on a rather mirthless set of ears;

“We continue to grow our enormous digital imaging business where we maintain leading market share”, said Stringer, before lauding the success of Blu-Ray (something which was by no means sure until recently).

He promised network connectivity in 90% of devices in 2010 - which means, perhaps, that DSLRs will have built-in WiFi, just to keep up the count towards a target figure. But he also refers to “electronic” devices in this context, and the Alpha division appears to be a separate category.

He said that Sony has committed to doubling its revenue from countries like China, Russia, Brazil and the Eastern European zone. “The global economic downturn is beginning to have an effect on Western Europe”, he told the journalists, but the east was showing a 25% growth. Eastern Europe and Russia show a 60% sales increase for Sony. Poland showed a 65% sales increase in the first four months of 2008. In Turkey, Sony has seen 43 months of consecutive growth, increasing by 500% in five years.

Nishida said that new products would be launched in Europe on the same date as in Japan. These include the OLED TV XEL-1 which is only 3mm deep. The Bravia EX-1 HDTV will receive its HD content via a wireless link from a media box sited up to 30 metres away. It mounts on the wall like a picture, without wires except power supply.

He said that the 50Hz frame rate of TVs was now old-fashioned and too slow for fast-moving sports. Motionflow introduced 100Hz in March 2007. The new Bravia 200Hz Z-4500 has four times the frame rate of standard HDTV, using algorithms to interpolate between the frames of the original. It will be on sale by Christmas.

New LED TVs would use side-injected illumination instead of a lighting panel placed behind the picture elements. The Bravia ZX-1, only 9.9mm thick, is the world’s slimmest TV and uses this new illumination method. It will also go on sale in Europe in December.

After discussing Blu-Ray, Nishida introduced the Sony T-500 with 10.1 megapixel still camera shooting 720p HDTV video clips, which goes on sale from this month. He then moved on to Walkman S-series players including photo storage, and mood sensing - it will pick the right music to play according to your activity level.

The Sony Reader was explained in the conference by Nishida - it is an electronic book reading device - and its first launch will be in the UK this week, followed by rollout in other countries. Nishida-san concluded with discussion of built-in wireless networking and control connectivity, including reference to Cybershot cameras but not to the Alpha range.

Simon McDowell, of Sony Entertainment Europe, spoke mainly about Blu-Ray and home entertainment. The most spooky thing is a new Blu-Ray based feature, BDLive, which lets you upload a snapshot of yourself into a movie and appear in the film…

Fujio Nishida concluded the press conference by announcing football sponsorship of the EUFA Champions League - a new signing to continue for a further 3 years up to 2012. “We have some exciting technology developments planned for football in the coming months”, he said.

BDLive to let the viewer in as a substitute?

- DK

We have received the first press release today (Sept 8th) for Sony’s presence at photokina 2008. It doesn’t mention the still DSLR range except in referring to digital photography in general. Here is the text.

Sony press release:

Paris, 4 September 2008 - As the world moves on, files get bigger. From high-megapixel compact cameras to the latest Sony α Digital SLR with its 5 frames per second continuous shooting capability, the pressure is on for flash memory. High Definition camcorders are tightening the screw even further, so Sony Recording Media & Energy (RME) has created a solution in the form of the Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo™ HX.

TAMRON has announced that its new 10-24mm lens will be an ƒ3.5-4.5 design - not an ƒ2.8 as some rumours had it - and will hit the shops in Nikon and Canon mounts first, on September 20th.

Nikon has introduced some of the technologies we might expect to see from Sony, apparently using the IMX021 sensor (the pixel count on the long edge is 4288, rather than 4272 as normally processed from a Sony Alpha 700 file, but this is within the usual limits of different raw conversions). The D90 is an A700-class camera for £699 but includes Live View with face detection contrast-detect focusing, 720p HD movie recording up to 5 minutes, 4.5fps continuous shooting, ISO to 3200 (6400 HI), and Auto Distortion Correction when fitted with current Nikon lenses.

Canon has today officially announced the 15.5 megapixel APS-C EOS 50D. This is a 1.6X factor sensor, packing a density well in excess of the Alpha 350 - if Sony was to make an Alpha with the same pixel density it would be 17.5 megapixels, and a full framer would be 38.5 megapixels.

It’s not going to be long before we see the Alpha 900, and some cameras are known to be out there on trial in the hands of Sony staff and pre-release testers. I am not one, so rest assured, this is not a leak! What can you expect from the Alpha 900’s full-frame prism finder?

(Note: this post was written in early August - it is now 100% certain that the finder is 100%, and at 0.74X magnification will be - as had been hinted - the largest of all current DSLR finders in apparent visual terms except the EOS 1Ds Mk III which is 0.76X. Comparisons: EOS 5D 0.68X, Nikon D3 0.70X).

At the end of September 2006, I set off for a quick visit to photokina in Cologne, having parted company with Icon’s am-pro magazine ƒ2 and not really needing to report on the whole show in detail. Here’s the report I wrote then, with photos, and some thoughts for the 2008 show.

There seems to be a lot of speculation about the Alpha 900 or Pro, and uncertainty about the timing of introduction. The August 14th date is not the 900, it’s two Cybershot models. The Alpha 900 will, as far as we are aware, be shown to the press on September 9th/10th worldwide.

The Photoclub Forum has really picked up in the last few weeks. We now have (as I write):

Total posts 2869 • Total topics 607 • Total members 894

That’s a long way from the early days - this site only went live just over a year ago though we have ‘date stamped’ some pages to make them match the Alpha launch back in June 2006. It’s a very friendly place, with a wealth of technical information and help and some very detailed responses from some expert users.

Take a look - http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/index.php - and register to become a Forum community member.

- DK

Well, it looks as if the 14th August UK press conference for exciting digital camera news may not be about the Alpha 900 after all - Sony has just officially announced that some colourful little Cyber-shot models with ISO 3200 capability will be unveiled there, and no mention of the A900. Roll on September 9th!

Here’s Sony’s release on the new Cyber-shots - I apologise for leaving the hyperbolic advertising style adjectives (unusable editorially, and just a waste of words) in place:

Calumet has announced that its Wardour Street, Soho, London store is now a Sony Alpha Centre of Excellence:

http://ebm.cheetahmail.com/c/tag/tBImAnOBSZ4PaB7SFuqB8eZtgdl/doc.html

Received this morning from Olympus PR:

Tokyo, 5 August 2008 – Olympus Imaging Corporation (Olympus Imaging) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic) today announced joint development of technologies and devices for the “Micro Four Thirds System standard”.

SONY UK has notified us of a press conference to announce an ‘exciting digital camera’ on August 14th.

They have also said that full details will be provided soon. It is possible this will be embargoed - we may attend a meeting on the 14th, but have to agree not to publish until a date later on, perhaps in September.

Update: it seems there is an international Sony Alpha press trip on Sept 9/10th to Edinburgh. Members of the Euro technical press have been invited, as a two-dayer with a stack of nightlife (the Festival and Fringe have just kicked into action today) it is an ideal location for putting the Alpha 900 and new 16-35mm and 70-400mm into the hands of journos. But it’s one week after the Sept 2nd close of the Festival itself, with the fireworks display. The Fringe is still running.

It seems very unlikely that the Aug 14th conference would be the long-awaited Alpha 900 launch since it is only a single day, or part of a day, and would not take place so long before an apparent pre-photokina pan-European press event. Judging by previous launches - Alpha 100, 2-day event in Morocco June 5-7th 2006; Alpha 700 2-day event on Lake Como Italy end of 1st week in September 2007; my guess is that the Edinburgh event is the big hands-on opportunity for the flagship full frame DSLR almost one year to the day after the launch of the 700. A very busy year, too, during which Sony has launched three other DSLR bodies and several important lenses.

Well, Edinburgh’s 45 minutes from my door and even if I am surplus to the tightly controlled A-list of such events I may be able to drop in and join them for a drink, as there’s one or two folk going I would like to say hello to. But then, Edinburgh is an airport! Just because the press gets to land there does not mean the city is where they are headed. I’ve been to big press events at Gleneagles (Kodak) and even in the middle of the Berwickshire countryside (Canon) in the past. It could be anywhere in Scotland - and some places in Scotland are not on our doorstep!

It costs me over one working day and around £200 to get to a London event (I’d rather by invited to almost anywhere in Europe than London in summer…) but whatever goes, the September date is an essential launch I am sure, and not just another Cybershot across the bows of the enemy!

- DK