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Shutterbug has posted a review of the Sony A700 DSLR camera.

There’s a brief discussion over the lack of live view on the A700 which seems to imply that it’s not a useful feature for professional and semi-pro photographers, despite all of the pro photographers who say it can come in handy:

A Sony rep indicated that they won’t implement Live View until a highly effective and convenient system is developed. Since the A700 is intended for enthusiasts with SLR experience, they doubt that many buyers will miss a feature that’s most appealing to those who are first trading up from a point-and-shoot digicam.

They report good image quality up to ISO 400, although the reviewer seems to have friends who prefer film grain to grainless digital images for some reason:

Particularly in Extra Fine JPEG or raw capture, image quality is outstanding at ISO 100-400, suitable for making gallery-quality 13×19” inkjet prints. Photos made without overrides exhibit rich colors, snappy contrast, high sharpness, and remarkable smoothness. Most of my friends considered the results to be “perfect” while a couple would have preferred just a hint of a “grain” for a more film-like effect.

Honestly, that’s one of strangest things I’ve ever read in a camera review: not enough noise! Get these noise-free images out of here, they’re disturbing me! Where’s my grain??

They report very good results with the anti-shake system, getting sharp photos shooting at 1/8 second with a 105mm (35mm equivalent) focal length, which is very good. They even report “some photos” shot at 1/4 sec were sharp enough for 5×7 prints, which seems like stretching things a little if you ask me. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with turning on burst mode, fire off a bunch of frames at a slow shutter speed, and hope one or two turn out. I just wouldn’t publish the shutter speed I used for that as a “usable” one.

Performance sounds very good as well, although half a second to turn on doesn’t quite sound DSLR-fast to me:

It started up in a 1/2 sec, activated AF instantly, responded without any apparent shutter lag, and was almost always ready to shoot another long burst. Autofocus was fast, accurate, and reliable even in dark locations. Tracking focus performance in action photography was very good with an affordable Sony AF 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom. The camera’s new AF system also provides a bonus when used with an f/2.8 or wider aperture lens: superior focusing accuracy with the dual cross-hatched central AF sensor point.

High ISO noise performance sounds about average for a DSLR, although the reviewer doesn’t compare it to other cameras:

In images made at higher ISO levels, digital noise is very well controlled. Color saturation and edge sharpness remain high even at ISO 3200; the images were suitable for decent 8×10″ glossies. (ISO 6400 is mostly for emergency use and for 4×6″ prints.) A stronger or weaker level of NR can be set in camera at ISO 1600 and above. That allows for an even smoother effect (but with more smudging of fine details) or for a more “grainy” look (with better definition).

The reviewer’s conclusion? The A700 is a “very fine” camera:

The original A100 remains a very fine 10-megapixel entry-level D-SLR but the new enthusiast-level 12-megapixel model is even more desirable because of more effective technology, much greater speed, more rugged construction, and a richer feature set. It should be a strong contender in the mid-range category in spite of fierce competition from other recent 10- and 12-megapixel models.

Check out the full review for all the details and some small sample photos (nothing approaching full resolution samples in this review.)

Sony has released a firmware version 3 for the Sony Alpha A700 digital camera. It fixes an issue with the access lamp staying lit and the camera not responding after taking several pictures in rapid succession, and fixes an issue where turning the camera off while in “MR” mode can mess up the settings in other shooting modes.

Plus, if you haven’t gotten firmware version 2 yet, you also get these fine features as well:

• Sharper images for pictures taken under low contrast conditions
• Reduced noise for pictures taken at ISO 3200
• Improved flash control for objects closer than 1 meter with non ADI controlled lenses

Sounds like it’s not as big of a deal as the version 2 firmware update for the A700, which brought actual image quality improvements, but still probably a good idea to install if you have an A700.

Oh yeah, the download location. Get it here.

DPReview has posted their review of the Sony Alpha A700 DSLR. Let’s take a (quick) look at the highs and the lows of this new digital SLR, according to DPReview.

They got a comment from Sony about the surprising lack of live view on the A700 (surprising, at least, compared to all the other DSLRs coming out these days):

When we spoke to Sony about this the answer was simple; they believe that the compromises involved in current systems are satisfactory, and they won’t implement live view until they can ‘get it right’. Whether the lack of live view has any real relevance in a camera at this level remains to be seen; we doubt it.

They feel that the A700 might have too much luminance noise reduction going on at high ISO settings: there was little luminance noise, although a fair amount of chroma noise remained and a lot of the detail had been blurred away. They compared it to the Nikon D300, which returned images with less noise, and the Canon 40D, which had the most detail. It did perform better than the Olympus E-3 in the high ISO noise competition, however. I guess that means the A700 gets a bronze medal, with the D300 and 40D being more or less tied, depending on how much NR you like.

Speaking of NR, you’re kind of in a bad spot with the A700, since, unlike every other DSLR that I know of, it still performs noise reduction even when you shoot RAW. Every other camera just gives you what came off of the sensor — isn’t that basically the implied definition of what a RAW image should be — and lets you do noise reduction later (Noise Ninja, etc). Apparently this is a design decision, and a side effect of doing the noise reduction on the sensor itself. Hopefully future cameras that do on-sensor NR will come up with a way to disable it for RAW shooting, if desired.

They report excellent dynamic range (better than average) and long exposure results, and they really like the optional battery grip.

They put the anti-shake feature in the “pros” section, but looking at their test results shows that it doesn’t give you as much anti-shake correction as other cameras do. Their test shows roughly 1.5 stops of improvement. Maybe I’m comparing apples to different apples by keeping in mind the 3+ stops of improvement that the Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS lens provided, and Canon/Nikon’s claims that doing it in the lens is better really do hold up. I’ll have to look into that some more.

Interestingly, their testing reveals that the camera’s “base” ISO setting is 200, and shooting at ISO 100 makes things a little wonky. You get much better results at ISO 200 than ISO 100, no matter how unintuitive (and undocumented in the manual) that feels. They also found poor automatic white balance performance, especially under incandescent light.

In addition, the Image Data Converter SR software just doesn’t convert RAW images well; you lose detail and introduce moire artifacts:

The differences between these three are pretty obvious, and stark. The JPEG from the camera demonstrates good resolution beyond absolute resolution which would mean good representation of texture and distant detail. Adobe Camera RAW (as usual) delivers great per pixel sharpness and resolution. The biggest disappointment however is the output from Image Data Converter which produced a large amount of moire as well as blurring anything beyond 2500 LPH.

I don’t know many people who do RAW conversions with the manufacturer’s software instead of Adobe Camera Raw or other third-party tools, but with the Sony it sounds like you really don’t have a choice. Their software should have a big warning sticker telling you that you’ll get worse results using it than if you had just shot JPEG in the first place. Kind of scary.

In the end, they label it “highly recommended” and say it’s a decent camera, especially for the price:

Overall then the A700 is a good performer with good overall image quality with a nice range of features – even if on the negative side there are some quirky design decisions which may or may not affect you. Best of all though is the fact that it weighs in at the lower end of the price band for this category of DSLR, that makes it about $400 less than the Nikon D300 and $300 less than the Olympus E-3.

Before we get to the main feature, here’s a teaser that was also posted at Luminous Landscape the same day:

The Nikon D3 is now shipping. It is Nikon’s new flagship camera and has been reported to have exceptional high ISO capability. Is ISO 25,600 real, and if so how good is it? How does the D3 stack up against the equally new Canon 1Ds MKIII when it comes to noise at ISO 3200? And, what about the Nikon D300? Can it hold its own with its bigger brother?

I had the opportunity to do a brief informal test and high ISO comparison with these three cameras this past weekend, and will have my report online here before the end of this week. You may be surprised at the results.

We may be surprised at the results? I’m not sure what that means. Which camera do we expect to come out on top? I guess the only real surprise would be the D300 performing as well as the two more expensive ones, right? We’ll see…

And now our feature presentation, a Sony Alpha A700 field report, always used with a Sony 16-105mm lens. A very interesting comparison was between the A700, a venerable Canon 20D (wait, that’s not old enough for me to call it “venerable” yet, is it?), and an Olympus E-510 while shooting an opera:

The A700′s double cross centre point focusing was completely un-phased no matter what the lighting was, locking consistently and achieving accurate focus quickly despite using the slowest lens of the group (16-105mm f3.5-5.6 used mainly at the slower tele end of the range). The Canon 20D with a 70-200mm f4L was close behind. The Olympus E510 with 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 and a rudimentary three focusing points was the Canon’s equal in speed but loses points with me because of the constant need to focus and recompose owing to the lack of focusing points. However it’s focusing accuracy was up there with the leading A700.

Something to note, the built in IS in both the E510 and A700 allowed me to shoot handheld all night, while the 20D without an IS lens required a monopod support.

He reports that even though the A700 has more buttons than the other two cameras, it was the most intuitive and easiest to use of the three cameras, even in the dark when he was trying to change settings without really being able to see what he was doing. One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in any other A700 review, but is a very useful feature that it has, is that when you push a button to adjust a setting, all three of the main adjustment dials (the front dial, the rear dial, and the joystick) are active to change it. It’s little usability details like that which make for a good camera review, if you ask me. Which you probably didn’t, so never mind.

He reports that the image quality at ISO 800 is pretty comparable between the three cameras, with the E-510 being a little noisier and the A700 a little softer, but those being pretty minor differences. At 1600, however, ISO the E-510 can’t compete with the other two cameras. At higher and higher sensitivities, the 20D performs better, but it’s still pretty close.

The reviewer was a big fan of the high resolution 3″ LCD on the A700, stating that it made checking focus, noise, and color very easy. Speaking of color, he reported very accurate color under challenging conditions:

The interesting thing to note about the ribbon-cutting ceremony photo above is the way the A700 handled the colour balance in this scene so well — late day existing light with a decidedly blue cast mixed with two tungsten balanced floodlights, and just to make it real interesting, overhead florescent fixtures.

I can tell you, the E510 didn’t handle this scene as well, and the DRO influenced metering on the Sony balanced out the exposure more evenly with no hot spots.

More praise about the DRO feature being helpful in getting what you want when shooting JPEG and avoiding the hassle of RAW processing:

Honestly, I’m continually amazed at what DRO will pull out of JPEG exposures. In many photos it counters the need to shoot RAW to capture extended dynamic range and without the hassle of stacking layers in PhotoShop.

On the negative side, he found the metering to be very “idiosyncratic:”

This seems to be a side effect of the DRO technology, which, while doing an impressive job of extending dynamic range in photos, will often skew exposure to a lighter tone than you are looking for. Thus, for a lot of photos I found I was applying minus one stop of exposure compensation routinely. Doing so kept the dark tones true while DRO lightened shadow areas and suppressed highlights.

He also reports that the detail-smearing noise reduction that had been reported early on with the A700 is now a thing of the past, after applying Sony’s latest firmware update. It sounds like the difference after updating the firmware is pretty significant, and everyone with the A700 should hurry up and make sure they’ve downloaded and flashed their camera to the latest version.

Overall, recommended. Be sure to check out the full review for all kinds of other details that I glossed over.