A900 'close to pure genius', PhotographyBLOG

[Krako]

Exactly. And there are gems in the Minolta lens-legacy which compliment this behaviour just wonderfully.

 

[tweedle]

The built-in flash is highly function oriented, as far as I am concerned,
and Sony missed the boat on that.

You might be right that a built-i flash will become an item for pro-directed cameras, like for the F700 already. To me, it makes sense always having that kind of flash available in the field. I like the idea.

However, at this point in time (and from the people I know), the lack of a flash will hardly affect that many buyer's decision about buying a camera of this class.

They had a whole year to chew on the main-sensor LV aspect, after LV
appeared in ALL the products from the market leaders, and even then,
came out with a body without it. How smart is that ? Now, all the
reviews are putting the lack of LV as a "con" against the A900.

LV is a nice feature that has to be weighed against so many other nice (or even nicer) features of the A900.

This camera was targeted at a certain price level. The relevant question about it is not whether it has all the me-too features, IMO, but whether it carries the decisive ones.

LV might be decisive to some, I agree. But the challenge for Sony was to make a camera with a range of distinct qualities to make it different and more appealing compared to all others.

The review that set-off this thread seems to confirm that Sony got things pretty much right.

 

[Edward Karaa]

I find it more a la Olympus OM than anything else, which is a great thing. OM cameras had the best viewfinders at the time.