Photoclub Alpha

WE trialled a ZMags version of the January 08 issue of Photoworld here. We then looked at Uniflip. However, all these places want a few hundred dollars to leave a slightly adjusted Flash or Java version of a PDF we create, on their server for 12 months. The ZMags trial is now removed and after [...]

The launch of the Alpha 350, with its small 0.74X viewfinder, makes a proper eyepiece magnifier attachment an essential addition to the Sony accessory range. Olympus, Nikon and Pentax all have such magnifiers, which permit a full view of the screen for most wearers and make all the difference to the manual focusing and general [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The Sony Alpha 350 14.2 megapixel DSLR pioneers a new type of Live View, related to Olympus’s original Mode A of the E-330 where a beamsplitting arrangement allowed a video CCD to view the actual focusing screen of the SLR system.
Sony Alpha 350 A350 Live View Quick Focus LV screen DSLR

Kenro has announced the release of a series of new hard plastic LCD panel protectors from Marumi - including one for the Sony Alpha 100. The price is very reasonable at only £6.99 retail.
LCD protector screen protector protector panel Alpha 100 A100 Sony DSLR

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

New photo website Myelephantbites.com offers the chance to turn digital photographs into animated movies by combining digital images with sound, words and special effects. The site would like to reward Photoworld readers with complimentary trials forthe first 1,000 readers. We have now extended that offer to Photoclubalpha website visitors, as we said we would [...]

The prototype ‘Flagship’ Alpha DSLR, with its 24 megapixel sensor, may offer live view - almost certainly off the sensor. Sony prototype (it is still officially in that state) product photographs reveal what looks like an extra button or sliding switch - and at least one rumour states that this is definitely for live view.
Sony [...]

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 [...]

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.

Sony CMOS full frame sensor 24.8 megapixel 24 megapixel Alpha 900 Nikon CCD imaging digital [...]

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 [...]

Sony Europe’s Recording Media & Energy (RME) division today announced a new LTO-4 photo contest promotion that offers the chance to win one of three digital cameras from Sony – in return for creative pictures of LTO-4 tape cartridges. The competition can be entered by distributors, resellers and end-customers of Sony’s LTO-4, its highest capacity [...]

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 [...]

On January 5th, Photoworld was lucky enough to be able to attend the dress rehearsal and official photo-call for the new Cirque du Soleil production at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and to put the Alpha 700 through its paces for high ISO fast action stage show capture. This article with large reproductions of [...]

AT THE Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, Sony has announced introduction of the new α (Alpha) DSLR-A200 camera which hasErstens kann man everest poker nach dem regularen Tausch noch Karten kaufen. been the subject of some strange speculation but was known beforehand to be a replacement for the Alpha 100. This is the first time [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]