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DCRP has just updated their initial review of the Sony Alpha A700 with new information from a production camera, and so now it’s a final review.

A few of the key points about the A700 are in-camera image stabilization, dust removal, no LCD info panel, and no live view. It can do 5 fps in drive mode (until the buffer fills, which is after 14 RAW images, but an unlimited number of JPEGs.) It includes a wired remote control.

One interesting feature is something to automatically bring out the details from the shadow areas, called Dynamic Range Optimizer (DRO). From the review:

This will boost the dynamic range of your photo, bringing out shadow detail. The basic “standard” option corrects the brightness and contrast of the entire image. The Advanced option optimizes brightness, contrast, and color area-by-area. You can also adjust how much DRO is applied to the image by adjusting the “level” from 1 to 5.

Of course, this is all done in post-processing inside the camera, so it’s nothing that you couldn’t have done yourself in Adobe Camera Raw (or whatever RAW converter you prefer) if you’d shot in RAW. But for someone who wants to shoot JPEGs (I don’t know those people), this can certainly come in handy. It does feel more like a low-end camera feature than an advanced DSLR feature, but maybe that’s just me.

The high ISO noise performance is pretty good. The reviewer writes that ISO 100 and ISO 200 look pretty much identical.

At ISO 400 we start to see a bit of detail loss due to noise reduction, but a mid-to-large print is still possible here. The ISO 800 shot is slightly worse, but still usable for midsize prints (and larger, if you shoot in RAW). Noise reduction really starts to smudge details at ISO 1600, so I’d save this setting for small prints only. I’m not sure what you can do at sensitivities above that — details are really wiped out. I’d definitely shoot in RAW mode at the higher sensitivities, as you’ll be able to extract more detail out of the photos (more on that later). At the highest ISO settings, I think the Canon EOS-40D does slightly better than the A700, though shooting in RAW could negate this.

The “more on that later” refers to a later test which shows that he was able to achieve a far superior and less noisy photo when using a RAW ISO 3200 shot than when using an in-camera JPEG. The RAW was converted with Sony’s included Image Data Lightbox, but I’m not clear on the settings. My guess is that some noise reduction was performed in that program, but the review isn’t clear on that point. If the noise is that different at the default settings (be sure to check the review to see the difference) then it sounds like something has badly configured defaults, in my opinion.

The reviewer recommends the camera, especially for anyone who has existing Minolta lenses that would work on the Sony A700. He does mention that he found the camera tends to underexpose a little bit, and isn’t a big fan of the legacy Konica Minolta hot shoe which means you can’t just add on any third-party flash unit that you want. I guess it wouldn’t be a full-fledged Sony product if there wasn’t something weirdly proprietary about it, right?

As always, be sure to check out the full review for all the details and a number of full resolution image samples.

Camera Labs has posted a review of the new Sony Alpha A700 digital SLR. This camera gives you 12.2 megapixels on an APS-C sized sensor, in-camera image stablization (improved over what was in the Sony A100), a new high resolution (640×480) 3 inch LCD display, and HDMI output for viewing on high definition televisions.

In their outdoor image comparison test, the review shows the A700 giving pretty similar sharpness results as the Canon 40D:

It’s immediately clear from the crops below that using their default JPEG settings, the Canon EOS 40D is applying greater sharpening than the Sony A700. The Sony crops appear noticeably softer in comparison, but if you increase the in-camera sharpening or apply sharpening through software later, the results can look very similar. It’s interesting given Sony’s reputation for vibrant image processing to opt for a somewhat toned-down approach on the A700, perhaps targeting more serious photographers who expect to post-process.

As for actual detail captured, the Sony A700 enjoys a very slight edge here at its lowest sensitivity, but it makes very little difference in real-life situations like these.

In the studio image comparison, the A700 shows very good resolution, coming pretty close to what the Canon 5D achieves:

In our studio resolution tests, the Sony Alpha DSLR-A700 fitted with the Carl Zeiss 16-80mm delivered 2350 and 2400 lpph of horizontal and vertical resolution respectively. This places it ahead of every 10 Megapixel DSLR we’ve tested and roughly neck in neck with Canon’s EOS 5D — even when the 5D was tested with a prime lens.

We’d expect the A700 to resolve a similar amount of detail to the EOS 5D at its lowest sensitivities though as both share essentially the same resolution and at low ISOs, noise hasn’t yet come into play. However as you’ll see on our A700 noise results, the EOS 5D retains a comfortable edge at higher sensitivities.

Interestingly, their resolution chart test images had a surprising amount of moire artifacts when shot RAW and converted with the Sony Image Data Converter 2.0. The images looked much better when converted in Adobe Camera Raw, although they found that the Sony software gave better results on their outdoor image test. So complicated!

They go on to test the ISO noise and detail performance, and find that the Sony is pretty close to the Canon 40D and 5D at ISO 100, and reasonably close but not as good at higher ISO levels:

As with our first results page, the A700′s crops appear softer than those from the Canon bodies, although much of this is due to lower in-camera sharpening. If you increase the in-camera sharpening level or apply sharpening later, the A700′s results here at lower sensitivities can look remarkably close to those from the Canon bodies.

Of course sharpening can only work if there’s detail captured in the first place and as the sensitivity increases, the A700 gives you less to play with. Things look good up to 400 ISO, but at 800 and 1600 ISO, pixel peepers will notice a familiar Sony noise reduction strategy kicking-in, producing a slight water-colour effect on the finest detail. You can see this on the foliage and blossom areas which appear slightly smudged compared to the Canons.

This is serious pixel-peeing though and is unlikely to affect most people. Ultimately the A700 delivers good performance across its sensitivity range, although it’s clear the full-frame sensor of the Canon EOS 5D retains a comfortable edge at higher sensitivities. With both cameras set to 100 ISO and the sharpening of the A700 increased though, the results can be very close.

In the end, the reviewer doesn’t understand the lack of wifi and live view, and would have liked to have a second status LCD screen (although it seems like more and more manufacturers are leaving those off, sadly.) They also point out that while it is an excellent camera, there are some issues to consider about buying into Sony’s system:

Sony’s done a great job of launching Alpha with a decent array of rebadged and new lenses, but few focus as quickly or quietly as Canon’s USM or Nikon’s SWM models. Take a look at some of our video reviews of Canon, Nikon and Sony lenses and you’ll see and hear what we mean. Sony still claims its own quick and quiet SSM technology is only appropriate for high-end telephotos, but few would argue it wouldn’t also be desirable on their general-purpose models.

It’ll also be interesting to see how much of an advantage the A700’s built-in anti-shake will be for a target market with more to spend –– semi-pro photographers may not baulk at buying image stabilised lenses and may also prefer seeing their stabilising effect through the optical viewfinder.

They give the camera an 87% rating when compared to other mid-range DSLRs from 2007. Be sure to check out the original article for the full review, a video tour, and several sample photos (resized but with a few 100% crops of detail areas.)

CNET has posted a review of the Sony Alpha A700 digital SLR camera.

The reviewer was hoping that the camera would be a little faster, but can’t really complain with the performance:

However, like many of its competitors, under dim, low-contrast conditions, the A700′s focus slows, bumping the lag to 1.2 seconds; though common, I still think that’s still too long for cameras at this price. Though it can’t match the 40D’s 6.3 frame-per-second (fps) burst-shooting rate, the A700′s 4.8fps acquits itself quite nicely, especially since I think the focus matches its speed better than the 40D’s does at maximum. (Sony’s rating of 5fps assumes use of a UDMA-capable CF card; we obtained 4.8fps with a SanDisk Extreme IV, which is non-UDMA.) In field tests, I was quite happy with the A700′s continuous-shooting performance.

They report good image quality, and recommend it as a good alternative to the Canon 40D, unless you need the 40D’s burst mode speed:

All in all, I’m very impressed by the Sony Alpha DSLR-A700 as an all-around midrange digital SLR. Though more expensive than the Canon EOS 40D, the built-in image stabilizer and higher resolution are worth the extra bucks, unless you really need the little extra oomph in continuous-shooting performance that the 40D delivers. Of course, it remains to be seen how the forthcoming yet pricier Nikon D300 will stack up relative to the A700. If you want to buy now, however, the A700 is a great choice.

The sample photos are all very low resolution, but include some small 100% crops, so if you’re really desperate for pixel peeping the A700, they’ll do. Otherwise, just ignore the sample photos and read the rest of the review.

Sony has announced the latest DSLR in their Alpha camera line, the Alpha A700. This new camera seems closer to the Maxxum 7D than the more recent — and more similarly named — Alpha A100. Imaging Resource has a good preview of it, but the key features are:

• 12.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, which sounds remarkably similar to the sensor in the Nikon D300.
• Analog to digital conversion on the sensor chip itself, which should eliminate one source of image noise by not requiring the analog signal to travel from the sensor to the A/D converter. This is only 12-bit A/D, however, not 14-bit like so many of the newly announced DSLRs. We’ll have to wait for the reviews to see if 14-bit processing will really be a big improvement.
• 3 inch high resolution LCD display (640×480, same as the Nikon D3 and D300′s much-hyped display.)
• Anti-dust system that uses the anti-shake system implementation to try to shake dust off of the camera. This hasn’t been that effective in other models, but we’ll have to wait for the full reviews to come out before we prejudge the A700 too much. Just a little prejudging for now…

Despite all the similarities to the D300, there’s one big advantage the A700 will have, which is in-camera anti-shake. This is supposed to be an improvement over Sony’s past anti-shake technology, and they claim that it’ll give an impressive 2.5 to 4 stops of exposure extension. That’s a whole lot more low light headroom than I have without any anti-shake, and I’d love to play with that and see what possibilities it opens up.

What about pricing? It will retail for $1,400 for the body only, $1,500 if bundled with an 18-70mm lens, and $1,900 with their new 16-105mm lens.