Photoclub Alpha

Burlingame, CA, September 12, 2007 — FotoNation, Inc. (www.fotonation.com), a world-leading imaging solutions company for the digital photography industry, announced today that it has been selected by Sony’s Professional Printer Group to provide its award winning digital Red-Eye Correction technology for new professional Sony photo printers, Picture Station Kiosks, and photo application products.
photo printer red [...]

TOUGH, RESPONSIVE α700 DELIVERS STUNNING NEXT-GENERATION PICTURE QUALITY… FROM SHOOTING TO VIEWING
Sep 6, 2007

Superb picture quality with newly developed Sony 12.24 effective megapixel Exmorâ„¢ CMOS sensor and brand new high-speed BIONZâ„¢ processor with RAW noise reduction
Ultra-responsive operation with fast, high-accuracy 11-point autofocus and 5fps continuous shooting
New ‘Quick Navigation’ function for instant access to camera settings
Rugged [...]

TEMPORARY website pages on the afternoon (GMT) of September 5th managed to leak the entire specification sheet and several new PR images of the advanced amateur Alpha model, along with its name - the Alpha 700. You wouldn’t pick a wife or husband on the basis of their on-paper specification, so remember, the [...]

FUJIO NISHIDA, President of Sony Europe, speaking at the Berlin IFA consumer electronics and technology show on August 30th, mentioned the Alpha system alongside Cyber-shot digital still cameras and Handycam digital video as part of Sony’s plan to introduce HD (High Definition Television) formats throughout. He held up the new ‘smile shoot’ Cyber-shot T200 with [...]

With only three days to go before the launch of the new Alpha, rumours of a ’sneak preview’ press release have appeared on dPreview’s internet forums. Leon van Bommel, writing from Holland, says he has seen a magazine which has a photograph showing the camera with a kit lens marked 16-105mm f/3.5-5.6. Certainly, a more [...]

BRANCHES of Currys, the large UK electronic box-shifter, have been displaying notices saying ‘Discontinued’ under their remaining Alpha 100 kits. This needed some explanation, so we contacted Sony UK to ask whether the camera was genuinely discontinued.
Sony Alpha 100 DSLR Minolta system production

Poway, CA. August 22, 2007 -Delkin Devices, Inc. today announced its new UDMA enabled line of CompactFlash PRO cards is now shipping to camera stores, distributors and international channels. These new memory cards deliver industry-leading read/write speeds with a minimum sustained transfer speed capability of a blazing 305x (45MB/sec) in all capacities of 1GB, [...]

Weybridge, 15 August 2007 - Sony technological innovation has once again been recognised by the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA). This year the EISA judging panel has made no less than four awards to Sony Europe in categories spanning home entertainment, digital imaging and in-car navigation. A fifth award was made to Sony Computer [...]

THIS morning I received from the Managing Director of Sony United Kingdom Limited a copy of the book ‘Sony Alpha Lenses’, inscribed to me and signed by Mr Katsumoto, Senior General Manager of the Alpha Mount Company. This is a very high-quality book which contains not only the expected promotional shoot images (nice freebie trip [...]

Berlin, 9th August 2007 - As a result of Sony’s commitment to energy efficiency, Sony reduced power consumption within 90% of its product categories during the FY06. With energy efficiency as one of its core commitments towards the creation of a sustainable society, Sony is continuously striving to make products that use less energy in [...]

This review from the Summer 2007 edition of Photoworld has been expanded here, and covers the Remote Release IR-1n kit along with third party remote triggers and flash synchronisation options for the Alpha system.
wireless remote trigger infrared slave firing cell radio cordless release shutter Dynax Alpha Sony Minolta Maxxum Konica DSLR SLR camera

WE spent a great week shooting mainly in Vaucluse, the district to the east of Avignon in the south of France, with Shirley using the 18-250mm Tamron f/3.5-6.3 lens exclusively. One object of this was to get some more example photos for a short article on the lens in our forthcoming Photoworld magazine.

9 July, 2007 - As take up of High Definition (HD) gains momentum in Europe, Sony is to launch a major Pan-European marketing campaign to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the company’s HD proposition and to educate consumers about the intricacies of HD.

IN 1998 Minolta published, for their 70th anniversary, a large poster featuring all the landmark cameras from their own museum and employee collections. Many of the cameras shown - all fairly small on the poster - were well used and worn examples. The original image-files for the poster, which we have archived, are of poor [...]

THE appearance of press-release resolution (14Mb) images of the new Alpha - un-named but thought to be the Alpha 200 or 300 because of the product code earlier assigned to shots of prototypes at PMA - combines with reports on various forums from European Sony executives visiting Japan to suggest that the launch announcement for [...]

When Konica Minolta’s photographic division closed in April 2006, the Minolta Club of Great Britain (operated by Icon Publications Ltd) acquired a mix of older stock, some dating back as far as 40 years, but much from the late MD and early AF era. We have priced these competitively, after studying international prices and [...]

YOU MAY want to learn exactly how I shoot the product photographs which appear in my own articles here at Photoclubalpha. I use a studio light table with an opal plexiglass transilluminated scoop. This is the method I have used now for over 25 years and it’s saved me a lot of time, and earned [...]

THE LENSBABY was a novelty item when first introduced as a low-cost meniscus lens mounted on a flexible concertina tube with an SLR mount-fitting at the other end. Like the Diana or Holga cameras sometimes used by professionals to capture a feel of post-modern grunge, it used aberrations creatively.

TESTING the flash options most widely sold for the Minolta/Sony unique hot shoe system became a necessity after the launch of the Alpha 100. Despite the reliability of automatic TTL off-the-film flash metering ever since Minolta first introduced it with the Auto Electroflash PX series in 1981, things began to go wrong with the shift [...]

HAODA FU has been supplying alternative focusing screens for the 5D and A100 since 2006 and for many other makes before this. While the Alpha system DSLRs are not intended to have user-changeable screens, it is relatively easy and risk-free.