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Both the 24-70 and 70-300 operate beautifully on the A900.The thing I like about the A900 over the Nikon D700 or Canon 5D Mk2 is how fast I can work with it. The Sony A900 is a camera built for photographers. The camera just "gets out of the way". Wonderfully agile, great ergonomics and stunning image quality. It does require the high-end lenses to get the most out of that resolution though, so factor that into your budget. No endless pages of menus like the Nikon D700, and the quick access screen/joystick combination makes adjustments on the fly quick and easy.I was also pleasantly surprised with the high ISO image quality. After reading some of the reviews I was hesitant, but I got very nice images up to ISO 1600.The preious mentions about the file sizes are correct - you'll also need a fast computer to process them and 16GB memory cards.But in the end, this is by far my favorite "affordable" Full Frame digital camera.
Here I am with Vista 64 and 8 Gig of ram and Vista and Lightroom both balk at the RAW output. I have one gripe. I've been shooting the A900 with most of the Minolta 'G' lenses and especially like its capabilities with the F 2.8 300 mm G for birding and wildlife. I love the product but want a professional level back to be more integrated with the other tools sophisticated users employ. The "manual" for the camera is less substantial than those for the A100 or the A700. With the time Sony took to get this fine beast to market you would think they would have a full featured companion manual and have provided code for Adobe, Microsoft et al to render its RAW output. Cannon would not be caught this way with a new high end product. Kudos to the Minolta engineers for continuing to refine the surperb ergonomics but help us fully utilize what's been achieved in hardware in the field.
Competition is a very good thing and Sony just joined the professional full-frame DSLR competition with the a900 by hitting the ball out of the park.I love this camera. It's got big, bright viewfinder thanks to a pentaprism that reminds me of the Nikon F that I owned many years ago. It's built solid as a brick - just like cameras were in the good old daysSure, it's got twenty-four-and-a-half-million-pixels, but that's only part of the story. The files are excellent with lots of shadow detail and tack sharp thanks to the growing line of Zeiss lenses.
And when Minolta produce their first 7D digital. The Sony A900 is everything that they advertise. A little back ground, I came up through the ranks shooting the Minolta max 7 & max 9. From the 7D came the A100. I shot the A100 until the A900 was produced.The A100 was slow about focus and not very accurate but the A900 is very accurate focus and with the five frames per second very fast.[.].
The image stabilization on a full-frame sensor is a first (and so far, only). Yes, the a900 supports APS-C lenses, but there is no real advantage to them with this body over other Sony DSLRs. The resolution is not only record breaking, but the clarity of each of those pixels is quite good (with the right lens). Let me start by saying that I teach a digital photography class at the local community college, and I've seen/used/taught about every major brand and many minor brands of digital cameras, and I think every manufacturer makes a camera that is right for different people with different requirements. These files are huge, and all that wonderful resolution comes at cost; that being the amount of pure computing horsepower required.Given those few caveats, the alpha900 really is a big step forward in digital SLRs, in many ways. If you have a collection of Sony/Minolta lenses, hopefully they're all full-frame.
The view finder really does exemplify why "live view" is more of a marketing checklist item, and not really necessary; looking through the view finder is a joy.But, the world of the a900 isn't all roses.
5 Frames per second.
While I usually carry an external flash, so the lack of a pop-up flash isn't a problem for me, many users will find the lack of one to be, at least, an annoyance.And last, but certainly not least, is post production once the images are off of the camera.
That being the case, the alpha900 is amazing.
The a900 does "find focus" better than previous Sony DSLRs, but the location of the focus points aren't as well laid out as other Sony models.
At 24.6 megapixels.
It is a testament to Sony's knowledge of electronics.
If you primarily shoot in RAW (as I do), and do much post-production, be prepared to bring your computer to it's knees.
If you can justify the cost of this body, it really is worth having, and you'll be surprised at just how much detail a single image can have when its almost 25 megapixels.
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