Dave Etchells Comments to Barry Fitzgerald on the A900

[Javelin]

David Brown from DPR was at the toronto release of the A900. he is, I gather, an olympus/Canon/A700 pro in advertizing and was commenting on the 4' prints that Sony had on display. he was quite impressed with them.

[tbroadley]

For another view on the comparions of the 1ds 111 to the a900 see Luminous landscape
The salient point is:
"The estimated price for this camera is AUD3999 for a body-only. Given that this is well under half that of the well regarded Canon 1DsM3, and that the images are very close in quality, then this has to be a great deal. You could buy the body and two top Zeiss lenses for much the same as the Canon.

As far as image quality is concerned, bear in mind that I had to look quite closely at the files – serious pixel-peeping really – to see the differences. I always figure that if I have to look this closely then the differences are probably so close as to be insignificant.

The system is a bit limited, but there are two new lenses, a 16-35/2.8 and a 70-400/4-5.6 both with SSM focussing. The new HVL-F58AM flash looks good too; with it's unique swivelling head the problems of shooting vertically are overcome by the simple solution of tilting the whole flash head up into a vertical position - very clever.

The lens range is getting wider with the staple zoom lenses available – 16-35/2.8, 24-70/2.8 and 70-200/2.8. The exotics are lacking, no dedicated macro or tilt/shift lens and only one supertelephoto (300/2., but whether this is an issue will depend on the photographer. Certainly those lenses that are availably are of top quality optically; this is a priority for many people who want to squeeze the last drop of image quality out of their images.

All things considered I'd have to give this camera a big thumbs up."

Tim

[Dr. Harout]

All things considered I'd have to give this camera a big thumbs up."

Tim

Oh yes

[destrian]

Can we safely say that we need to test out the A900's RAW files! Lets just face it... who buys a 25mp DSLR, and shoots JPEG for commercial work... not very many I'm sure. The A900's strength will be in the fact that it lets studio lighters on commercial shoots go ballistic with cropping, its awesome for landscape shooters who have wide expanses with wide angle lenses... man... this thing really ask for pro use. I'm fairly sure that when the money is on the line... RAW is what this camera will be used for. So in other words... at $3,000,00 I think unless the Canon 5d replacement comes in at $2,500.00 and at 20 MP and is frickin noiseless... I think Sony has the Camera of the Year... There, I said it.

[bfitzgerald]

[quote="Sonolta"]Some of you may know who Dave E. is...he is the supreme leader over at Imaging-Resource. Barry F., as many of you folks may already know, is a Sony blaster who has been complaining about Sony cameras since the very first alpha camera was released.

A few points here. I don't know Dave at all, bar the forum on IR, but he seems to be a pretty balanced and decent bloke. And takes the time to look at points raised by people.

And for the record, I did raise the NR bionz issue with the A700, very strongly, when some bailed out and gave up. I won't take credit for getting a firmware fix, there were a few others who did make a lot of "noise" about it too. But you got the issue sorted, and by not doing a head in sand job, IMO certainly helped.

I have also raised some issues on prices, esp lenses, and some other areas too. However, this isn't sony bashing. And the good news is that some of these areas have been looked at.

[Javelin]

Hey Barry. you buy your A700 yet ?

[bfitzgerald]

No, not got one yet, but this is not unusual, I tend to buy at end of product cycles..I like a bargain
I got caught out on the 5d and the ist black frame one, still, you cannot win them all.

I think the main point made, was that RAW should give the user options, with their pp workflow. Clearly NR on RAW does not do that, hence my objection.
But Sony have woken up to this, and sorted it out, which is the main thing

[Javelin]

Sorry I know it was off topic. I just hadn't seen any posts from you in a while and wondered if you ever bought a camera.

[bfitzgerald]

I got tired of the bar brawls on dpreview, so I have decided to not bother posting there anymore. Plus it was taking up too much time, when there were more important things to do, such as photography!
I know, you thought I went off and got a Nikon or something
Yes I am doing a fair bit of film, but mostly for scenic and landscape shots, still do digital for other subjects. I was toying with the idea of an A700, or an A200, but I might even wait it out for newer models..either to look at one of those, or to nab a nice deal on one of the two mentioned. Though to be fair, the A200 is amazingly cheap right now, it must be selling well, it's out of stock on some online retailers.