Photoclub Alpha

While I appreciate the threads on dPreview calling for them to lift their ban on my using the dPreview forums, they have gone over the top - if they do unban me, what if have nothing useful to say? I can not be a permanent fixture on the dPreview Sony SLR forum although I am happy to participate in that, and several other dPreview forums. In a way I am hoping they do not lift the ban.

The parallel development of Carl Zeiss lenses for Sony (AF lenses in the Alpha mount) and independent manual focus lenses for other makes continues. The latest CZ design is a revision of the classic 18mm Distagon last seen in the Contax system, optimised for colour balance and reflection supression with digital SLRs.

Sony has announced the September introduction of the most powerful flash yet for the Alpha system, which incorporates a brand new body design allowing optimum bounce flash illumination regardless of how you hold the camera.

Following announcements that Sony has developed a backlight technique to enable extremely low noise exposures, we receive this press release which may or may not be related - a Sony CCD astrophotography camera capable of one-hour exposures and programmed sequences. Resolution seems a bit basic though.

Here’s a question which came in to my email just now:

“Could I process a RAW file in Photoshop to achieve a similar effect as if I had used a Polaroid lens filter?
Or would I be better just using the Polaroid filter?”

The answer is that you can never imitate the effect of polarizing light (which changes the way reflective surfaces look, and deepens or lightens the sky blue according to the zone of the sky relative to the sun’s position. But you can use Adobe Camera Raw (CS3 versions) to deepen skies you never thought could be rescued.

The introduction of a £399 (street price, RRP £449) DSLR with 14.2 megapixels – with or without a useful type of Live View – should have been applauded by reviewers. It’s the single most important point about the camera. No other DSLR approaches this image size and resolution at such a low price.

CLICKING on key mapping points of a face, then adjusting some simple overlaid Bezier curves using movable anchors, it takes only a minute to load a typical headshot portrait into Portrait Professional.

Now that there are five Sony Alpha DSLR bodies in circulation, with many owners of the original 2006 Alpha 100 considering a replacement, the differences between this ur-Alpha and the 2007-8 generation of Alpha 700, 200, 300 and 350 need examining.

Epson today announces the launch of its high specification professional A3+ photo printer - the Stylus Photo R2880. Aimed at professional photographers and keen amateurs, the printer utilises Epson’s advanced UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta pigment inks

USERS of the Nikon D3 downloading the latest firmware update have found information strings referring to the D3X and listing the file sizes the forthcoming camera will produce. The sizes match the pixel count of the Sony full-frame CMOS sensor due to be used in the ‘Alpha 900′ Sony full-frame body.

London— April 2, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta, a public preview of new and improved functionality to be delivered in the next major release. Lightroom is the professional photographer’s essential toolbox, providing one application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. Lightroom 2.0 beta will feature enhancements such as dual-monitor support, localised dodge and burn correction and will be the first Adobe application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Intel Macs and Microsoft Vista 64-bit operating systems.

Adobe has released updates to Photoshop Lightroom and the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, both available immediately as free upgrades for existing users. The releases provide added raw file support for nine additional digital cameras, including the Sony Alpha 200 (already supported by 4.3.2 whether they knew it or not), Alpha 300 and Alpha 350. Lightroom 1.4 also provides updated printer driver compatibility for Apple Leopard Mac OS X 10.5.

Moving a DSLR - preferably without vertical grip because of the further imbalance created - to portrait format shooting on a small tripod ballhead produces an unstable arrangement where the head is stressed. The camera may sag unless the head is tightened, and if the lens is heavy, it may also unscrew itself from the normal tripod bush tightening. A L-bracket is the ideal solution for mounting your camera for a portrait session or any other situation where most of the images will be vertical.

There’s a lot of controversy right now about whether or not the image structure of the Alpha 700 files at very high ISO - mainly 3200 and 6400 - is as clean as raw processed results from other comparable cameras like the Canon 40D (does not offer ISO 6400), the Olympus E-3 (does not offer ISO 6400) or the Nikon D300. At the heart of this is the way different raw processors handle file conversion, and most specifically, the current performance of Adobe Camera Raw 4.3.1.

The Sony DSLR A200 is now on sale, following the end of Alpha 100 production. Although it is without any doubt the Alpha 100 replacement mentioned by Sony executives in October 2007, when they first revealed that the 100 was no longer being made, it is not an exact equivalent and represents a mixture of upgraded performance and simplified specification. Because it has gone in two directions at the same time, the A200 poses a problem for A100 owners.

Apple’s Aperture 2.0 is a tedious program to test, with all its creation of ‘projects’ and ‘libraries’, ‘albums’, ‘vaults’ and nonstandard GUI, and it isn’t fast in processing files or passing them to Photoshop (which it does in 16-bit form, just another step to reverse before saving as far as I’m concerned). However, it’s handling Alpha 700 raw quite well. And it does things differently, with non-destructive raw editing, stacks of image versions, and so on.

The latest full release - no longer Beta, and accepting previous C1 Pro activation keys for unlimited access but otherwise now on 30-day trial - of Capture One v4 now handles Sony Alpha 700 raw files and transforms high ISO rendering in comparison to the industry standard Adobe Camera Raw.

NOT everyone will want the live view offered by the A300 and A350 - it does turn out to be more or less as we suggested, a secondary optical path adjacent to the eyepiece inside the prism housing. I’ll explain here exactly what the implications are, and why a future model - let’s call it the A500 - offering the 14.2 megapixel sensor without the live view may be worth waiting for.

Sony Corporation today announced the development of a 35mm full size (diagonal:43.3mm) 24.81 effective megapixel, ultra-high speed high image quality CMOS image sensor designed to meet the increasing requirement for rapid image capture and advanced picture quality within digital SLR cameras.

In mid 2007, rumours of a 14.8 megapixel Sony sensor came from the usual Far Eastern ‘inside’ sources. As a full-frame Alpha model (the so-called 900) had been previewed at PMA 2007, it was possible this megapixel count related to full frame, or near-full frame. It now looks as if it may have been a leak of development for currently rumoured 14.2 megapixel (active) Alpha 350, which is an APS-C sensor camera.

Sony say that the Alpha 100 has a 230,000 pixel rear screen and the Alpha 700 has 920,000 pixels. What they don’t make entirely clear is how many individual R, G or B pixels are used to create each ‘pixel’ of the image (complete RGB). In fact the 920,000 pixel screen is VGA - 640 x 480 - in display resolution, which is 307,000 pixels not 920,000. What is going on? We took some macro images to show you.

AT THE Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, Sony has announced introduction of the new Alpha DSLR-A200 camera which has been the subject of some strange speculation but was known beforehand to be a replacement for the Alpha 100. This is the first time a DSLR has been launched to the world at this show, and Sony’s decision to do so sends a major signal out as to where they see themselves and the Alpha system in the marketplace. It is highly competitive in price and we have just ordered our body for £369 including VAT (£314 + VAT) plus £13 express shipping from www.sonystyle.co.uk. This is exactly the same price as we paid for our last Alpha 100 in summer 2006.

SINCE September 2007 I have had for test the Canon EOS 40D, Sony Alpha 700, Nikon D300, Olympus E-3 and Nikon D3 in that order. The reports have been published in the British Journal of Photography, and later on in Master Photo Digital and f2 magazines (some are yet to appear, in February, in these titles). My own system is Sony Alpha but I have to be as objective as possible when field testing all makes. I also have to seek out the unique selling points, the reasons for owning any given model, rather than just compare them on a tick-chart feature basis.

With the Alpha 200 about to appear, I guess it’s time to sum up what I think about the Sony Alpha 700 and how it compares to the competition.

After reading Andrea Nivini’s article in Italian Tutti Fotografi, December 2007, which launches an attack on Adobe’s Camera Raw plug-in and its handling of many camera types - but specifically, the Sony Alpha 700 - I decided to check out whether the December 5th release, ACR 4.3.1, fixed the problems.

It’s the same on every web forum - if you post a digital picture which would be acceptable to a photo library or professional buyer, half a dozen grumpy one-liners will come out saying ‘That don’t look sharp to me’ or ‘there must be something wrong with your XXX’ (fill in D300, A700, E-3, D3, 40D as required). Then someone posts a hugely messed up image and people say ‘Wow! What sharpness!’…

THE specifications of the CMOS 13.1 megapixel, 12.3 effective megapixel sensor used in the Sony Alpha 700 and the Nikon D300 continue to provoke discussion. On the one hand, we have Sony’s own announcement of the ‘commercialisation’ of the IMX21 sensor in August, preceding Nikon’s advance publicity by a few days. On the other hand, we have people who refuse to believe that Nikon, who openly bought Sony CMOS technology to create the D2X, is not entirely responsible for its own sensor.

BEFORE we publish a fuller assessment of the Sony Alpha 700, here is a taster of just one improved function, the Dynamic Range Optimisation (DRO) system built into the camera. For social, wedding, sports, music, theatre, news and event photographers DRO Advanced Manual settings are a real magic bullet zapping the bugbears of excess contrast, poor lighting, and inadequate flash penetration.

Sony has released a firmware update for the Alpha 700, from version 1.00 (as supplied) to version 2.00, and an updater for Image Data Converter 2.0 SR.

I’m still testing the Alpha 700 and still struggling with aspects of image quality, notably the failure to get much wow factor from straightforward shots in good light. It seems easy enough to get exceptional high ISO images, of the type they are expected to be, but even then many examples seen are marred by a very coarse noise structure.

ON OCTOBER 10th I left the UK London press launch complete with an Alpha 700 review camera. I’ll be covering the many aspects of the Alpha 700 performance in later reviews, but this camera is so good I wanted to get just something out to you right the next day.