Sony A700

 

Ever since I switched to Canon cameras, at the dawn of the digital age, I kept glancing mournfully at my old camera bag full of analogue Minolta gear. Ironically, I switched from Canon to Minolta in 1986 when the later revolutionised the field with the first practical autofocus SLR, the 7000. Coming up from the Canon A1, the 7000 felt like a computer and was a very exciting upgrade even if it wasn’t as well built. The Minolta 9000 which did offer Swiss like quality was a bit above my budget at the time. I kept up with the brand until the 900, four generations later, which could give the Canon EOS 1 and the Nikon F4 a run for their money. Then came digital and Minolta lost its ground.


Even though I had switched to Canon, I was very keen on using my old gear with a digital body and paid much attention to the Minolta D5 and D7 which were nice but had the major flaw of not having an instant start. Then there was the merger with Konica and the sale to Sony. The resulting Alpha 100 was nice but very low end and it was not until the A700 came out that I started thinking about dusting off my old Minolta gear.


I’m of two minds about that camera. On one hand it works very well and delivers top notch pictures but on the other hand, it feels cheap and plasticky compared to its direct competitors, the EOS 40D and the Nikon D300.


My other issue is that while there are lots of nice little switches on the camera body, they almost all send you back to the single back LCD. It is very bright and legible of course, being the leader in its category, but reading this very bright and defined screen  kinds of puts off looking through the viewfinder again. I much prefer looking at a top mounted black and white LCD for changing settings


It seems I should have waited for the full frame Alpha 900.

28 February 2008

 
 

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