The Nightmare is over!

[pakodominguez]

I'm not sure stills shooters will approve of that choice.

I'm not specially happy about it, even if I like having the wonderful video capabilities on a DSRL

Anyway I think Canon have the video DSLR market right now, I'm not sure if that's going to change much.
And even if it did and Sony dominated it at some point in the future, it seems obvious to me that the needs of stills shooters are secondary to Sony.

You are wrong: "needs for stills" is secondary to any single maker except probably for Leica, that does not include video and that offer a BW only camera. So probably Leica is the only brand that suits you, Barry...

For that reason I find their approach uninteresting and their products less appealing than rivals.

Au contraire, I was ready to bet the Nikon D800 as Camera of the Year 2012, but then Sony came with the RX100; RX1; NEX6 and 3 new E-mount lenses that I guess are good optically and sport OSS (hey, how many 10-18 OSS lenses have you seen? )
About the A99, I need to see how good is the new AF and Flash system in order to decide if I'm excited about it or not. Otherwise is a camera that Sony announced more than a year ago, that share lots of things with the A77, and that make it less "new".
Now Nikon have been shipping D800 with a faulty AF -and taking the best approach ever: denial (the new D600 use a different AF module, so it will be probably AF-issue -free). And Canon is just boring.

Regards

[bfitzgerald]

Pako I'm pretty upfront about my own personal experiences so I've given Pentax and Nikon a bit of a hammering there is no doubt a QC aspect..worse with Pentax in that they felt ignoring the issue was a solution, at least Nikon made some effort even if it didn't quite work.

So I'll continue to monitor things as they go along I've not had any issues with the Sony stuff I did buy, but then I didn't buy much!
Nobody is getting an easy ride from me. As for the D800 disaster yes completely unacceptable lack of QC and I would simply say to anyone..camera has problem (or lens or whatever you buy) send it right back get a replacement or your money back. I've never dealt with Canon in any way so can't comment on their customer service.

It really comes down to what you do, and what you like. For me I can't see where Sony is going to go with a £2500 FF SLT body..bar a few serious video folks, it's surely not high up the list of Canikon users. With the A77 some nice price cuts have come along which is good, but being the low light shooter I am..frankly other cameras spank the A77 at high ISO and quite clearly, that alone rules it out even if I "got over" the EVF SLT aspect.

Appreciate not everyone does available light shooting, I do quite a bit so that's fairly important to me.

[Greg Beetham]

The shape of the hotshoe doesn't maters. The flash itself is a little bit dummy, controlled by the camera. There are some metering issues in general with Km and Sony DSRL, well documented, about the cameras underexposing when a spot of light get into the frame (like a small window, or the reflection of the flash in a mirror)

Sony change the hotshoe because they already have many accessories for Handycam that use that interface, since they want to get the Video-DSRL market, it is their way to go...

I bet the shoe being changed matters too the people who have bought numerous i-shoe flashes in the past.
Also I think that reflection problem where the message from the camera/flash to the ‘other’ flash to turn off (stop shining in my face) is reflected back and turns the flash off on the camera is blown out of proportion too a degree, I was able to deliberately make the KM5D and the A100 with the F56 do it but you have to get the position of the reflection just right, most of the time the cameras just took the photo with flash normally in the tests I did even though there was a bright reflection.
The real problem is the sloppy QC of making the i-shoe while Sony has been making it, very poor effort on my A700 (loose fit and rough surface on the contacts, plus plastic is transferred onto the contacts by the action of sliding the flash on and off) compared to the shoe on my KM5D and even the one on the A100 is better. That’s why I think Sony wanted to get rid of the i-shoe all along and were priming everyone in advance by making sure it operated so unreliably that when the replacement finally happened there were no real large scale revolutions by all and sundry, and of course I’m sure you are correct as to the reason WHY Sony wanted to change the shoe.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

IR are saying the lots of extra hot shoe contacts could be used for XLR connectors and other fancy video stuff. Which is great but has nothing at all to do with still sas you don't need anywhere near that number of contacts for flash work. I suppose you could say you can use an adaptor for the inverted hot shoe. But let's not kid ourselves this was done for photographers. Sony are aiming for video folks.

Some of the long running bug bears continue. Sony have stripped their models of any Minolta dials (as DK predicted) same old drive mode button v the newer Nikon drive mode dial (which works great and much better than a single button) Pricey grip (though Nikon are pricey too) with NO AA battery option, no built in flash again. You could argue AA's won't pull enough power, but that's the problem with SLT the power drain. The top LCD is really quite basic still and only thrown in there for "keeping up with others". Still looks like a Canon to me with a few tweaks.

Sadly this is what happens when a photographic company get's taken over with one obsessed with video. They'll dump anything to serve video shooters..yet fail to address the needs of high end stills shooters properly. Very sad to see. There's more Minolta thinking in other makers now..

[Dusty]

.... Sony are aiming for video folks.

(snip)

Sadly this is what happens when a photographic company get's taken over with one obsessed with video. They'll dump anything to serve video shooters..yet fail to address the needs of high end stills shooters properly. Very sad to see. There's more Minolta thinking in other makers now..

Exactly. According to the AMPHOTO interview http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ph ... uya-numata of Son'y top camera and marketing guy, it WAS compromised for video. They couldn't do the video they wanted to on the 36MP sensor, so they stuck with the 24.

They will never make up for the loss of real photographers with the gains of a few video people, as REAL video people will go for a video camera, not a hybrid, and the occasional vid shooter isn't all that interested in high end video spec in a stills camera.

Dusty

[bfitzgerald]

Interesting Dusty just repeats what we already know.

"Many people love an OVF [optical viewfinder] especially for full-frame products but we believe an EVF is better."

And folks wondered why I called Sony arrogant and out of touch
Very strange logic..Sony=Ignore users=Lose sales
I don't get it but hey you can't tell them they simply refuse to listen. They tell you what you can have, they don't understand "listen to our customers"

Not a problem, lots of other products from other makers. I'll go one further, I won't actually buy any Sony products at all, that's how I feel about the company I can't avoid Sony sensors, but I'm not touching any of their consumer electronics products ever again.

[bfitzgerald]

Well as the old saying goes it's not over until it is actually "over"
I shot a wedding Friday with the D7000 and I've around 40%+ false AF locks (ie out of focus) varying sometimes from a bit to quite a lot. You can take 2 consecutive shots and the AF can be off on one. Flip a coin and see what you get!

Put a focus test chart in front of a D7000 and it nails it spot on (as per my "it's over post") put a real subject in front of it..and it's something of a lottery what you get.
So back to square one, at this stage I think my Nikon experiment is over (I really can't say I have any confidence in their AF abilities). The 5d was a demon for AF it was not..but it was quite accurate at least a lot more accurate than this POS!, and more importantly it would actually let you know if it could not lock AF. The Nikon's I have used will rarely if ever refuse to AF..but if you get an accurate lock is another thing!

I'm running out of options at this stage. I got by because I "had to get by" you have to deliver problems or not (MF, stopping down, live view all came into play) But it was not much fun, bit like being tortured with a blunt knife. I'm lost on this one..accurate with test charts..real world results are poor

[bakubo]

You didn't mention it, but I suppose you have carefully checked the AF in controlled conditions using things other than test charts? Very carefully try some objects and people in various lighting conditions and types of lighting using the lenses you use a lot.

Generally it seems the AF for wide angles is often iffy, but you probably know that also. I have found that my A700, A100, and KM 7D almost always get the focus wrong (usually way, way off) at shorter FLs, say <22mm or so. AF is basically useless at the short FLs, IME. My Canon 60D, 30D, and 300D tended to be better, but I can't say they got it right all the time. With all my DSLRs I learned to never use AF for very short FLs to be safe. For other FLs though no problems with any of them. My m4/3 gear will accurately AF at all FLs, but they use CDAF.

[pakodominguez]

Well as the old saying goes it's not over until it is actually "over"
I shot a wedding Friday with the D7000 and I've around 40%+ false AF locks (ie out of focus) varying sometimes from a bit to quite a lot. You can take 2 consecutive shots and the AF can be off on one. Flip a coin and see what you get!

I understand this is a brand new camera that you got few days ago, right? Do you really know your camera? cuz, as you know, not all the cameras behave the same (even from the same manufacturer and even if they share same parts/systems)

Best you can do is use the camera intensively for a couple of weeks and then decide what to do.

Regards

[Philip]

Barry, 6 months after getting my D800, following decades of Minolta/Sony use, I am still trying to fathom out the best AF mode to use in any particular situation - there are just too many options in comparison with off/on single/on continuious of Minolta/Sony..... As Pako says, give it a week or two and if you can do what babuko suggests, set up a more controlled situation hopefully you won't have to go through the whole new system syndrome yet again.......

Philip

[bfitzgerald]

I shot 100's of pictures when I first got it to see how the AF system was working. Not just test charts but various shots such as people, objects etc. And the AF seemed fine. I've not dropped the camera, nothing obvious has happened it's just as if the AF has "gone bad" or become suddenly hit and miss

I am puzzled..very puzzled
I agree there are a lot of AF options, I tried most of them but it didn't seem to help a lot
I know some are thinking "hey this is him" I would be myself. But how hard is it? I mean you put the AF Point on a subject and it can either focus or not.

[Greg Beetham]

Barry, I didn’t notice what lenses you were using, do you have any reason to suspect the lenses might be an unknown quantity?
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

Problem is Greg they all look fine as in if I had a problem with one or 2 then I would expect constant problems with that lens. I get a mix of in focus no problem shots, some a bit off (to various degree ie some are a tad off AF wise but it won't matter) then I get some that are way off for some shots.
I'm baffled really I am.

If it were a case of changing lenses I'd do that no problem, even the 35mm f1.8 shows the same behaviour. 17-50mm f2.8 again has hit..90mm macro is a lens I'd not expect issues with either. I tested the 90mm quite a bit for head shots and it was bang on..until I arrived at the location then it was hit and miss.

I ran across this..
http://photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00aT6J?start=90

Some of the posts seem similar to mine. Mostly using faster lenses. At times the AF can nail a shot in very dim conditions with absolute accuracy..then you might be outside in super bright light and it will miss well more than you expect. I do want to get to the bottom of this..but I can't really do much as I've another shoot coming up soon. No I don't want to keep changing mounts either (I've almost run out!) I don't think I can AF tune my way out of this either maybe I can apply some AF settings that give better results. Can't deny whilst I can soldier through this and take safety shots etc. It's not really very impressive, esp not for a camera in this class.

[Greg Beetham]

Barry if you are charging for your time you need a camera that works properly, you’ve had so many AF problems with numerous bodies that I’m suspecting the lenses as well now. Henry didn’t have any problems with the AF on the D60 so I’m thinking go where it’s safe at this point and just cut your losses.
Greg

[Greg Beetham]

I had a look at the thread you posted, it seems as though Nikon have haphazard production issues with AF for some unknown reason, camera related or lens related, or both, or poor QC maybe who knows, but it's not really good enough for someone depending on the system to produce the goods, it's not as if they are breaking new ground building AF systems in this day and age.
Greg