A900 lens compatability with other Alpha DSLR's?

Gavin_P said:

Gavin_P said:

Re Jefir's post; I haven't found a full pdf manual yet for the A900

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but your comment on the menu's is very interesting. I will have to
keep looking!

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Go here:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=DSLRA900

Robert Lynch said:

Gavin_P said:

Robert Lynch said:

Re Jefir's post; I haven't found a full pdf manual yet for the A900

Click to expand...

but your comment on the menu's is very interesting. I will have to
keep looking!

Click to expand...

Go here:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=DSLRA900

Click to expand...

Thanks! Just what I was looking for.

I hear what is mentioned about average glass and high quality. There would be nothing stopping me getting some higher quality lenses once I had the A900 body. Zeiss lenses are well known for being higher quality than most although with having the Sigma 50-500mm lens, I'd perhaps go for a wide-angle/fisheye/or even just a standard lens for general snapping...who knows what other types of lenses could be available in a couple of years?

It would be interesting for me to compare how the lenses perform on both camera bodies, shoot at the same subject and look at them on a large screen.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Regards

Gavin

--
Look out that window. Eden isn't burning, its burnt

sinusundo said:

Most of the Alpha zoom lenses are DT, but the SAL-75300 is not.

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Actually, with the latest addition (16-35 mm), there are seven DT lenses and seven non-DT lenses.

Gavin_P said:

I was wondering about me now (almost) having the Sigma 50-500mm lens,
the fact that the A900 won't recognise it enough to downgrade to the
crop sensor size.

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It's full frame, so for obvious reasons it won't go into crop-mode.

Then again, you can always crop to your heart's content in any picture processor.

headofdestiny said:

A DT lens is a lens designed for crop sensor cameras. They should be
fine on the A900. The only issue comes with metering, and so matrix
metering may have an issue in some cases, but no biggie.

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Vignetting would not be an issue??
--Phil

Vignetting certainly would be an issue for lenses such as the 4.5mm fisheye lens on the Sigma UK website - which is only designed for the APS-C sensor-equipped cameras.

This is the thing I was mostly concerned about if/when I upgrade the camera body for the A900 spec.

--
Look out that window. Eden isn't burning, its burnt

Gavin_P said:

By chance while I was googling around to find a definition of a
cropped sensor camera, I found an older thread on the Dpreview boards
discussing the topic, however the APS-C sensor size was never
specifically mentioned.

Is APS-C classed as being a cropped sensor? I guess anything smaller
than full frame would be considered cropped now that the A900 has
appeared and set a new standard...

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Cropped sensor is a misleading term invented by advocates of minature format (35mm). Minature format is a crop of 70mm full frame movie film. And on and on. Anyone using the term cropped for APS is trying to disparage and put down APS. It is a meaningless term as it's the definition of nothing as it's used for all kinds of sizes of sensors. Basically anything that FF advocates want to disparage.

APS-C is officially classed as APS-C. Anyone calling it cropped is trying to mislead.

The a900 set no standard at all. It's a imitation of 35mm film, which was a standard of film. And was not FF at all, but a crop of 70mm, which was full frame in the early movie industry. Call the a900 35mm format so as not to be misleading.

Walt

Robert Lynch said:

The standard of "cropped" vs. "full frame" existed years before Sony
entered the DSLR market. It is not new and dates to the very first
DSLR that did not have a 35mm film frame sized sensor.

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Nope, back then we did not have the term cropped being used at all. We used the multiplier to identify if anything. Mostly we called them cameras and took photos with them. Cropped turned up with the first 35mm format DSLR as a term to disparage other cameras by those that owned that camera. It was stupid then and is stupid now. It's people's egos talking.

We did use the term full frame to indicate a mythical 35mm sized sensor that might appear someday. Full frame is more legitimate than cropped, though it ignores the history of 35mm film as 35mm film was never called full frame, but was called half frame when it was invented. Or called minature.

From one who shot with a Minolta RD-175 for years, a 2X DSLR. When Nikon or Canon did not even have a DSLR. And with film from 16mm to 8X10" for still photos before that.

Walt

Klipsen said:

From what I've read, the A900 automatically switches to "11 Mpix crop
mode" when a DT lens is mounted.

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That is one of the very dumb things Sony did with the a900 since many DT lenses will cover the entire frame except at the wide angle end. All kinds of framing would be possible if Sony had not crippled the a900 with DT lenses.

Walt

WaltKnapp said:

Nope, back then we did not have the term cropped being used at all.
We used the multiplier to identify if anything.

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Using the term "cropped" or referring to a multiplier is a semantic difference. The point is that the A900 did not "introduce a new standard" as the OP stated. The concept/issue/terminology/whatever existed years ago.

WaltKnapp said:

APS-C is officially classed as APS-C. Anyone calling it cropped is
trying to mislead.

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No, there are being frank about its use in a camera mount designed for 35mm film and lenses.

35mm would only be cropped if you put it in a system physically and optically designed for 70mm.

Full frame and cropped and relative terms, neither is a disparagement and neither mean anything without a proper context.

WaltKnapp said:

Gavin_P said:

By chance while I was googling around to find a definition of a
cropped sensor camera, I found an older thread on the Dpreview boards
discussing the topic, however the APS-C sensor size was never
specifically mentioned.

Is APS-C classed as being a cropped sensor? I guess anything smaller
than full frame would be considered cropped now that the A900 has
appeared and set a new standard...

Click to expand...

Cropped sensor is a misleading term invented by advocates of minature
format (35mm). Minature format is a crop of 70mm full frame movie
film. And on and on. Anyone using the term cropped for APS is trying
to disparage and put down APS. It is a meaningless term as it's the
definition of nothing as it's used for all kinds of sizes of sensors.
Basically anything that FF advocates want to disparage.

APS-C is officially classed as APS-C. Anyone calling it cropped is
trying to mislead.

The a900 set no standard at all. It's a imitation of 35mm film,
which was a standard of film. And was not FF at all, but a crop of
70mm, which was full frame in the early movie industry. Call the
a900 35mm format so as not to be misleading.

Walt

Click to expand...

AFAIK 35 mm was never a crop of anything. It was a clever idea to use spare bits of rolls from the film media. At that time it was big format and medium format cameras and this new format was a consumer format, and this small format on the new Leicas became the photojounalist tool very soon.

Film (movies) was shoot on rolls on this format and when 70 mm became popular I think they still shot with 35 mm and blown up to 70 mm afterwards.

APS was a failure, a film format where you could choose different format for print. APS-c beeing standard. In its form it was fullframe and had a dedicated system around. Minolta made a SLR for this format, these lenses are not 35 mm and cannot be used on the alphas.

APS-C on a dSLR are the size of APS-c on a 35 mm system, and therefore it is cropped. It is the same as taking a centrecrop on a fullsize sensor. That makes the 50 mm almost a 75 mm, but the (whats the word, english is a second language of mine) perspective- parallaxe - view is not the same, it is just a crop of a 50 mm.

Fullframe uses the whole system, so in this respect a Olympus 4:3 is fullframe not a 2.0 crop of anything.

WaltKnapp said:

That is one of the very dumb things Sony did with the a900 since many
DT lenses will cover the entire frame except at the wide angle end.

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Maybe a future firmware-upgrade could solve that "problem". In the meantime, I don't think it's that big an issue, because you'd lose the only reason for using an APS-C lens: wide angle.

WaltKnapp said:

All kinds of framing would be possible if Sony had not crippled the
a900 with DT lenses.

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Crippled sounds to me more like what Canon did with EF-S lenses.