Sony's A900 reviewed: 'Highly recommended' but with caveats

Most consumers won't be able to get their hands on Sony's new 24+ megapixel A900 for at least another week or so, but dpreview has already had its way with one, putting this full-frame body through its paces in a typically exhaustive review. Overall findings are much the same as the site's earlier impressions, with the main knocks being slow (but accurate) focus speed and noticeable noise when shooting at anything greater than ISO 400, making the camera's ISO 6400 mode borderline useless. However, the hefty, 850g magnesium alloy body is "incredibly solid" and its bevy of features, including 5fps burst shooting and HDMI output, make it a solid value, too. Overall the A900 sounds quite good, though far from perfect, so unless you already have a closet full of compatible lenses you might just want to wait a month and see how Canon's EOS 5D Mark II fares when run through the same ringer. If nothing else it'll be $300 cheaper.

[Byron @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:34AM]

I have the Canon 5D but tried my friend's A900.... the best feature about that camera is the viewfinder.. makes mine look like a toy. It's a real photographer's camera.

[Dan @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:18AM]

Wow, apparently my last comment got cut off.

Your comment that the A900 is a real photographer's camera based on the 100% viewfinder is foolish.
5D: 96% viewfinder = 92% area, 5D Mk. II: 98% viewfinder = 96% area. This leads to a very small fraction of the image missing.

Many famous landscape photographers, and even "real" photographers now use cameras with less than 100% viewfinder coverage. Your assertion that 100% is necessary is faulty. Galen Rowell used an N80 which only had 92% coverage... a lot less than even the cheap dSLRs on the market today.

But I don't anyone will argue that his photos are better than yours, your friend's, and most photographers'. Don't give yourself too much credit.

Of course I would want 100% viewfinder coverage, but it's not necessary to make a "real" camera. Nor does the lack of it make the venerable 5D a "toy."

[Dan @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:24AM]

Also, how did your friend get the A900? It is not scheduled for release until next month.
This makes your claim and opinion less legitimate.

[Something4u @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:50AM]

Dan, most professional photographers that I've meet have already had their hands on with the A900 (Gee I wonder how dprevew got an A900 from). At my local Penn Camera a Sony Sales Person came last week and gave a demo to the employees there.

[Byron @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:53AM]

Wow... talk about vicious...

The Sony A900 is out already in stores… 2 of my friends have them already….

I never said the 5D was a bad camera… I actually like mine….

But if you compare the viewfinder of the 5D vs the a900, the 5d is relatively very dim. When I take landscape night shots I find it a pain to try to look through the viewfinder.. but with the A900, you don'thave that issue…. I also prefer the grip (makes it seem lighter even though it’s the same weight) and the buttons. For the viewfinder alone i would buy that camera.

The A900 is not a great camera for handholding in low light, but it’s a great camera for landscapes and portraits (good lighting is assumed).

Everybody takes different pics and so has their own preferences… you can check out mine here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixty9/

Relax.

[yida @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:26PM]

@Byron
I have that same feeling with the grip. When I held the D90 compared to the 50D, the positioning and placement of the grip gave different feelings of weight when I held the camera, the bigger and wider grip gave me the impression that I had more control.

[Billy Fiul @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:48PM]

@Byron

I just checked out your flickr photostream, and frankly your photography sucks.

[jon @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:58AM]

I am the first to support more competition for Nikon and Canon, but I have to say as a full frame Nikon shooter, "noticable noise on anything over 400 ISO" is pretty poor for a full frame DSLR. Even Canon's old, old, old 5d did much better than that, and Nikon's new cameras are working at 3200 ISO without much noise.... too bad for Sony fans.

[Tony @ Oct 22nd 2008 2:52PM]

i agree... Sony has never really been very good for high ISO noise control for some reason. They're like one of the biggest electronics companies in the world, and produce sensors that have been put in Nikon cameras, yet they cant quite get it right themselves... I have the A700 and can usually shoot at 3200 without TOO much trouble, but i wouldnt do it if i didnt have to...

[CraigJ @ Oct 22nd 2008 10:37PM]

Which is interesting since the Nikons use Sony sensors, no?

[Mr. B @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:08AM]

The high ISO tests are depressing, but overall it looks like Sony has done very well with their first full frame outing. I have Canon gear myself, but I would love to see Sony become a serious competitor and promote more innovation.

[jordan turpentine @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:49PM]

if you look at the a700 and it's firmware updates it substantially increased high iso performance with updates and I would expect similar results from the a900 because Sony is after all new to this game and needs to time to really punch out details like that.

[Dan @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:11AM]

How does it make the 5D look like a toy? It makes the 5D's viewfinder look like a toy?
I also have a 5D, and I have never found the 96% viewfinder coverage to be inadequate despite using film cameras with 100% coverage in the past. How does a

[Tyler Willis @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:16AM]

So why exactly would you pay for a full frame camera that was noisy?

Unless you are really into wide angle photography, I can't think of a reason. What's Sony's widest lens?

[Tony @ Oct 22nd 2008 2:53PM]

i think their widest is an 11-16mm right now. minolta might have made something wider though

[sethmo @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:21AM]

Looking at the tests shots, theres noise at ISO400. I dont know whats up with that, for the price of this camera, Id expect to be able to at least use ISO1600 with little noise. From the looks of it, ISO800 isnt useable unless you use Noiseware or Noise Ninja. I guess if you dont shoot in low light, this camera is for you!

[JD @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:52AM]

FYI The A900 has been available in the UK for about a month, can't speak for other territories though but this would likely explain how the earlier poster has already used one.

[Karn Eggie @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:56AM]

who knows, lets see what nikon can do with the same sensor, in a few weeks time it will be out. i have a feeling that sony will release a FW update before christmas to iron the ISO out. they wouldnt spend 2 years making the thing to let it flounder with the ISO so shotty.

[Joe @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:28PM]

Hey, I work at a camera retailer and we got to play around with this camera for a couple of weeks. Its a noisy piece of junk.
The Nikon D700 is a better choice. This camera is over-sharpened. More pixels on a 35mm sensor is a bad idea.
The only thing that is good about it is the viewfinder. It's huge.

[Geir E @ Oct 22nd 2008 3:52PM]

oh come on. The camera is no high iso marvel like the d700, but at low iso it outresolve the d700 by a long shot. Not that it makes the d700 less good, it just shows you can't always have both high resolution and good high iso performance.

I'd love the a900 myself. But I'd also love the d700 or the 5d mk2 for that matter.

[David Vogt @ Oct 22nd 2008 5:13PM]

I'm sorry to hear that a pixel-peeping newbie like you gets to sell cameras to poor, uninformed buyers. People shoot 90% of their pictures below ISO400. So just because high-ISO performance isn't stellar, it's a piece of crap? Sorry, you have NO idea what you're talking about. I'd love to see your photography, in fact.

[Weet @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:35PM]

Meh, I'll take sensitivity over resolution any day of the week.

[AkumaX @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:14PM]

reserve comments till 5D M2 comes out - i mean, come on full on 1080p movie mode?!

[BillV @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:18PM]

I guess from DP Review's review, we now know why Nikon rejected Sony's sensor for the D3.

[esoterica @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:18PM]

The term is "wringer," not "ringer." As in "to wring something out." The fact that the wrong spelling of this term is used in this context probably more often than not doesn't make it any less wrong.

[maxx @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:33PM]

Imaging-Resource has had an in-depth Sony A900 review for over a month now: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA900/AA900A.HTM

You can even download sample RAW files there: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA900/AA900THMB.HTM

[Andrew @ Oct 22nd 2008 5:10PM]

What kind of product gets "highly recommended, but with reservations"? What happened to just plain "recommended" for just such cases? Dpreview is the prime example of non-linear review scaling. In their parlance, "average" means "terrible", above average is "bad", "recommended" is "average", "highly recommended with reservations" is above average, "highly recommended (just)" is good and "highly recommended" is "great". Or something like that.

[kyc @ Oct 22nd 2008 6:52PM]

A900 is already on sale in a lot of markets. I know a few friends who have been using it for about a week or so

[Pixel @ Oct 22nd 2008 7:21PM]

Yep I've had the pleasure of playing with one and the first thing I did was to throw a card in, crank up the ISO and shoot some frames.
JUNK! It's' basically a full-frame Minolta, as Sony bought up the scraps when they went belly up.
The Canon 50D (for half the price) blew it's doors off on image quality as I tested the two side by side.

[Ian @ Oct 22nd 2008 8:45PM]

From the DPReview review, it really should have just been given a Highly Recommended, without caveats.

The photos look fantastic, and those people who are in the market for this camera, and not the Nikon D3, are those who will want this camera for lower ISO work. You don't buy this camera if your main concern is noise at high ISO, and if you're most worried about noise, and would get more use out of a Nikon D3, you're better off just up-res'ing a 12 MP Nikon image up to 18 MP. There isn't much difference between an 18 MP, 21 MP, or 25 MP image anyway. Just take a look at the Canon 1Ds and A900 images. In practical terms, there isn't much more cropping space, or more detail from a 25 MP camera when compared to a 21 MP camera.

However, this does show you that if you're interested in this camera, the 5D-II may be the better option, as Canon's slightly older 1Ds-MkIII looks good using what is probably a similar sensor, or inferior, sensor to the one in the 5D-II.

[JPW @ Oct 22nd 2008 9:12PM]

Umm, 'ringer'?

That's just rong.

[gad get @ Oct 23rd 2008 3:24AM]

I checked out the photo comparisons on DPReview, and all I can see is more proof that megapixels are not all they're cracked up to be (and that Sony still lags far behind Canon and Nikon in their handling of noise). The excessive noise and crappy (read: over-aggressive, inefficient, destructive) noise reduction all but washes away any fine detail you might expect from a camera of this price point. Oh, but the file sizes are larger than those of the competition.

[Harkonian @ Oct 24th 2008 3:52PM]

.

[Jonian @ Oct 26th 2008 1:43PM]

even if the Canon is cheaper, with the A900 (becuse of its anti-shake system) one doesn't need any balanced lens which are so costly...