My adventures with the Sony A900 started in early September when I anxiously awaited (like many others) the announcement of the Nikon D3x or Canon 1Ds successor from Photokina. My schedule for the fall/early winter had several shoots that begged for big files (20’ store displays, large format ads, etc) so I figured the timing would be perfect… what better time to play with new toys then the fall in some of the coolest outdoor locations in the US?
As the days passed however, it became apparent that nothing was coming and I needed to start making calls to reserve MF equipment and rethinking the shot ideas I had that were dependent upon 35mm focusing ability, packabiltiy, and lens selection. That’s when the late night idea of finding an A900 came to my mind. After a bit of research, my head was racing with fun ideas again, and the photography nerd in me was psyched to get to play with all the AF Zeiss glass I had heard great things about.
FFWD a few weeks and I had located a dealer in China that, after paying a small (yet very reasonable) premium, shipped me an A900 in just a few days to my door in SLC. I had a couple of days to get up to speed on the system, files etc and then it was off to upstate NY for a fall outdoor sport shoot that focused on the world class kayaking, mountain biking, running, and camping of the Adirondacks.
[ABOUT THIS ‘REVIEW’: For me photography is not a pixel peeping endeavor, I’m a commercial photographer who is on location about 250 days a year. As a result I’m demanding on my gear and I expect it to work how it was designed. Yes the pixels matter, but usability/reliability/consistency are all more valuable in the long run. It sounds simple enough but you’d be surprised how many people can justify tinkering and making compromises when it comes to their gear. I don’t like to compromise. All of the images (including the ones from the A900) we process in-house through using Lightroom 2.1]
Over the course of a week I shot about 5000 files on the A900, and had a good chance to see where it shined and where it struggled. Our week started off with shooting kayaking at sunrise, with fog pouring off the lakes, ended with strobed nighttime urban inspired downhill and ran the gamut of things in between. It got carried to the top of mountains, put in dry bags, mistakenly placed in puddles, and mounted to trees. Overall I was pleasantly surprised by its robust build, and ability to handle the elements. I say surprised because on the surface the camera is extremely light and unassuming in the hand. There is also a consumer (rather than professional) edge to some of the Sony marketing, the reasonable price being just one example, that might lead a pro to believe that they will be forced to make compromises, but for the most part that is not true.
At the end of each day we’d load up the selects and the client loved the images that were coming out of the A900, when I showed the Art Director the files in Lightroom and we zoomed in to see subtle detail in the fall foliage, product, and talent’s faces her eyes would light up. Now could she tell the difference between a D3 file and an A900 file, I doubt it, but for her knowing that more information is in the files means less hassle with the printing companies (who are always asking for bigger file sizes), better looking store displays, and better cropability.
I also took notes during the week, mostly about the camera, but funny quotes like “Do you camp here often” (maybe you had to be there) also found their way in. So below are my general thoughts… my ‘review’ of the camera if you will. If you have any further questions drop a comment and I will do my best to answer. But for now, I have 120GB of A900 files to wade through and they just finally all loaded into Lightroom:
Pros:
- Big beautiful files — These babies open up at 60+ MB and look simply awesome. I can’t help but think after comparing images all week that Sony is giving you every piece of data (good or bad) and letting the user decide how to maximize for final output. If any word can be used to describe the files it would be ‘raw’ (where I’d call Canon files ‘silky’ e.g.)
- Lightweight and great feel in the hand – Shooting side by side with the D3 I never hesitated to pick up the A900 if the conditions suited it (see Cons). The grip is arguably the best out there and the weight (even with the Zeiss glass) is welcome in the camera bag and in the hand.
- 5Fps – While the big mirror may be loud at times, the A900 can rapidly fire off shots and keep on going for quite a few frames before you hit the buffer. At times I would be shooting and expect to be stopped but it just kept clicking away… just don’t expect to review/edit/peep much while the buffer is cranking. It behaves like a cross between a 35mm SLR and a Medium Format camera, and I like that.
- Big LCD – A big bright LCD, and easy to navigate menu system, and awesome zoom abilities to check focus (which is ultra important with these high res files) are all intuitive and easy to use. It took all of a day for me to feel comfortable using and fine-tuning the A900.
- Steady Shot – It’s hard to complain about built in steady shot. This feature worked great for some moving car to car shots we did, and lets you keep the A900 down at lower ISOs.
Neutrals:
- Viewfinder – I’d heard rave reviews from people about how great the viewfinder was. The viewfinder is big and bright (and 100%), which is awesome! But it’s no better than the D3 or 1Ds brightness/bigness (is that a word?) wise.
- Battery – The battery is small and considering the size of the files it does a decent job. Come to think of it kind of like an iPhone battery… just big enough for most users to get through the day, but serious users are going to have to have a midday recharge or a couple extra spares around. While I didn’t test it specifically I can deduce that you are going to get about 30gb of shooting out of one charge.
- Flash Sync – Flash sync is huge for outdoor photographers and studio guys alike, and I can’t believe camera manufacturers don’t see the value in adding a faster sync/electronic shutter… especially in their high resolution bodies. I found I could push the sync on the A900 to 1/320 and only lose the top 1/6 of the frame when using PW’s in fast mode.
- Zeiss Glass – While I can’t put any Canon or Nikon glass on here to compare I have to say I wasn’t “blown away” by the 85mm and 135mm Zeiss glass I put on the camera. It suffered from the same problems I’ve seen from the other manufacturers (CA in backlit areas when shot wide open & image softness wide open). Don’t get me wrong they are beautiful and probably surpass the competitors in IQ, they just didn’t blow me away.
Cons:
- AF area – The AF area is confined to 9 central points and this brings up lots of issues. The first and biggest is if you want to shoot with your subject outside of the focus area you are forced to focus and then recompose. This causes major problems with moving objects, and also when using very narrow depth of field — as the high resolution is not forgiving if you or your subject move the slightest. At times I also found it difficult to navigate to the central focus point and also of note I did have a couple instances when my D3 was able to find focus in dark situations when the A900 continued to hunt.
- Raw Files – The uncompressed Sony raw files are 35mb apiece!, and you are forced to shoot these because the compressed (cRAW) version sends the files to 8bit. I noticed quite a difference between the RAW and cRAW files so you are left with little option but to watch your cards and drives get filled up quick! I can’t believe with all of the codec experience Sony has that they haven’t fixed this issue.
- High ISO Noise – There’s no way around it, I don’t think I will shoot this camera with the intention of having 60mb files at anything higher than ISO 800. If you size down, the 30mb files look pretty awesome, and if you use Noise Ninja and size down… well then the A900 holds it own quite well to the competition. But if you are looking to shoot at 1600 and have a clean tack 65mb sharp image, its not going to happen. Maybe after some more time messing around in Noise Ninja etc learning how to maximize the raw files I might change my tune, but for now I’ll leave the A900 in its sweet spots (ISO 160-640).
- Unwelcome Sony Details – Say what you will but the unique Sony flash mount is a pain (especially switching between bodies), the single CF card slot is impossible to unload with gloves on and I would loath to have fat fingers for that matter, also getting the thumbs down in my book are the rear lens caps that can only be put on if lined up perfectly and the front lens caps that are different sizes throughout the pro glass focal ranges.
2 Comments
Wow looks great!
Thanks for the very nice and honest review. I look at a lot of reviewers articles and their bias toward Nikon or Canon is just oozing out of the review. Not so in your refreshing review. I know both platforms well enough to see when those other reviewers are giving half truths ignoring the powerful benefits that the Sony has and just talk about the noise comparisons as if it was the only iportant thing. Not all photographers are on a quest to get a good photo of a black cat in a coal bin on a moonless night. Blowing that out of proportion and then forgetting some of the amazing things that the Sony has is a disservice to everyone.
For instance I see where few mention the three memory functions. It enables you to have four different cameras in one. One memory could be for available light with singe file shooting and aperature preferred and another could be for outdoos shooting black and white at low ISO and shutter priority or auto or manual. In fact every function on the camera is changeable in those memories. So if you come in from shooting low iso B&W on the ski slopes and go into the hotel - just flicking the control givess you a whole other camera with high iso color. The Nikons don’t do that and it could mean not getting a photo while you go thru the menues to get the camera in the right way for the new lighting or scene.
I have the a700 and have discovered another new aspect of photography when connecting to an HDTV screen via an HDMI cable. The resulting photos on the a700 way outperform any HDTV 1080p that comes down the commercial tracks. It makes your jaw drop. It is life size and life like on a 52 inch LCD. It is surreal. There is no way to describe this but to say WOW. Check it out on your a900. By the way - many have written that the Sony HDMI features work a hect of a lot better than the Nikon since the Nikon superimposes exif data on a border or over the photo. You cannot avoid it in the unmagnified view on the Nikons. Not so with the Sony unless you call for that via the remote or camera back.
One other thing that I have noticed between the Nikon D300 and the Sony a700 and that is the viewfinder sharpness under magnification. The a700 at 6.7x (their first stage) is tack sharp. Same is true at no magnification. At 13 x the image gets somewhat blurry but not bad. On the other hand the D300 Nikon is sharp only at zero mag and is terribly blurred with pixilation and stair step phenomena at the Nikons maxumum magnification. That means that you can check for focus and sharpness at a higher mag and be certain of your final focus in the Sony a700 - I would bet the a900 might even be better than the a700 and permit even higher magnifications ratios without sharpness loss because of more information on the files. No one seems to mention this factor but I would think to a professional it would be important to really and with certainty check for focus accuracy before leaving the scene.
About the HDMI capability, think of your client and how he/she would react to seeing a 52 inch or whatever size photo that looks better than real life. Boy could you sell some photos. And Sony gives you the remote so that you don’t have to use two hands and fumble with a heavy camera. You could even give the remote to your client so they can look at things. All file handling functions are duplicated on the remote including a less sophisticated jog control than is on the camera. I am certain that would increase income.
By the way, not only doesn’t Nikon give you a remote, they don’t make one for the HDMI navigation on their cameras. So you can just hold the 1 ounce remote in one hand with the Sony (instead of the 2 pound camera and using two hands while being tethered to the TV via the cable). That woule have to be awkard. Then point the remote at the camera on a desk and walk around the room etc. Think how much easier it would be to communicate with clients. And don’t forget that you can go to a clients home with the camera and small remote and show your files there in full life size fashion if they have a high def TV rather than having to have them come to you and getting your computer and small (by comparison monitor) display and bending over to mouse around and click.
And sadly not only does Nikon not make a similar remote control device (even for a price) no one else does either. Is that not an important comparison? But no one - and I mean no one, mentions that in their reviews -it must be politically incorrect to point out that Nikon or Canon has a serious deficiency that Sony bested them on.
Remember you can do a lot of serious noise processing on a 24 MP sensor and even with obligate loss of resolution the file would still be sharper than the Nikon 12 MP sensor’s noise at the same iso.
I made a composit comparison photo of the same section of test images on the Imaging resource site of the multitarget. The comparison involves the same section of an scene shot with the a900, D3 and D40 under the same lighting and settings. Check it out. The photo will only be there for another 2 weeks.
http://members.aol.com/NC4LMal/a900.D3.D40-comp
If you disregard and discount every thing else I say here, please check out the remote and HDMI. I have been at this for 40 years and the HDMI is in my opinion better than anything else I have seen in photography.
Mal