Sony Alpha 900 SLR camera test: how the Alpha group shot in the reserve

DSLRs

Introduction

For quite a long time, the working tool of an image quality demanding photographer who shoots digitally and is mobile at the same time, could be only 2-3 models of cameras and correspondingly two systems of lenses and accessories.

That has changed somewhat. The Sony company which created the first serial digital camera Mavica in 1981, using all eight decades of experience in camera production by Minolta, introduced in 2008 the new Sony Alpha 900 with a sensor size of 24×36 mm and a resolution of 24 million pixels.

The price of the camera is much lower than competitors, the stock of compatible lenses for general purpose photography is more than enough. I was able to try this system out on a real photo expedition and compare it to the equipment I’ve been using for years.

Sony

About the gear

In these extreme conditions, I decided to test not only the new Sony Alpha 900 camera, but also the entire Sony system, which would be necessary for the traveler, wildlife photographer, landscaper or photo hunter. The more so because there is a specific task: within a few years to create a photo album about the reserve.

So in the luggage were two fully duplicate sets from different manufacturers, with a set of excellent optics from 15 to 600 mm, and two different 24×36 mm cameras.

I didn’t want to have a battle of the titans, and not tied to any of the three big brands as I deal with many models from different manufacturers , I decided that I would work on my own program, setting aside some time to test the Sony system. These plans have already changed in a few days.

What was in the expedition backpack? Camera with a battery grip and two batteries, charger for two batteries, wide-angle zoom Zeiss 16-35/2.8, standard Zeiss 24-70/2.8, medium-focus zoom Minolta design but as Sony 70-200/2.8G, latest long-focus zoom Sony 70-400/4-5.6G, a fast telephoto lens Minolta design as Sony 300/2.8G with two extenders 1.4x and 2x.

And, of course, a macro lens, also a Minolta design, but modified by Sony – 100/2.8 with the ability to shoot at 1:1 scale. The American site of the camera manufacturer has instructions and descriptions not only for the camera but for all the optics, which was a nice touch. And it’s no laughing matter, because the control panel on the telephoto 300/2.8G required me to study the manual.

The camera manual also demanded study, as the menu terminology is full of poorly understood abbreviations. Especially the sections on controlling the tracking focus and the focus areas. I figured out the camera’s controls pretty quickly, and almost every organ is responsible for only one function. But the buttons and levers are of course very many, and all of them are duplicated on the battery box.

For users of one of the alternative systems, it takes a bit of retraining to press the shutter button rather than the exposure compensation button, as I did on my first day. The small upper display shows not much information, you can not understand at once, without pressing any buttons, in which mode the camera is shooting, autofocus or white balance.

The only thing you can see at a glance is the big color display, which has excellent quality. Even more awesome is the viewfinder that shows 100% of the frame and the pentaprism, which is very bright and suitable for manual focus even with dark lenses.

SLRs

The mode dial is very clearly locked and has never, even under extreme conditions of use, changed its position. The camera’s “hot shoe” for attaching external accessories has its own design, making it difficult to use studio accessories from manufacturers of similar equipment.

Studio flashes can only be synchronized using a PC terminal or the FA-ST1AM adapter. All in all, it doesn’t cause any problems and seems to be very useful for slow movements, when you have time to think about what you’re doing.

It was time for the optics test, which brought the first discoveries. The design of both Zeiss lenses evoked only positive emotions. Except that the lenses were so similar in appearance that you had to read the lens name to choose which one you wanted.

Before my many days of trip I spent a shooting day taking pictures of a standard landscape with all the lenses of different systems from the tripod in RAW format, in order to appreciate the pattern of each glass and to exclude the element of chance.

A comparative test showed that the 16-35mm and 24-70mm lenses have a very high-quality image, work realistically and stably at all aperture openings, including fully open, and visually surpass all zoom optics of the same name range of the company I own.

Only lenses with fixed focal lengths could achieve the best results at comparable apertures. So, to save weight and space, I left all similar lenses of my own manufacturer at home.

Now let’s try some long focal length lenses. The Sony Minolta 70-200/2.8 G showed its excellent result, but, as expected, lost all image clarity when the extenders 1.4x and 2x were attached. This is where the new 70-400/4-5.6 G zoom comes in.

Once again, the stable and high-quality images at all focal lengths showed that this lens can be used for on-the-go photography when weight and size are important.

For me this parameter will definitely be important, since the average speed of moving through an impassable swamp with a backpack varies from 1 to 4 kilometers per day, and it’s comparable to crossing a mountain range.

The fast Sony 300/2,8G was uncommonly slow. I wouldn’t recommend this expensive lens to a volleyball or tennis photographer, nor would it have any use for hunting. The focus speed doesn’t allow you to grab the subject and then steer it into trailing focus, as competitors’ much longer and faster systems manage to do.

The Sony 100/2.8 Macro I was very pleased with the great quality and smoothness of the image at all apertures, including the fully open one, which is important for popular macro, for artistic shots of flowers, droplets and halos in nature and in the studio. Very slow focusing speed and motor noise would require a lot of effort when shooting moving insects, so this glass’s specialty is beautiful static compositions.

Sony

Photography

These impressions shaped the way I worked on the expedition. The ultra-long zooms and fast macro lenses stayed with the camera I’ve been using for years, while all the wide-angle optics and Sony 70-400G compact lens for cross-country and boat photography and marsh photography were used only from Sony system.

The camera has its own specifics. As it became clear, this is not a reporter’s kit. It’s not fast, but the autofocus is phenomenally accurate. Out of more than 4000 thousand frames taken, there were no un-sharp subjects at all due to camera fault. The algorithm for selecting focus points is interesting.

In the menu you can set which focus mode is used: wide-area in my opinion, uncomfortable , by the central point the most accurate and convenient and selectable with the joystick from 9 options. The joystick is constantly hitting the details of clothing or the photographer’s thumb when holding the camera, which is unaccustomed. That’s why I only used the center focus point.

The image sensor stabilizer was very helpful in the fight against vibration. Many scenes in a moving boat, on a wobbling swamp, where there is no way to put a tripod, I would not be able to shoot without this feature at all. I wish this stabilizer was more useful with long lenses, when the camera barely changes position and the stabilizer doesn’t engage because the front edge of the far out heavy lens vibrates, as it does when working from a tripod in a fixed position.

A two-second delay in releasing the shutter with preliminary mirror lifting helped me here, but to be on the safe side I wish the same mode could be implemented with a ten-second delay as well. Continuous shooting, especially with flying birds, was no problem 5 frames per second with a 36-40 megabyte RAW file size and allowed to work in bursts of 14-15 frames, which is very good. But this requires large and fast memory cards. Quality of optics and matrix lets you make a significant amount of framing, which again is important when shooting wild animals and birds.

When shooting an evening scene with the sun in the frame and the glittering water against the light the Dynamic Range Optimizer was very helpful. Of course, to see the result not only on the camera screen but also on the print, you should shoot in JPG format or use Sony’s native ARW converter.

And so it worked for me: in especially tricky cases, when the difference in brightness was too big, I used not the usual Capture One, but the Image Data Converter SR 3, a very handy and, what’s the most important, Russified converter.0. I’d like to say a few nice words about the software.

Everything is in American, and when you install the driver, you can see the previews of the RAW-files right from Windows Explorer. It took me only a few minutes to get the hang of the converter, and working with separate frames is very quick and convenient.

Mirror Cameras

Conclusions

The half-month acquaintance with the camera resulted in several thousand photos and full understanding of the technique. I didn’t have to struggle with the camera, the quality of almost all the optics is impeccable and the photos turned out exactly as the photographer thought they would.

No need to change the color balance when converting images, auto white balance worked very well, exposure metering never failed, histograms were smooth and decreased steadily towards the edges. The working values of ISO I used were from 100 to 800, I tried not to use higher values of sensitivity because of their noisiness.

Enough battery power to charge the camera once every two days, and it was basically always on. As I said before, working with a camera means controlling all the controls, it teaches you to take pictures slowly.

I think for a landscape photographer, for a staged wedding, for studio photography, for a hiker, everywhere you don’t need a very fast focusing system and don’t need extra-long zoom lenses, this is a very good system, and considering the quality of Zeiss lenses it’s unique.

A huge fleet of lenses and accessories from Minolta help in solving applied problems, and the quality of the sensor is enough to obtain high quality photos of almost any size.

The author would like to thank Sony for the equipment provided, the Union of Nature Photographers, the staff of the nature reserve Oxana Alexandrovna Shemyakina and Mikhail Sergeevich Yablokov for their assistance in preparing this publication.

Picture Tests

SLR cameras

Oksana Shemyakina, Reserve ornithologist, Ph.D. in Biology, my guide in the world of birds and marshes. A pretty girl and a wonderful dedicated scientist. Sony 70-400 lens, focal length 160 mm, ISO 200, f5.6, 1/100 c, Super SteadyShot image stabilizer, back light without using lens hood, demonstration of the highest quality optics.

Mirror Cameras

The edge of the impassable swamp. Under the water layer there is a many meters layer of wet peat that has been accumulated since the last glaciation. Peat bogs are up to ten meters thick in some places and probably hide skeletons of gigantic deer. Zeiss 16-35, ISO 200, f22, 1/30 sec.

SLR Cameras

Gorelnik. Dozens of years ago, a peat fire swept through the outskirts of Lake Polisto. The forest is dead, flooded, fell and became a great grouse’s current, the hum of which can be heard for many kilometers.

Zeiss 16-35, ISO 80, f11, 1/80c.

Mirror Cameras

Sunrise on the river Hlavica. On the way to the lodge. To work out the sky but not lose the texture and color of the frosted grass in the foreground, dynamic range enhancement was included with an exposure level of + 3. Sony 70-400 lens, f8, 1/640 sec, ISO 200, Super SteadyShot on. In order to compensate for the effects of the dynamic range optimizer, an exposure correction of -0.7. LCD monitor helped me get the exposure settings right. Processing was done in Image Data Converter SR Ver. 3, because processing with the usual Capture One converter required the construction of complex curves, but the result was still worse than after using the software from the manufacturer. Dynamic range optimizer was used in the shooting.

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Foggy morning in the Grivi tract. While approaching the lodge where I photographed the rare Great Curlew Sandpiper, a unique bird in the Red Data Book, I watched the wind rip through layers of thick fog. The tripod was already in the blind under the large telephoto lens, and could not be used. Before sunrise, focal length: 300 mm, Sony 70-400 lens, ISO 400, f7,1, 1/30 sec. Super SteadyShot on.

Mirror Cameras

“Fighting position”. The photographer has to spend quite a lot of time in such a stakeout, and the exit should be taken before sunrise. Early morning ISO 400, f7.1 and 1/40c.

Photo equipment

Grass frogs mating.Despite their apparent accessibility, frogs are very shy during the mating season. So you can only capture their natural behavior with a telephoto lens, and one that can focus at a very close distance. The Sony 300/2.8G lens paired with a 1.4x tele conversion lens makes this possible, and the total system focal length is 420mm. I limited the active focusing area to between 2 and 3 meters using the telephoto lens controls and obtained a great improvement in AF speed. ISO 200, aperture 11, shutter speed 1/100 s, lens resting on a sandbag to reduce vibration, Super SteadyShot system enabled to increase the depth of field at such a close distance.

Photo equipment

Thousands of gray toads in a few April days try to carry on their spawn, congregating from all over the swamp forest to the few shallow and warm puddles. Low sensitivity is desirable in macro mode, so ISO 100, f16 to get acceptable sharpness in the eyes of both characters, 1/15 sec. and Super SteadyShot coped with the shake. Macro Lens 100/2.8.

Photo equipment

White storks on the nest. Sony 300/2.8G lens paired with a 1.4x teleconverter. Total focal length 420mm. All camera functions retained, including autofocus. Shooting handheld in clear weather, the Super SteadyShot system was used to stabilize the shake of the heavy lens. ISO 100, 1/320 sec, f10. When the teleconverter is attached, the maximum possible aperture is reduced to 4, and to compensate for the effect of the teleconverter on image quality, the aperture was reduced to 10.

SLR Cameras

Cuckoo flax moss and last year’s leaf. Macro shooting with tripod in the scale close to 1:1. Backlight. Excellent optical quality and excellent background blur. ISO 100, f10, 1/8 second, 10 second self-timer delay to reduce camera shake. 100/2.8 macro lens.

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Herd of elk, never

who had never seen a human being,

at the edge of the swamp

in the abandoned village of Ratcha.

The group of scientists and the photographer were in the open view in the swamp. Their presence sparked the interest of a herd of elk, so they came out to observe the strange visitors. I had the opportunity to get within 30 meters of them. I had no solid ground under my feet and was waist-deep in the swamp, treacherous hands trembling, and the Super SteadyShot image stabilizer saved the situation. Sony 70-400 lens, focal length 400mm, ISO 400, f9, 1/500s.

Cameras with mirrors

Lapwing nesting on land scorched by fire.

Using stalking techniques and the behavior of the wader on the nest, I was able to get close to the teal at 4 meters and look the bird straight in the eyes. Sony 300/2,8G lens paired with a 2x teleconverter. Total focal length: 600 mm. All camera functions are retained, including autofocus. Lying on a sandbag to reduce vibration. ISO 400, f8, 1/1000 sec.

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A chance encounter on the moor. Those residents who aren’t the lucky owner of a motorized drivetrain travel along the abandoned narrow gauge, “on stakes,” as the local expression goes. Vitaliy and his friends went to remote Pylka river to fish and they kindly invited me to come along. Sony 70-400 lens, 330mm focal length, ISO 200, f7.1, 1/200 c.

SLR Cameras

A flock of Northern Wigeon ducks continues on their way to the Arctic. Demonstration of tracking autofocus. The lens grabbed a flock of birds and guided in tracking focus until they disappeared into the horizon. Sony 70-400 lens, focal length 400 mm, ISO 100, fully open aperture, framing about 1/10th of the image shows the high quality of the sensor, 1/800 s, handheld shooting, tracking focus.

Photo equipment

The village where the bear lives. The last inhabitants of the village of Ratcha left their home 30 years ago. The houses are still standing, difficult for the casual tourist to get here, and the feral apple orchard gives shelter to a bear that hardly knows any people. They say he might be interested in what a photographer tastes like. Zeiss 24-70 lens, focal length 24 mm, ISO 200, f13, 1/125 c.

Sony

Polisto Lake. Nature Monument. Dynamic range enhancement at + 4 was turned on to capture the sky, but not to lose the pattern of the branches in the background of the sun disk and in the foreground. Sony 70-400 lens, ISO 400, f8, 1/1600 s. Exposure compensation of +0.7 was used to compensate for the effect of the sun on the camera’s automatics. Visual control

The LCD screen helped us find the right exposure parameters.

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John Techno

Greetings, everyone! I am John Techno, and my expedition in the realm of household appliances has been a thrilling adventure spanning over 30 years. What began as a curiosity about the mechanics of these everyday marvels transformed into a fulfilling career journey.

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Comments: 2
  1. Magnolia

    What were the key features and performance of the Sony Alpha 900 SLR camera during the reserve group shot test? Did it excel in terms of image quality, autofocus accuracy, and overall usability?

    Reply
  2. Lucas Mitchell

    I’m curious to know how the Sony Alpha 900 SLR camera performed during the group photo shoot in the reserve. Did it capture the intricate details of the natural surroundings while also maintaining excellent focus on the subjects? How was the camera’s overall performance in terms of image quality and color accuracy? I’m thinking of investing in this camera, so any insights from your experience would be greatly appreciated!

    Reply
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