A900 crop vs. A700 - 2

[Greg Beetham]

I've been to a couple of air displays (back in my film days), and I really think you would be much better off limiting the amount of gear you give yourself to hump around, then you can concentrate on getting good shots with what you do take. Personally I'd probably take the A700 and the Siggy, there is usually an opportunity to get most of the planes from a reasonable distance while they are in the air.
I suppose you could always put the Tamron in the bottom of a backpack or such just in case it's needed, then there is the static displays to consider, and that means a short lens as well....
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

In the original thread, I took a lot of flak from one direction because of my suggestion that the A900 - with whatever lens was in use - was a better choice for football photography than a crop APS-C camera because of the real difficulty of getting all the right parts of the players, plus the ball, into the frame at the moment of exposure. A larger field of view avoids the too-tight crop or the unaccepted 'ball out of shot' which used to get my press colleagues loudly abused by the picture editor.

A well-respected dPreview poster, and good photographer, nbercasio, has posted some examples:

http://www.bercasio.com/photos/realmadriddcunited/

Taken with the A700 and 70-300mm SSM. Nice PP effect (colour and contrast palette) but if you look through his set of pix, you'll find exactly what I was talking about. There are shots with player action and the ball is gone - shots with player and ball only the player's head is cut off at the frame top, and other similar instances.

Most if not all of these pix would have been 'intact' at the same focal length with the full frame camera. While I have said I would not choose the A900 for sports or wildlife, I would choose it over the A700 in these apparent circumstances for this type of sport. Wildlife is a bit different and it depends on whether the wildlife is closely approachable and moving fast, or at a long distance and static. First option, A900; second one, A700 or even A350 to grab extra resolution.

David

[pakodominguez]

http://www.bercasio.com/photos/realmadriddcunited/

Taken with the A700 and 70-300mm SSM. Nice PP effect (colour and contrast palette) but if you look through his set of pix, you'll find exactly what I was talking about. There are shots with player action and the ball is gone - shots with player and ball only the player's head is cut off at the frame top, and other similar instances.

I'l speak as a photographer AND as a Real Madird fan:
I don't like the PP. I don't like the composition.

And I think that if the photographer miss the ball is mostly because his (lack of) technique and not because the APS camera -he will probably miss the ball with the A900 too!

At least he got the action of the 1 goal...

[David Kilpatrick]

You may be right - even on dPreview there are 'where's the ball?' comments!

The PP is very fashionable right now. This kind of de-saturated, contrasty look is almost universal in fashion and high end advertising portrait work in the UK. There are special sets of Actions and Capture One, Lightroom etc presets just to achieve it. I do not use it myself as I think it wrecks the photo permanently, but I am always quite impressed when I see it.

David

[stevecim]

Yer I agree with Pako, it's not to hard to get ball in football or cricket, well at least with the batmans.
even with a A350.





I did miss the static pitch on this one.




with any sports you need to understand the game, but having a larger MP image + larger FOV would be very handy
Having enough MP so you can take photos with a larger FOV then crop to the FOV you want and high frame rate is ideal

With all the info presented here, I would be hard press to chose between a FF or APS If they where similar in price.
I guess full frame is better if you have the lenses needed to get the image you want and APS is better if you want to get more out of the lenses you have. Dose that make sense? I guess in 3-5 years we will only have FF DSLR .

[Greg Beetham]

Tell you what David, next time you are over here we'll go for a walk along some rainforest paths I know from back in my film days and shoot birds of opportunity, you can use the A900 if you like and I'll handicap myself with the A100. Over 70% of the birds in the rainforest are small, sort of sparrow size up to maybe twice that (body mass). You can often get reasonably close to them if you stand still for a bit, they are curious little critters, especially the 'Robins' 'Monarchs' Silvereyes and 'Fantails' (similarity in style/appearence too elswhere in the world is accidental, nobody new what else too call them I think). The bigger birds, the Parrots, Pigeons, Thrushes, Fernwrens, Riflebird, Whipbird, Whistlers, Drongo, Figbirds, Logrunners, Scrubfowl, Nightjars, Owls, Turkeys, Oreoles, Crakes etc. are much more likely too be aware of you long before you see them or are just plain normally up high in the canopy and very hard too get a good look at with a camera, binocs are ok tho usually.
You might be right, the A900 could be good at birds but I remain to be covinced, having seen how APS-C is so much better to use than film FF...
Greg

[stevecim]

Hmmm, A A900 cropped to APS FOV would give a image size a little bigger than the A100 but it would mean more work in post processing

[Greg Beetham]

Yah I know the A900 has the drop on the A100 'on paper' but when it comes to focussing on a small bird...that's where I think the A900 will find it difficult, it'll be a lot smaller in the A900 VF than the A100's for achieving a critical focus on the actual subject and not something close by, unless a bigger lens is used of course, but then you have the difficulties associated with using a bigger lens, more magnification is good but it's at the expense of DOF, not to mention extra weight, and extra mag means extra apparent shake....
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

Greg, this myth (from Don) about the A900 being harder to focus either AF or manual is simply untrue. The AF module in the A900 is precisely the same ACTUAL size as that in the A700 (but with added assist sensors which make it better at tracking action around the nine sensors in wide area mode). That means that if you use a 200mm lens, the focus target area is precisely the same as the A700, including the f/2.8 plus double cross array for centre focusing.

The viewfinder optical scale (to the eye) is marginally smaller than the A700, so the subject will appear slightly smaller. However, the use of a real condensor lens, a very large prism and different eyepiece optics means the clarity and resolution of that subject - to the eye - is vastly improved. Ask anyone who has used the A900 next to the A700. Both are very good but the A900 outclasses every current DSLR finder made for brightness and visual acutance. That includes the 1Ds MkIII with its slightly larger view. It's nothing like as a sharp or bright to the eye.

Having some extra view field in the finder makes it easier to track subjects, see them entering the frame, prevent them leaving it. If the A900 had 28 megapixels it would match the A700 in resolution (pixel pitch) and then there would be no question of the benefit. If the A900 AF array was extended beyond its very tightly centred APS-C friendly shape, say to 15 sensors, it might be better at tracking subjects leaving the APS-C area.

Remember, the A900 can also be switched to APS-C crop made anyway, and just shoot 10.7 megapixel images. But there's no gain over the 5fps of full frame, and no very clear finder mask to show the restricted area. It would be VERY frustrating to have a subject caught in the finder, but cut off by the crop!

David

[pakodominguez]

Yer I agree with Pako, it's not to hard to get ball in football or cricket, well at least with the batmans.
even with a A350.

mmm
I never said that it's easy to get the ball in the frame. It's a matter of technique. Your samples are nice but... you are not shooting the Real Madrid -the players an the ball go way more fast than the players in your samples! I didn't go to that game (too expensive when including train fares and extras) and I'll probably miss a lot of "balls in the frame" too because sports is not something I shot -I do events, I do prefer weddings, and I can tell you I never miss the kiss

The photographer lack the technique. He's not a reporter either -He got mostly Cristiano Ronaldo and a couple of shots of Raul, Real Madrid's Captain, and that was it. Composition isn't good either and the PP (vigneting and desaturating) doesn't help to understand what was happening there... ah! les artistes

[stevecim]

Yer I agree with Pako, it's not to hard to get ball in football or cricket, well at least with the batmans.
even with a A350.

mmm
I never said that it's easy to get the ball in the frame. It's a matter of technique. [/i]

That's what I was agreeing with, technique and having a understanding of the game you are trying to shoot

The photo's where just for fun I was bored