New Sony - Minolta-Mount SLR and Lenses

I have always suspected that Phil's sample of the 50/1.8 is faulty as his results with all Nikon DSLRs do not reflect my experience. This may go some way to explaining the resolution conclusions he makes.

I agree with Herb that the main competitors are the 350D and D80.

I agree with Herb about the housings.

Housing manufacturers are generally a very cautious bunch. And will stick to the tried and tested models. Look how little support there has been for the Fuji S3, for example.

The two acceptions are Ikelite and UK-Germany, who tend to support a wide variety of cameras.

But I wouldn't expect many UW options for this camera. Unless Sony commission something themselves.

Alex

I have to agree with Herbko that this camera is an entry level one and should be compared to 350D (370D?) and D70 (D80? or D50). Although these recent models are cheaper, they started from the same level (around 1000 euro) as I remember. The street price of sony alpha will fall soon. (I've seen body and kit lens for 848 euro few days ago in Germany)

And I also agree that the difference of quality is not much and I really don't care even 6M vs 10 Mpixel differences.

Regarding lens selection Minolta has some fine glass (Sony rebranded some of them) and Zeiss will produce also some high quality lens (not really for underwater photography but indirectly, yes).

What can we consider for UW photography:

Wide angle:

16mm Fisheye (designed for film camera, but not bad. Not as good as nikon 10.5 FE)

Sigma 15mm FE (similar)

Tokina is on the way to release digital FE

http://www.tokina.co.jp/news/4961607atx107news.html

It's not clear whether they will support sony or not.

11-18 mm

17-35 mm (good quality zoom but not really wide)

Macro

50mm and 100mm macro have legendary picture quality. According to independent tests Minolta 100mm macro is better than similar C and N lenses.

Sony just rebranded this two.

But I have to admit, they are not as fast (focusing) as the Canon (or Nikon) rivals but they are not so bad.

3rd party lenses (Tamron 90mm, Sigma 105mm)

The availability of UW housing is dependent on the selling statistics, which highly depends on the marketing and Sony will surely load lots of money into it.

Cheers

Marcell

Thanks for the Stats on the Tokina 10-17mm FE zoom, Marcell.

This is the same lens as Pentax does, right? For some reason I thought it was a Tamron - and have been regularly checking the Tamron site waiting for an announcement of a nikon fit - I guess I will have to start checking the Tokina site instead.

Thanks

Alex

As I know Tamron cooperates more with Sony (The 17-35 is a tamron lens). Maybe Tokina is more behind Pentax. Who knows?

Do you think that all Nikon and Canon lens were produced by themselfs?

I read somewhere that even cosina produced some of their lenses, but I cannot recall it.

If you don't mind I would post two links which may show, how capable is the sony (minolta) system:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp...essage=19487433

and about the lens performance underwater:

http://www.mirkozanni.com/gallery.htm

The uw-photography world shouldn't be bipolar

Cheers

Marcell

Ikelite has finished the underwater housing for sony alpha:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_two/2sonya100.html

It looks very nice and the great news on top, the TTL code was also cracked and the housing supports it.

I'm starting to save money.

(Or maybe waiting till PMA. Sony is supposed to announce two new models this year. I'm using 7D now that has a much superior handling compared to alpha)