$1,000 FF Alpha - guess when

[A1000]

$1,000 FF Alpha - Can you guess when?

There is no reason why FF should cost more than 2x as much as APS-C.

I estimate $2K FF this year, $1,5K next, $1,000 in 2011, even with strong Yen.

A1000 will be a pro body.

Zeiss is the magent for pros. Pros are the magnet for amateurs. See Sony's market share climbing.

If Sony combines their ClearVid technology w/EXMOR-R, we'll soon have a FF camera w/40 effective MP and 2x the sensitivity of D3x.

Since we are in the MP race, expect same sensitivity and 80 MP. The race will be who will first reach 100 effective MP, without reducing sensitivity. It will not take long. By that time we'll have new way of taking pictures and lenses, which will extend close to the CMOS, no OVF

[Dr. Harout]

If no OVF, then I'm out.
And yes, I do believe that in 2-3 years there will be a FF costing $1000 US and that would be a used A900

[Dusty]

Doc, I think that in 2-3 years we'll see used 900s going for less than that. And other makers sub 21MP models at $300 - 500. The reason is the MP race will continue, and anyone who's not a pro will be caught up in it, and getting rid of the old models. Heck, if they improve their IQ enough on subsequent models, even the pros will dump them.

The 100 MP race will eventually give way to the giga-pixel race, even tho' lenses won't be able to keep up.

Check out http://www.gigapxl.org/gallery-AngelWindow.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That makes it easy to photograph anything that's basically a static scene. Pop 3 or 4 shots of wherever you are, then just crop to .05% to get your prints!

Dusty

[David Kilpatrick]

Just for your interest, now that ACR 5.3 can process both D3X and A900 files I have been looking at some direct comparative tests (both cameras equipped with Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lenses) and revisiting some older tests. The Alpha 900 is not yielding much to the D3X, despite all the figures. One thing is really noticeable (and does not do the Alpha 900 many favours visually - for 'pop'), the much lower contrast and brightness of the typical Alpha result. Even when the whole picture looks darker, at any ISO up to 1600, the Alpha picture has more shadow detail. The Nikon raw data is clipped to favour a solid black which is totally noise-free, but just black. The Sony raw data can be opened up so a whole gradation appears where the Nikon sees black, but it's a very noisy gradation! It is easy enough to clip the Sony to the same black and lose the noise, but it's impossible to do the reverse with the D3X.

Here is an example of an Alpha 900 ISO 6400 image, street lighting (dark), 1/60th at f2.8, small 100 per cent clip, processed using ACR 5.3. Sharpening left at 25 (it does increase the noise slightly, but makes a better looking result); luminance NR and chroma NR both set to 50 (half way to maximum). Tungsten light balance set on the camera, and reported correctly in ACR 5.3.



I think that Sony already has an excellent full frame sensor in the A900, they just don't add the processing which Nikon use, and you must work from raw and do careful post-processing if you want results. ACR 5.3 looks pretty good to me on A900 high ISO files.

David

[A1000]

What Sony needs to do is provide a selector switch, which will shut off the floor noise, to match other brands in noise performance. The swich could have more than two positions. That would make shut up DPR and various other amateur and C-N fanboy accusations.

I do not think that the MP race will go beyond 100 MP. That will be the magic number. Optics will be the limiting factor. 100 effective MP's will be achieved with 50 MP CMOS with checkerboard pattern. Does anyone really believe that we will not see actual 50 MP in FF when this year cell phones will have 12 MP's?

The sensor is not the only part in a camera. Most other parts cost nearly the same. There is a big difference between OEM price and how much a sensor costs to make, especially if you are already making the sensor for other cameras and all the R&D costs were already amortorized. $1000 FF will be here a lot sooner than anyone realizes. At that time Sony will not be disadvantaged with having less quality FF lens with stabilization, actually they are not disadvantaged even today, but the blind fanboys at DPR and elsewhere are just too dumb to relize that. When FF DSLR prices come down enough, watch the Sony advantage and steep market share rise. Add to it the convergence of video and still photography in new future style of photography and you'll see Sony's rapid rise to No. 2 spot.

[Dusty]

PS...Almost nobody except Nasa wants to store, crop, and process 100MP files.

And that's just what we thought about 100K files, when we were downloading them from BBSes over 2400 baud modems to our 20 meg hard disks on our 286s! Intel just dropped the price of it's quad core processors, and 1 TB drives are now readily available for less than $100! We'll all get used to it when everything else speeds up to match.

Dusty

[A1000]

If everyone had linear thinking like you, we'd still be living in the stone age.

[A1000]

Most of my pictures lately were taken with a cell phone, still I took a lot of digital camera pictures and SLR pictures last year. I bet my cell phone pictures are better than your fish and wife art. I bet you I've taken more celebrity pictures than you did, just because I have hung in different places than Chicago, the home of most 300 pound BBW models.

[bfitzgerald]

I bet if you run that A900 file through another raw converter, do some noise ninja, you will get less artefacts, and better details.

I am amazed so many are happy with how ACR deals with high ISO files, I honestly think it's second rate..

[David Kilpatrick]

Agreed - many pictures at anything over 1600 put through ACR are terrible, and for some reason I don't understand ISO 3200 is looking worse than 6400. ACR 5.3 is not a fix in the way that using Raw Developer, RPP or other better converters can be. But it's still capable of producing usable results at over 1600 (results at 1600 are very good and it's almost impossible to tell the A900 from the D3X until you get over this figure - the only real difference is that Nikon kills the chroma noise, which is very easily done in ACR without affecting detail).

David

[A1000]

Sony is Adobe Premiere's competitor, with their Vegas software. As soon as they purchased Sonic Foundry, Vegas sales zoomed past Premiere.

The cameras need a mode where they will cut off the ground-level noise.

[A1000]

Why nonsense? Anytime someone proves you wrong, you start with insults, bringing in unrelated data to prove your wrong point, etc.

[A1000]

Have you heard of Jung's Theory of Shadow?

[KevinBarrett]

2nd

[A1000]

Sonolta, don't twist the facts again. I've taken plenty of pictures with Minolta Maxxum SLR, including last year.

Still taking pictures of the Chicago's Super BBW models? Nowhere in the world are so many of them per square mile than in the Midwest. You must have a ball.