Sony Alpha 900 and My Future with it
Sony Alpha 900 front view
On August 15th was a sad and a glorious day. Sad, for the sake of making my Sony a100 a secondary camera, to sit in my camera bag with a naked body, no lens attached. My sadness was quickly overtaken by joy once I had my Sony a900 out of the box. Of course sadness quickly came back for a few hours, having to wait a few hours for the battery to charge!
With the idea of becoming a portrait photographer next year, I spent a long time deciding if this was going to be the camera for me [article]. I ended up buying the camera as pictured, but with a 50mm f/1.4 fixed lens. I’m waiting on buying a 16-35mm lens.
The Sony 50mm f/1.4 Lens [SAL-50F14]
I was very impressed with the lens out of the box. Considering the fact that it performs even better for APS-C cameras, if you own an Alpha line camera, you’ll be happy to own it. DPReview.com did a review on the lens, giving it a “Highly Recommended” tag. The sharpest center focus outperforms the competition, but has sharpness issues in the corners. Now you can see why I picked this lens for my closeup portrait work. Below is a short slide show of a few photos taken by my sister and moi. If you want to see the photos below in full size, here’s a link to that set of photos on Flickr.
Pocket Wizard with the Sony a900
This was by far the most important thing I researched for the aspect of portrait photography. You need the most reliable equipment, so I had to have the ability to use Pocket Wizard. Thankfully Sony provides the Hot Shoe adapter [Sony Style Purchase page] for $130 to use Pocket Wizards [pictured below]. Searching for information, I couldn’t find any information that stated the adapter wouldn’t work with current Pocket Wizards. I have yet to test that idea, since I’m buying all my lighting equipment after I move to Utah. I did email Pocket Wizard directly, so once I get a response, I’ll post it here on the website.
08202009 ***Update on the Pocket Wizard For Sony’s Adapter*** - Got an email back from Cirillo from Pocket Wizard. With the Sony Adapter listed in this article, it will work with the Pocket Wizard Plus II setup.
Above is the setup for it as an example, Sony with the Pocket Wizard Plus II. Below is the hotshoe needed to use the Pocket Wizard Plus II.
Pocket Wizard Hot Shoe Adapter
Out of the Box Upgrades - Adobe RAW version 5.4
I’m a fan of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Bridge. I like to play with large batches of photographs in RAW, then convert them to TIFF or JPEG, and Adobe Bridge with Adobe RAW v5.4 can do just that with the a900 .ARW files. The Sony a900 comes with Sony’s software to do similar things, but it’s slow and can’t do batch conversions. So if you use Adobe products, Google/Bing “adobe raw 5.4″ and you’ll get the link.
Final Note
I would love to describe all the new features on the Sony a900, but I’m still learning it myself. Also, features on the Sony a900 may be new to me since I jumped from the a100 to the a900, but may not be new to Sony a700 owners. So I’ve chosen not to cover features. I will talk about future tricks I learn with the camera and the vertical grip when I learn them.
I only wish I didn’t work 50 hours a week, which is taking valuable time away from me to play with my new toy!
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