New Sony Alphas

[tegan]

At PMA 2007 in Las Vegas recently, Sony showed a mid level Alpha and what they are calling their flagship Alpha with no dates for distribution yet and few details. This pic is the mid level, which they are predicting for this year sometime.

Reading between the lines of what Sony is saying, it seems to be designed to compete with the Canon Mark II and Mark III. It is a new chip, not the CMOS sensor that is in the current Alpha. From the size of the cameras, it looks like full size 35mm. (no 1.5 factor). The BIONZ engine has been adjusted to provide much more dynamic tonal range for higher quality images.
Higher speed shooting, faster focusing in low light, wireless transmitting of the image to a computer, a much brighter pentaprism viewfinder, and live preview are probably in the mix too. Both cameras seem to have Zeiss lenses.

The flagship by the way has a 85mm 1.4 Zeiss t* lens on it and I notice a depth of field preview button.

I would say that the mid range Alpha should have about 14 megapixels and probably come in at the $2,000 range to be priced competitively. With the flagship, I would not be at all surprised at 20 megapixels with some interesting improvements over the the top of the line Canon at 16.7 megapixels. Price would be under the $8,000 Canon price.

Tegan

[Marko]

Personally.....Unless I could really justify it (like your work pays for it or your dayrate is 1000.00 +) - I would not be spending more than 1500-2000 on a digital camera at this point. Current digital Cameras in this range are excellent - especially if you rarely enlarge greater than 11x14 inches. The technology is changing so fast that within 6 months you'll probably regret spending so much cash. I'd wait till we settle down a bit and prices drop. 8 grand on a digital SLR is just not worth it IMO at this point.

[tegan]

Personally.....Unless I could really justify it (like your work pays for it or your dayrate is 1000.00 +) - I would not be spending more than 1500-2000 on a digital camera at this point. Current digital Cameras in this range are excellent - especially if you rarely enlarge greater than 11x14 inches. The technology is changing so fast that within 6 months you'll probably regret spending so much cash. I'd wait till we settle down a bit and prices drop. 8 grand on a digital SLR is just not worth it IMO at this point.

I agree. The other problem that seldom gets mentioned is that the higher end DSLRs tend to be rather large, heavy, and unwieldy and 72mm diameter to 77mm kit lenses certainly add to the size as well.

Tegan

[ScenicBC]

I'm definitely learning more towards Pentax then whatever Sony has coming up.