But... Personally I'm starting to wonder if I'll need an A99... or not. Of course none of us need one, but you know what I mean. With more lenses coming down the pipe for NEX I think it may be the platform of the future for me. Lots of speculation in that statement but I was just thinking the other day if I had fast and wide lens options for the NEX I could ditch my 5D and be perfectly happy. I've gotten very comfortable composing and focusing via the rear LCD, in some ways it might even be advantageous over an EVF.
played with one for about 15 minutes at the local store. Had the CZ 24-70 mounted on it. My first impression is very positive. That EVF looks really cool. Would love to see some real life pics.
A lot of people will prefer a smaller camera, but at 730 grams, the a99 is small, more APS-C in size and weight. Canon's admittedly well-built 7D is a full 820-860 grams depending on who you believe, Nikon's D600 is 760 grams despite the plastic construction, the full bottle D800 runs to a hefty 900 grams.
Pics - I am flat out like a lizard drinking getting ready for a big trip so no pix from me - but what I have seen so far from the Contax/Leica R lenses is very promising indeed. There are plenty on the web however, here are a few shot with I think the 28-75/2.8:
I know this country very well, the colour is absolutely right. Big features so far for me are accurate AWB, 'as seen' colour and very good DR, so you get a very natural, nicely toned image with well rendered and subtle highlights.
and the highlight handling is pretty impressive, as is colour retention at high ISO, with a range of lenses:
I picked up the RX1, it's very impressive. So much so that I went back to the shop to look at the A99. I have to say that Sony really has upped the ante in the DSLR arena with features that are unique, interesting, and most importantly USEFUL. If the brand name was Canon or Nikon, these would be flying off the shelves. This camera uses technology to its advantage and makes me really wonder why I'm still using Canon gear at all.
Sadly my A99 is heading back to Sony. I bought it to use it as a true hybrid - I shoot events and low-dollar TV commercials going from a 5d2 to a FS100 with a Nex5n and EM5 for stills to what I had hoped would be the all-in-one solution with the A99 - and my copy of the A99 just can't deliver. The video is noticeably soft in any shot where there's lots of detail. It looks worse than the 5n and EM5 in some instances. Shallow DOF shots look great and the DR is awesome, but when you need detail the A99 falls short.
I returned my camera for exchange hoping that it was a flaw in the first run, though that raises other concerns about QC if that's in fact the issue. I suspect it has something to do with the scaling/processing as the image still looked soft when the clean HDMI out was connected to my TV. Aliasing and moire is pretty bad too, the worst of any camera I've owned. Anyway, Sony is shipping me a new camera. If it shows the same softness my foray into Sony FF will be short lived as I really can't afford to wait another 6 months or more for it to get sorted with a firmware update. I'm not sitting on the camera beyond the 30-day return window if the new one has the same problem.
I will say on the stills side the A99 does impress. After getting the AF microadjust sorted I was really happy with the way my test shots looked. In hand the A99 is awesome, there are buttons for everything, the joystick and quick menus made changing anything not accessible through a button push a breeze, the dials matched my thumb and forefinger perfectly and I love, love, love the silent control nipple on the front and the tilt/swivel LCD - every camera should have one - and AF-d/AF-range are really cool features.
On the downside the focus magnify doesn't work in video mode and you can't have multiple AF adjustment settings for zoom lenses - so you have to log settings for different FL's and change them as you're shooting. It wasn't an issue with the 24-70z but my 70-400 is different at 70, 200 and 400. Those are my only real complaints outside of video IQ. It kills me to have this problem as I have an event to shoot on the 15th and I'm heading to Arizona in a few weeks and my plan was to shoot the Grand Canyon and family holiday stuff with the A99. Grrrr....
@Chris: It's my impression too from EOSHD that the A99's video is as bad as the VG-900, which is both surprising and very disappointing. As it is, I'd only buy the A99 for stills.
AhamB wrote:
@Chris: It's my impression too from EOSHD that the A99's video is as bad as the VG-900, which is both surprising and very disappointing. As it is, I'd only buy the A99 for stills.
I've seen posts going both ways, but those results are similar to what I'm getting. Some are saying they're not seeing the softness and others are reporting it, but I haven't seen anyone post any concrete evidence that the A99 can render an acceptable amount of detail in deep DOF shots. When I say acceptable, I mean at least as good as my Nex5n, which in many cases its not. I posted about it on another site and started an amazing flame war about poor shooting technique, lighting, focusing and so on when I repeatedly said I would take a still just to make sure I had perfect focus, then switch to video and it turned to mush. The fanboy head in the sand mentality is overwhelming, but there's definitely something wrong.
photo chris wrote:
Sadly my A99 is heading back to Sony. I bought it to use it as a true hybrid - I shoot events and low-dollar TV commercials going from a 5d2 to a FS100 with a Nex5n and EM5 for stills to what I had hoped would be the all-in-one solution with the A99 - and my copy of the A99 just can't deliver. The video is noticeably soft in any shot where there's lots of detail. It looks worse than the 5n and EM5 in some instances. Shallow DOF shots look great and the DR is awesome, but when you need detail the A99 falls short.
I returned my camera for exchange hoping that it was a flaw in the first run, though that raises other concerns about QC if that's in fact the issue. I suspect it has something to do with the scaling/processing as the image still looked soft when the clean HDMI out was connected to my TV. Aliasing and moire is pretty bad too, the worst of any camera I've owned. Anyway, Sony is shipping me a new camera. If it shows the same softness my foray into Sony FF will be short lived as I really can't afford to wait another 6 months or more for it to get sorted with a firmware update. I'm not sitting on the camera beyond the 30-day return window if the new one has the same problem. ...Show more →
Not really disputing your findings, as i've yet to handle an a99, but it does seem really odd that the video image would be softer than expected AND the aliasing/moire would be worse than expected. Those two attributes should be inversely correlated.
alwang wrote:
Not really disputing your findings, as i've yet to handle an a99, but it does seem really odd that the video image would be softer than expected AND the aliasing/moire would be worse than expected. Those two attributes should be inversely correlated.
That probably depends on how they arrive at the final stream.
alwang wrote:
Not really disputing your findings, as i've yet to handle an a99, but it does seem really odd that the video image would be softer than expected AND the aliasing/moire would be worse than expected. Those two attributes should be inversely correlated.
Moiré/aliasing just refers to ugly downsampling artifacts in the video footage -- not so much undersampling of a high resolution image. I believe it has something to do with line skipping. In other words: the A99 doesn't use enough data to create a good quality 1080p image. The 5Dmk3 is supposed to be better in this respect but is still extremely soft and has much less detail than the Panasonic GH2 and GH3.
alwang wrote:
Not really disputing your findings, as i've yet to handle an a99, but it does seem really odd that the video image would be softer than expected AND the aliasing/moire would be worse than expected. Those two attributes should be inversely correlated.
Wide shots with lots of detail - landscape, cityscapes, and even a simple establishing shot in front of a house or something like that with deep DOF is where the A99 really falls short on rendering details. Check the EOSHD VG900 samples, my camera did the same thing. When the shot is sharp, the moire and aliasing are bad, far worse than the FS100 I previously shot and worse than my current tiny-cam lineup. The FS100 is native 1920x1080 so no surprise there as its not a 24mp sensor hacking the image down to ~2.1mp, but the real surprise is how bad it is compared to what I would think are inferior cameras video-wise. Hopefully that won't be the case with A99 v.2, but if it shows the same problems I'll post screen caps.
Makes you wonder about the A99/VG900 engineers, working 4 years on a camera which is specifically designed and marketed to have top-notch video features. Results are relatively bad. Hope your second A99 is better, although I have my doubts.
AhamB wrote:
Moiré/aliasing just refers to ugly downsampling artifacts in the video footage -- not so much undersampling of a high resolution image. I believe it has something to do with line skipping. In other words: the A99 doesn't use enough data to create a good quality 1080p image. The 5Dmk3 is supposed to be better in this respect but is still extremely soft and has much less detail than the Panasonic GH2 and GH3.
How does the D800(E) video compare? I have not shot any video yet with mine.
Since the D800 does the ever other line interpreting in LV mode, wonder if Sony sensor thing?
wayne seltzer wrote:
How does the D800(E) video compare? I have not shot any video yet with mine.
Since the D800 does the ever other line interpreting in LV mode, wonder if Sony sensor thing?
The problem seems to be isolated to the A99/VG900. This thread has a couple comparison shots of the A99 with the D800, the OP shot a nice video of Utah landscapes, but its pretty easy to pick out the A99 shots. Scroll down a bit for side by side shots of the leaves to see the softness.
So far it looks like the A99 falls far short of the other DSLR's on the video side, which is really disappointing as its heavily marketed toward videographers and I really, really like the camera and the 24-70z as an all around photo/video lens.
mortyb wrote:
Makes you wonder about the A99/VG900 engineers, working 4 years on a camera which is specifically designed and marketed to have top-notch video features. Results are relatively bad. Hope your second A99 is better, although I have my doubts.
I'm already trying to figure out plan B while waiting for #2 to arrive. I may just go back to a gently used 5d2, a Mosaic filter, a 24-70, a zoom in the 400mm range and invest in some Zeiss C/Y's or Leica R's with what's left after returning the A99 and selling the 24-70 and 70-400. I'd rather the A99 work out as its basically a FF version of my beloved EM5, APS-c mode gives my zoom more reach and primes more FL's and such - but I need the video to work for paid jobs. I don't know...
