Review 1 of 3
Price Paid:
$1100.00
from Saturn, Duesseldorf, Summary:
Having worked with a lot of bodies of all kinds I find this a good and well instrument. This is not a shocking experience but a good thing to have. Pricing is agressively low, competitors cost usually double the price. A lot of practicality is build into the body that is not present in competitors. For me the only reason to start at all with such a body - but coming from other digital bodies most probably a r*e*a*l advantage.
Please pardon me, I like shooting with the camera but also I feel myself a bit "mainstreamed"; shooting with this one is a definitely technical experience that lacks a lot of feeling you get and can work with using other bodies.
And this is not a professional body like an EOS 1 or a Mamiya RB. Does not need to be to, but also is not. It does not feel like being able to 500.000 shots or so - I will see.
All in all I come back to the usual message - it depends on what you are planning to do with the body. Almost every non-professional goals can be achieved with this body, but if one is for excellent performance other bodies will suit better. Strengths:
The body is handy. Even my long fingers can hold the camera well.
The screen is well, and it does give a lot of opportunities you do not get with other bodies.
Life view is very well. It is fast and usable; this is not the case with some other implementations of that feature.
Screen combined with life view is the first real step forward from the screen existing till the early starts of photography. This "screen" is moveable and can deliver more information than ever possible - whithout obscuring the good features of the screen: "life view", zoom in/out (lens on screen), wysiwyg. It is still too small, but good enough.
I love the anti-shake mechanism. It is not in the lens (an more than silly implementation, as you can see with the most canon lenses if they exist in the two flavors). And it works. And it is easy to activate - deactivate.
To switch between manual and automatic focussing is fast and - given the current lenses - works well.
Working with the actual results I am more than pleased. Except a for my eye unusual "soft" character of the pics I am often happy and sometimes really astonished about the quality delivered. As to be expected the body excells in low light; when the strength of light is lower than EV 13 colors are more vivid than with any other medium - but this is shared by all good digicams of today. Contrast management is also well; even when there is still not enough flexibility to really cover more than 9 "aperture steps" (the right term escapes me in this moment, sorry) contrast handling is difficult. Nothing helps here than bracketing (for which I did not yet find the automatic function, if it is present).
The software package is impressive and a good reason to buy this body. It outperforms most software packages you get from manufactors by far. I like it very much - it helps me with all tasks, ranging from presenting on party shots to rework shots in all detail. Most important for me is Raw-converting and digital darkroom workflows. The software from Sony is doing very well here.
Weaknesses:
I agree to the comment that the circular buttons-pad is to close to the right back of the body and sometimes a button gets pushed by accident.
The flash is too low - even with std zoom there appears a shade I am simply not accustomed to.
I hate the flash system itself - the minolta flash hold is very well but only used by Minolta and Sony and I need to buy extra adaptors. Again non-standard is a drawback.
Buttons and switch-buttons like the power or anti-shake seem a bit flimsy - only time will tell how often they can be used without getting weak.
The camera quite often has strange interpretations of the light quality (White balance). Not inside, not with people (i.e. skin! with portrait the metering is very well) but outside with dominating colors, e.g. simple tree - green. But with shooting raw and a medium-well brain to remember what I shoot this does not matter much. In fact I have still to encounter a camera that shoots the colors that are present at the time of shooting.
With some lenses autofocus is very unstable and is searching / refocussing constantly, forcing me to switch the camera off very often or deactivate autofocus. That is a bit annoying.
The viewfinder does not cover the whole picture and is small. From my point of view the most important failure of this design. If the viewfinder would have the quality of the current EOS models the body would be hard to beat.
Similar Products Used:
Too many to tell. Ranging from film to digital, from compact to large format. Don't ask or you will get an lengthy answer! Customer Service:
No experience yet. No need to.
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