Toronto Photography Meetup Group

A850 - A900 with 98% finder and 3fps, otherwise identical, $2000US

A550 - A350 with 14.2MP CMOS sensor, real LV as well as second-sensor, ISO 12800, 5/7fps, 3" 922k articulated LCD, 14 RAW buffer (More with fast card), 95% 0.8x finder.
A500 - As A550 but with 12.3MP and maxes out at 5fps and 6 RAW buffer

28-75 f2.8 SAM - rebadged Tamron with micro-motor AF.

Big news then. The A850 comes in only $100 more than a D300s, first $2k MSRP FF. Spec cust bring it down to similar finder to and just a bit slower than a 5DmII.

The new mid-range bodies give Sony something viable to go up against the D5000 and Rebel T1i and bring back the much nicer ergonomics of the A200/300/350 as opposed to the actively uncomfortable A230/330/380 bodies. Unfortunately the Error Button remains.

A850's pricing - impressive for what you get.

Michael Reichmann has an overview up already.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/revie ... -850.shtml

$2000 for a full frame sensor with in body IS and weather sealing, I love where things are heading. Hopefully the 7D will be an appropriate response from Canon. If you downsample the A900 pics to 12mp, you get D700 ISO performance.

This camera is also the cheapest possible solution for stock photographers.

I'm not surprised one bit that Sony (Canada?) gave Michael Reichmann a review copy of the a850. Good review on the whole. This camera really does go after the 5DII though, with the sole exception of video.

I am surprised at his talk about Adobe's raw converter though... Adobe is well known to suck with Sony raw files.

The a500 or a500 look to be good smaller bodies for the live view benefits to pair with my a900, similar to lxdesign's choice to pair a D90 with his D700. If only these bodies took CF.

When the a230 and it's brothers came out around the time of the last Henry's show, they were uniformly disliked by many. These new bodies are more like it.

On the whole I remain very happy with my a900, and look forward to seeing new people either come over, or dabble on my dark side with me.

Dabbling sounds like good clean fun.

Canadian prices posted:

a850 body: $2499.99 CAD - Sep 7th Canadian availability
a500 c/w 18-55: $899.99 - Oct 14 Canadian availability
a550 body: $999.99 - Nov 4th availability
a550 c/w 18-55: $1099.99 - Nov 4th availability

For comparison of current Canadian MSRP's of the full frame bodies (taken from Henry's)
a900: 3099.99
5D2: 3299.99
D700: 3069.99

USD List Price Comparisons (taken from B&H):
a850: 1999.99 USD
a900: 2699.99 USD
5D2: 2699.95 USD
D700: 2699.95 USD

So based on my informal check of current exchange rates (compared to USD), the a850 should only cost 2200. But all Canadian premium is the same or worse across all brands when comparing Canadian to American prices.

On the street price is likely in Can$1999 just in time for X'Mas shopping period.
I just wonder what the response of the other players (Canon/Nikon and poor Pentax)

Daniel

I didn't notice video on any of the new models. I could care less myself, but strange how they would leave it out with Nikon and Canon sporting them. Maybe their video division is worried about cannibalizing their sales?

The Sony reps at a Sony sponsored event were quite mum on the subject, but possibly just like their Live View strategy, maybe they were waiting to implement it correctly.

Let's play a game: how many TPMG members can you identify?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsJFtBLW ... annel_page

Sony just posted another event on the Sonystyle website under "DSLR owner event".

Oct 4th: Waterfalls and fall colours with Michael Reichmann.

So a head's up to the tpmg organizers: don't organize our fall colours trip for the same day... please?

Here I am resurrecting a long dead thread, but I figured this post didn't warrant it's own new topic.

This morning Sony released a firmware update for the a900 and a850, including the following:

Improved AF algorithms, shutter release with no cpu lens attached (i major sticking point of yours truly), and expanded bracketing.

I'll be installing the firmware update tonight when I get home.

Note that 'shutter release with no cpu lens attached' really means Aperture Priority AE with non-CPU lenses (Samyang's and adapted lenses), you always had Manual mode.

Very true, but I found the process especially tedious. Chipping one lens was one solution I had used to date.