0:00 – Intro
0:27 – Sony Announcements
1:08 – Sony Alpha A850
1:49 – Sony Alpha A550, A500
4:42 – Canon Announcements
6:11 – Canon EOS 7D
9:02 – Panasonic Lumix GF1
11:02 – Micro Four Thirds Lens Line-Up
12:16 – Carel Struycken’s Olympus E-P1 Review
13:11 – Roberts Imaging on Facebook
Sony Alpha A850
Word just came up that Sony’s new full-frame shooter, the A850, has hit the store.
To review, it’s got the same sensor and dual-processor set-up of the A900, but cuts costs down a bit with a smaller viewfinder and slower continuous shooting. It uses the same grip as its bigger bro, though, and last I heard we had those too.
Sony has shown a real commitment to their DSLR line, and it’s growing every day. And, whatever reservations I may have about the other divisions of Sony, I find their larger DSLRs (the A700, A900, and now this one) to be quite excellent machines, and I like the very honest, no-nonsense tool aesthetic and feel they’ve built into their full-frame shooters. And, with a growing collection of constant-aperture zooms and Carl Zeiss lenses, it’s a system heavily worth considering if you need depth of field, low light, and studio resolution in one budget-friendly body.
Sony Alpha A850
Sony, whose compact camcorders always sift out near the top of the heap in all categories, raised a few eyebrows last week when their three new DSLR bodies all trotted out completely devoid of HD video recording.
HD Video recording, which in part has contributed the monumental success of the 5D Mark II, and of course is the major buzz surrounding Nikon’s new D300s.
But, Sony, who basically own the HD world as far as end-to-end experiences go, opted not to include HD in any of these offerings, despite the markets their competing in being clearly lead by HD enabled competitors.
So, luckily, after that strange bout of behavior, we get a statement from them about why:
“We recognize that HD video is driving customer interest, but without effective continuous auto focus and exposure control, we are concerned that current implementations of HD Video on DSLR cameras don’t provide a good customer experience. Capturing quality still images is a major driver for photo enthusiasts to buy DSLR cameras, and our A500, A550 and A850 DSLR cameras prioritize features (HDR, Exmor CMOS sensors, BIONZ processors, 5fps continuous shooting etc.) that ensure customers will achieve high-quality photos.”
Sony Alpha A850
Sony today announced it’s newest prosumer body, the A850. Sporting the same CMOS sensor as their other full-frame, the A900. So that’s a whopping 24.6 megapixels. It also sports the dual-bionz processors of its predecessor. It has no built-in flash, and I don’t see any movie mode here, and it drops from 5 frames per second down to 3, but those seem to be the major concessions to keep the price down.
Pricing is yet to come, but it should be the cheapest of all the available full-frame bodies. If you want to get on our waitlist, call us at 1-800-726-5544. The A900 was an impressive offering, and at the kinda price points we’re hearing for the A850 it’ll be a fabulous option for studio shooters, slow economy or not.
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