A900 crop vs. A700

[Dusty]

In response to Don.

Different shooters do different things. I am a WA to short tele shooter (mostly), I have little interest in the long end (at this time)

FF means, lenses like the 17-35mm are real UWA again, the 20mm is a real UWA prime, 24mm is just that..wide angle! Also none of those lenses are ultra expensive either. Even the 50mm, which is far more useful for general shooting..as a real 50mm.
APS is fine, it's a compromise to some of us, acceptable.

The real challenge would be to see one of those APS-C fanboys uncrop their images to get back that UWA FOV!

You can always whittle a toothpick out of a baseball bat, but you can never hit the ball with a toothpick!

Dusty

[harvey]

The real challenge would be to see one of those APS-C fanboys uncrop their images to get back that UWA FOV!
Dusty

Red Rag...?

You can overdo this ultra-wide thing...


A900 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 @12mm 1/250s f/10 ISO200

The tower had squareish corners.

It makes my wife sick to look at this photo.

Harvey

[bfitzgerald]

Clearly Don has never heard of cropping

He also thinks the world is based on tele shooters, it's not..for Don maybe, but we don't all share that view.

[David Kilpatrick]

There is one excellent reason for using the A900 for sports and wildlife - if you are close enough to fill the APS-C frame correctly (not to need any further cropping for a good composition), it can be difficult to follow and time action without getting bits of the subject cut off. When panning for example the subject may be centred with too much space ahead of it, and almost touching the trailing edge of the photo.

With the A900, you can crop the APS-C shape from any part of the frame. Subjects moving, or weak panning technique, or just the usual problem of framing tightly while hand-holding a 400mm (etc) can lose you shots on the A700 but the A900 gets them as there is more space around the subject - assuming the same lens.

But for wildlife for example I almost never have enough tele reach. Even 500mm on APS-C is not enough, and A700 shots have loads of space and really need cropping for a good composition. For those shots the A900 has no advantage.

David

[harvey]

Clearly Don has never heard of cropping

He also thinks the world is based on tele shooters, it's not..for Don maybe, but we don't all share that view.

Well, I did ask about telephoto range.

And secondly there have been a lot of comments about other comparisons you could make and they were not all about tele shooters...

If you are primarily a wide angle or studio shooter and you already have (or will purchase) the top quality glass then the a900 is clearly the tool for the job. If you are primarily a long lens, closeup, or macro shooter then one needs to consider how many more $$$ on lenses you will need to spend for the a900 to be of serious benefit to you.

Maybe someone will post some images

Harvey

[stevecim]

since we are not getting an images, I'll go a little OT. When you need to do some serious croping on a image but you still want a good size print, is it better to up size the image before you crop or after?

[Dusty]

since we are not getting an images, I'll go a little OT. When you need to do some serious croping on a image but you still want a good size print, is it better to up size the image before you crop or after?

There should be no difference in image quality either way. Do you print 11x14 prints and then crop to 8x10, of just print the portion you want of the photo?

There could actually be slight advantages to either, depending on the actual pic and your machine. Low on memory or have a slow processor? Crop first. Is the pic one where you're not sure how it will look upsized, perhaps a section is too noisy? Upsize it then crop, so you don't have to do it twice.

Whatever floats you boat.

Dusty

[robsphotography]

Clearly Don has never heard of cropping

He also thinks the world is based on tele shooters, it's not..for Don maybe, but we don't all share that view.

Well, I did ask about telephoto range.

And secondly there have been a lot of comments about other comparisons you could make and they were not all about tele shooters...

If you are primarily a wide angle or studio shooter and you already have (or will purchase) the top quality glass then the a900 is clearly the tool for the job. If you are primarily a long lens, closeup, or macro shooter then one needs to consider how many more $$$ on lenses you will need to spend for the a900 to be of serious benefit to you.

Maybe someone will post some images

Harvey

Hello Harvey

I own a Sony A900 and I am very satisfied with the results I get from using the Sony 70-300 mm G SSM lens. For example, have a look at the tiger images on this web page:

http://www.robsphotography.co.nz/Sumatran-Tiger.html

The first image is a substantial crop, and has an image size of 3024 pixels x 2016 pixels, which is exactly half the width and height of the original A900 image. If the above image is printed at 150 pixels per inch (ppi), it will give a print size of 20.16 inches x 13.44 inches.

Now people who have seen my 20 inch print of this image are really amazed at its clarity and overall image quality. It is probably the equivalent field of view that you would get from using a 600mm tele lens on the A900.

If you own an A700, I know that there is a crop factor of 1.5 because the sensor size of the A700 is 23.5mm x 15.6mm and the sensor size of the A900 is 35.9mm x 24mm. The 1.5 crop factor is the approximate relationship between 35.9mm and 23.5mm. So, a 300mm lens on the Sony A900 gives a true 300mm field of view, but on the A700, because of the 1.5 crop factor, it gives a field of view of 450mm.

Now assume that I make a 100% crop of a very small part of an A900 image and that the cropped picture measures, say 542 pixels in width (as I did of the tiger's whiskers and chin in the tiger picture above). All things being equal, if the same lens was used on the A700 etc., I think you would probably end up with a cropped picture of the tiger's whiskers and chin that is quite close in pixel width to the cropped picture that you got from the A900. This is because the “gain” that you make from the 1.5 crop factor of the A700 is almost completely offset by the fact that the full A700 image is only 4272 pixels wide and the A900 image is a huge 41.6% wider at 6048 pixels.

Regards
Rob
http://www.robsphotography.co.nz/Sony-A900.html

[bakubo]

The real challenge would be to see one of those APS-C fanboys uncrop their images to get back that UWA FOV!

Here are few UWA photos with APS-C DSLRs:

Hilltribe village in northern Thailand:


Longneck Karen woman and baby in northern Thailand:


Wat Doi Suthep, Chiang-mai, Thailand:

[David Kilpatrick]

Reminder to Henry and all others - three images or links per post please! On this occasion I will leave the four intact, even though I suspect they are Canon shots on 10-20mm Sigma...

David

[bakubo]

Reminder to Henry and all others - three images or links per post please! On this occasion I will leave the four intact, even though I suspect they are Canon shots on 10-20mm Sigma...

Sorry, I forgot about the 3 image limit. I'll go back and remove one. Yes, these are Canon 30D + Sigma 10-20mm shots. It was in response to someone asking about APS-C and UWA so I figured any APS-C and any UWA would be okay.

[bakubo]

I use bold text when interspersing....it's should be easy to differentiate the comments using the Mozilla Firefox browser but less easy to do so when using IE. I do use color when quoting straight comments or speaks not enclosed in quote boxes, and I also use color for interspersing when comments have gone beyond the original comment, and then my reply, and then another comment. That said, I will consider switching to 100% color when interspersing.

I am using Firefox 3.5.1 and the twilightBB board style. I changed to twilightBB a few weeks ago when we were having problems with the old default. The light gray text on the medium gray background is not ideal though so I a few minutes ago changed to subsilver2 and now your bold text is easily discernible.

[bakubo]

Henry - nice shots. Of course he brand of the camera does not matter for the UWA usefulness discussion.

Notice the poor, weak color of these Canon shots. They were shot in raw and converted using DPP. Compared to KM and Sony colors these are really unattractive, don't you think? I haven't really gone back and looked at my old Canon shots in a long time, but I am not too satisfied with them now. I think I will try reconverting a couple with PS/ACR and see if I can get them looking better.

[bakubo]

Notice the poor, weak color of these Canon shots. They were shot in raw and converted using DPP. Compared to KM and Sony colors these are really unattractive, don't you think? I haven't really gone back and looked at my old Canon shots in a long time, but I am not too satisfied with them now. I think I will try reconverting a couple with PS/ACR and see if I can get them looking better.

I just redid shot #2 of the woman and baby. I think it looks much better now. I have replaced the old one on my website so the one you will see in my earlier post is the new one -- unless the old one is still in your cache. I really should go back and reprocess hundreds of old Canon raw shots on my website in the Thailand, Japan, Cambodia, Arizona, etc. galleries. Maybe someday.

[robsphotography]

Henry - nice shots. Of course he brand of the camera does not matter for the UWA usefulness discussion.

Rob - The a900 loses in the head-to-head long end resolution battle with the a700. Not only does the a900 provide less resolution, it does not have eye-start af, and you are wasting a bunch of memory, storage, and energy just trying to make the a900 frame match the a700 frame. Not only that it may not be as easy to make the capture in the first place because the subject will be smaller in the viewfinder on the a900 which may make it more difficult to hit your critical focus point as easily. No since guessing which will provide more resolution in the head-to-head long lens battle between the a700 and the a900 because we already know that the a700 wins the higher resolution prize.

See this page here as it is is one of the more well done pages on the subject:

http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/dslrsens ... ensors.htm

-Sonolta

I have had a quick look at the source you quote above. The article seems to be saying that it’s the “higher pixel density” of the Canon 20D that helps to give the 20D picture more detail than the picture from the full frame camera.

To be honest, I would far rather have a camera where the pixel density is not too dense, and the A900 seems to have less pixel density than the A700. We all know about the problems that arise when too many pixels are crammed on to a relatively small sensor!

In the pictures published of the bear’s nose in the above article, it’s almost impossible to see this claimed “extra detail”, and I certainly doubt whether you would see it at all in a large print viewed from a “normal” viewing distance.

Honestly, if you could actually see the fantastic print quality and large prints I am getting from even quite heavily cropped A900 images, you wouldn’t hesitate to always use your A900, even for long telephoto shots! But, as always, I fully respect the views of people who don’t want an A900, because it’s a huge adjustment to make if you are very satisfied with your APS-C camera.

Regards
Rob
http://www.robsphotography.co.nz/Sony-A900.html
(Examples of the outstanding resolution of Sony A900 images)