Any Sony Alpha users here?

[Fortytwo]

I've got some friend that shoot Sony. One has a A700 and one has a A900. I've been very impressed by their gear, seems like some fine equipment to be honest.

[Bambi]

MASP, buying a camera is like choosing a mate. You can't have it all but figure out what the important bits are and make your choice.

I know how crazy this decision can make you but in the end, whatever camera you choose, you will most likely be very happy with. For at least a few years.

[jjeling]

Masp, Bambi is right. Whatever you buy, you will most likely be happy with. They all perform the same functions, its just extraneous bits of detail after that honestly.

As far as older Olympus and Pentax lenses. I know Pentax has a huge range of fully manual lenses and auto lenses. The older manual lenses tend to be quite good and extremely sharp if you are willing to adjust the focus and aperture manually.

Olympus lenses are the same way from what I understand. I have very limited experience with them, but they are quite good.

[masp]

Thanks for the advice. Basically I picked the camera for it's quick AF in live view. There is still a small amount of lag compared to the viewfinder (which works at the speed of light), so I think I see your point, jjeling. The viewfinder has it's uses for scene composition right now, but it makes more sense to manually pre-focus or let the AF system do the job.

Lack of depth of field preview and mirror lockup may turn out to be a sore point for shooting landscapes or experimenting with DoF. It's too bad Sony decided to drop these features rather than compete for the enthusiast market. So you get a camera that's good a shooting things that move and not so great at landscapes and long exposure. Everything's a tradeoff until you buy that $5000 camera I guess.

[Kevin.OBrien]

masp, I shoot with the Sony A350 IMHO its an awesome camera. The liveview and the flip LCD screen is the best as far as DSLR goes. Its takes some great shots as well. One thing you REALLY REALLY need to do is if your looking at the A230, A330, A380. Goto your local shop and try them out the grip on those is very uncomfortable. Which is the main reason why I didnt get the A380 and got the A350 because the A350 has what I call as full grip.