Photoclubalpha

Group DSLR test: Verdict
It's been an epic battle of the camera brands and there have been a lot of surprises in the performance of all of them.
It's always different when the cameras are being tested all together, they all have pro's and cons which don't necessarily get seen until a close comparison is done.


It's a surprising winner of the group test, I expected the Nikon or Canon to take the crown.


The Sony Alpha A700 wins because of the specification being so similar to the other models, it gives good noise performance, has great colour rendition and a good dynamic range that seems to work even when dynamic range compensation is switched off. All that and it's the second oldest of the group.


Well done Sony.

the compleet review is here

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/DSLR-group-test-11857

greetings
gustav

winning what?
:-/

The loser is ePhotozine. This site is truly terrible for bad writing and misinformation, despite being run by a photo press colleague of mine I respect, Peter Bargh. Matt Greyson, the writer of this report, appears to know very little about anything when writing single reports and here he has excelled in knowing nothing about several things at once.

For example, he believes the Pentax K7 uses a 'SAFOX VIII' sensor to capture images - that's actually the AF-module, not the imaging sensor. He also thinks the BIONZ has face detection and its special purpose includes something to do with shutter speeds. Er?

The whole thing is complete nonsense. Someone was on holiday, I think, and told Mr Grayson to do a round-up to keep the site fresh. He copied some specifications, misunderstood large chunks of instruction manuals, and came up with a standard hack journo 'filler'. That's sad because it would have been great for the Alpha 700 to come out top in a report where most the detail was accurate, and opinions plausible.

David

Oh dear, just been reading more - here is a classic:

"Canon were the first, incorporating Image Stabilisation into lenses before DSLRs took over the world. They got the rights to call it IS (Image Stabilisation) forcing other companies to select different names. Nikon opted for Vibration Reduction (VR), Pentax chose Shake Reduction (SR) while Olympus selected Supersonic Wave Drive (SWD)."

Aaargh! This guy honestly does not know which is the AF-sensor and which is the image sensor, what is the stabilisation module and what is the focusing module - etc etc. In other words he simply does not understand a single thing about the cameras.

David

David Kilpatrick wrote:Aaargh! This guy honestly does not know which is the AF-sensor and which is the image sensor, what is the stabilisation module and what is the focusing module - etc etc. In other words he simply does not understand a single thing about the cameras.

David

Don't worry. I heard is reporting is so bad that NBC is going to hire him as a news anchor!

Dusty

Sadly I have to agree. Matt Greyson is not the right person to review cameras, frankly I am astounded he is on the payroll, it's shocking to say the least. Might be a really nice guy, but about as clueless as you can get with cameras.
EPZ is top on my list for junko consumer fed not to be taken seriously web stuff, it's the least useful site on the net for camera reviews. Followed closely by Trusted reviews and Steve's digicams.

Concerning ePhotozine's compliment to the a700:

"Thanks, but no thanks."

Ha ha, a Bionz anti shake module...or was it a Bionz AF sensor thingy, I forget, whatever..thanks for the chuckle DK.
I especially liked, "He doesn't know anything about several things at once" he he...
It can't be serious surely, it has to be a sendup of actual, real review sites....
Greg

Well, it looks as if the reviewer was perhaps not qualified to carry out such a group test. I did superficially read the review and wondered about the A700 face recognition feature. I have just purchased a new A700 and was looking at some Jpegs taken by my son with my old one. I think the Sony Jpeg engine is fine even at the "fine setting" and also at 100% they look sharp (using tha 18-250 Tamron). Whatever the outcome of such a comparison the A700 remains a good DSLR and in v.4 is versatile and competent even at higher ISOs. I notice that you still have to pay over £1000 for the D300 and the 40D has gone. I will contend that whatever else is released by Sony or competitors the A700 remains a good all round DSLR with plenty of functionality and an easy to use Menu. I will continue to use my A350/A700 combo with A350 on wide and standard zooms and the A700 mostly on telephoto work and when requiring to use on camera flash due to longer "legs". Just received my HVL-F20AM five minutes ago so we will see how that performs. Looks nifty and light.

Oddly enough, at the present typical sale price the Alpha 700 genuinely is the best of the bunch. The Canon 50D, I can assure you, would be disliked by most users here - if you think the A700 ever had too much built-in NR and poor JPEGs, the 50D would be an eye-opener. They got high ISO at the expense of some very strong processing. The results are like a sort of point-and-shoot on steroids. The D300 high ISO is actually a little better than the A700 even after v4 and I have no idea how they got such a poor comparison. I can't say anything about the K7 but the K20D was a nice enough camera, you just wouldn't ever want to use it at high ISO, much like the A350. I reckon that if these cameras were subjected to the same in-camera raw processing at the 50D they might well match it.

The tester used IDC, Capture NX2, etc for the conversions. I think Adobe ACR would have given some different results...

BUT - just try ACR 5.5! I have been using it for a day. It's giving me much better results than ACR 5.4 with the 900 and 700. Noise is less prominent and white balance is improved with the change in colour readout.

David

David Kilpatrick wrote:
BUT - just try ACR 5.5! I have been using it for a day. It's giving me much better results than ACR 5.4 with the 900 and 700. Noise is less prominent and white balance is improved with the change in colour readout.

David

DO you know how to get LightRoom to use ACR 5.5?
I installed it yesterday and CS4 picks it up but LR still uses 5.4 for some reason.

Until there is a Lightroom update, it can't, because ACR is built into Lightroom, not added as a plugin. There will be a Lightroom revision very soon I am sure.

David

Elisha wrote:Do you know how to get Lightroom to use ACR 5.5?

No way.

Elisha wrote:I installed it yesterday and CS4 picks it up but LR still uses 5.4 for some reason.

The reason simply is this: Lightroom 2.4 is ACR 5.4 (and then some). You just have to wait for Lightroom 2.5; most likely it will be released at the same time as the final release of ACR 5.5. The beta periods for ACR typically last four weeks or thereabouts.

-- Olaf

ok thanks guys.

I had to comment on his review of the A230, where he claimed the screw drive was the new SAM system.... to his credit he did then get it sorted.

Ant.