SONY ALPHA DSLR - A900 trying to compete with industry giant photography

Sony A900

The Sony A900 is among the most anticipated digital SLRs in recent memory rank. The company first showed an early version of its upcoming flagship design at the Photo Marketing Association trade fair in the spring of 2007, and to the following year shows Sony some more details revealed about the image sensor and stabilization mechanism would use it. The Alpha A900 with a full 35mm frame-size image sensor Sony has joined a rather exclusive club. So far, only four companies have offered full-frame digital SLRs. Of these two - Contax and Kodak - since the market for digital SLR cameras remain completely cut out.

The Sony does in a head-to-head race with the two giants of the photographic industry - Canon and Nikon. Each competitor has two full-frame digital SLR - a mid-range model at around $ 3000 MSRP, and to triple a professional model for twice as much. Sony looks to have quite upset the status seems quo by pricing its flagship at about the same as its competitors mid-range models, but with a specification that lie somewhere in between the competing Mid-Range and Pro models - and in some cases, such as sensor resolution, actually introduces the field. The Sony Alpha A900 has a whopping 24.6 megapixel resolution from the full-frame Exmor CMOS image sensor - where the highest resolution of the sensor from 35mm SLR yet known. To handle all the data from the high-resolution image sensor generates, uses the Sony DSLR-A900 Dual BIONZ image processor, and this permits to shoot five frames per second up to 11 JPEG or 13 RAW images.

The sensor is mounted on a movable plate for in-camera image stabilization, SteadyShot INSIDE branded mounted allowed. This is another world first for a full-frame SLR, and it is no small thing when you consider that the sensor-shift mechanism, consider has to do with the extra weight of a full-frame sensor. Various DSLRs seen to date that features CCD-shift image stabilization all have much smaller 1.6x crop sensors. Sony took the challenge by developing a new more powerful sensor-shift mechanism, and the rates of the Alpha DSLR-A900 so good for a 2.5-to 4-stop improvement.

The Sony DSLR-A900 body is made up of five main-magnesium alloy construction and includes sections to reduce seal against moisture penetration between body parts, as well as the various knobs and buttons. The Sony A900 has a Sony Alpha mount, which also accepts Konica and Minolta glass. A large pentaprism sits above the lens mount, both dictate the camera body workmanlike visual aesthetic and a very large and bright viewfinder with 0.74x magnification TTL. The back features a large 3-inch LCD display with 921,600 points, which corresponds to VGA (640 x 480) with three pixels R, G and B dots per pixel. This is solely for the review of the images, as well as menus and status display, the Sony Alpha DSLR-A900 does not offer live view capability. There is also a small top-panel LCD status display, the shots remaining and battery life displays, and basic exposure variables

The Sony Alpha A900 offers ISO sensitivity of 200 corresponds to 3200, but is expandable corresponds to ISO 100 to 6,400. Shutter speeds range from 30 to 1 / 8000 second and a bulb setting and x-sync is 1 / 250 second (or 1 / 200 second when SteadyShot is enabled). The dosage is reached by a 40-segment honeycomb sensor, and you can choose from center-weighted or spot metering modes. The focusing is achieved, arranged courtesy of aa nine-point autofocus system phase with 2.8 dual center cross sensor, and there are ten additional AF points of light near the main focus areas. There is no flash in the Sony A900 built with the design, rather than offer a hot shoe and PC sync terminal for external Speedlight flash units and lighting setups.

The Sony Alpha DSLR-A900 features dual flash card slots, and thus the images on memory in CompactFlash Type I or Type II cards (including Microdrives), or on a Memory Stick Duo cards. The Sony A900 draws its power from a proprietary NP-FM500H InfoLithium battery that is rated for about 880 shots per charge on CIPA testing standards. Connectivity options include both USB 2.0 High Speed port for computer and standard and high definition video. For standard-def, there are PAL / NTSC switchable composite video output, while high-definition is achieved through an HDMI connection.