Lensrentals.com has decided to take a big plunge and start stocking
Sony alpha SLR equipment. From a pure business standpoint it doesn't
make a lot of sense: there just aren't enough Sony owners to support it
. . . yet. But the system seems to have a lot of promise and I was
pretty curious so we jumped in. My biggest hesitation on the sytem's
eventual success isn't the equipment itself, its Sony's marketing. They
push the system through big box electronics retailers and its difficult
to find in camera stores. That's probably effective in capturing the
"want a better camera than my point and shoot" folks moving up. As
those owners get the bug, though, and want to consider better lenses
and accessories, the advice they get at those retailers is going to be
less than worthless. That worries me. But on to first impressions.
The
body I've shot with a bit is the alpha 350. Compared to the Nikon and
Canon cameras I usually shoot its better and worse. That about sums it
up if you want to skip the rest.
The body itself is fairly
small, just a bit bigger than an XTi or D40, smaller than a 40D or
300D. Its rather plasticky feeling and light, again like and XTi or
D40. It also feels a little slick in the hand since the grip isn't very
pebbled. I wonder how slick its going to feel in mid summer when I'm
sweating.
The layout of controls and menus is different:
more switches on the body, the rear LCD the source of all information,
the menus, of course, seem foreign at first. I've pretty quickly grown
to like the multiple switch layout though. Important controls are at
hand with no staring through multiple menus I can't read in sunlight to
find them. Its still not intuitive for me, but the control ergonomics
are logical and well laid out as a whole.
I really, really
like the tiltable mirror. I'm not a big live view shooter, but that's a
nice feature that the other companies should emulate. It makes it much
easier to see in sunlight for certain. Autofocus, white balance,
autoexposure are all as accurate as the mid level cameras from Nikon
and Canon, or perhaps a bit better.
Image quality is a
mixed bag: There's lots of detail in the 14 Mpix images, colors are
rich (the reds seem a bit oversaturated on jpgs at times, but that's
probably just a setting adjustment I haven't discovered yet). Noise is
more of a problem than the current Canon and Nikon cameras. I see more
shadow noise than I'm used to for certain, and seems a bit more chroma
noise in out of focus areas. Its fine at ISO 400 but at ISO 800 I'd
definitely be using a pass through Noise Ninja or similar software. 800
is quite usable, mind you, but I've gotten spoiled shooting with D300s
and 5Ds. The 350's noise level is similar to D200 or 20D cameras, so I
guess Sony's about a generation behind. Or perhaps the smaller pixels
on this sensor are the culprit, I haven't shot with the lower Mpix
alphas to compare.
As to the $64,000 question: the in-body
image stabilization works. It works really well. It works about as well
as what I'm used to from lens based IS and VR on the Canon and Nikon
systems. I've heard the arguments that lens based IS is superior and
some of them make good sense, but for everyday shooting around, the
image stabilization on the sony is excellent. And it works on prime
lenses and wide angles where its not available from the other
manufacturers. (Yes, I know you don't NEED it on a wide angle, but it
sure is fun handholding 1/2 second exposures. Tell me you'd never, ever
use that. Liar).
Lenses are somewhat limited
compared to the other brands, and a bit pricier. But I've shot with
half a dozen lenses now and I'm pretty impressed with all. The Zeiss
16-80 Vario Sonnar is as good as I had hoped, if a bit aperture
impaired. The 50 and 100 Sony Macros are excellent, like most Macro
lenses. The 50mm f1.4 is very similar to the excellent Canon or Nikon
versions of that lens. I'll have more lens impressions later, for now
you can download some full frame sample images from the various lenses
on the Lensrentals Sony page: www.lensrentals.com/category/sony-rentals