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 p.1 #19 · Image Quality - A850 or D700 | |
The A900/A850, D700 and 5D Mark II together prove that digital SLRs are still in their infancy. These cameras each have serious drawbacks in addition to their remarkable capabilities.
The A900 has worse high-ISO performance than the best crop-sensor cameras, lacks Live View, inherited the proprietary Minolta flash shoe, can't record to both memory cards simultaneously, and doesn't have much in the way of in-production lens selection (though there are a few great ones).
On the plus side, it has superior overall craftsmanship, a far better viewfinder than the others, it surely looks prettier on the shelf, and more importantly: it has the best outright image quality (at low ISO). It offers superb resolution and colour, and it probably does have the largest usable dynamic range of the trio at base ISO, though the D700 would push it very close (and significantly lower noise in the mid-tones). Whether Sony will expand and support the Alpha system at the high end for another two, five, ten years is anyone's guess.
The D700 is a far more accomplished camera than the others in many ways. Its autofocus is in a different league, it can shoot at 8 fps, it has vastly shorter mirror black-out and shutter-lag times than the other two, it's designed with an attention to detail that Canon hasn't achieved in decades and that Sony won't achieve for years, and it's the best low-light camera on the market except for the new D3S.
But these advantages are tied to a sensor and antialiasing filter that result in vaguely soft 12-megapixel images: unacceptable to many in late 2009, if only because other cameras do so much better. Read noise is too high too, resulting in lack-lustre low-ISO dynamic range compared to the high-ISO performance. The little built-in flash compromises the top-half, and worse, it's just ridiculous. The viewfinder is the worst of the lot, with 95% coverage and no official options for a decent focusing screen. The camera is limited to 5 fps without the grip, for no obvious reason other than selling overpriced grips. The D700 is also the most over-complicated way in history to select an f-stop and shutter speed (the manual has 450 pages and would need more).
The 5D Mark II has the shapeless, androgynous design—if it can be called design—of all the big EOS cameras (its slouched shoulders one of many sins Luigi Colani has committed against the world). Inside are more features than you can shake a stick at, most of them half-baked. It shoots bad video, has a crap shutter, uses yesteryear's autofocus, and offers a selection of ISO speeds from 100 to far-too-high, none of them class-leading but all of them tolerable enough.
This camera wins praise for detail retention, but only by using a weak antialiasing filter that encourages false colour at the drop of a hat. The colour filter array isn't very colourful. The build and construction are fussy and obviously of a lower standard than the D700 or A900; but no-one cares about that these days. There are more EOS lenses than anyone could ever want, most of them also pretty crap. Some of them though, are better than any comparable lenses by anyone, bar none. But its biggest flaw is inexcusable: it suffers from worse shadow banding than any camera in recent memory. Any old DSLR has better usable dynamic range at base ISO.
If the A900 is a low-ISO tripod expert and the D700 an action camera, the 5D Mark II is a Jack of all trades and master of none. Its perfect blend of mediocrity appeals to me not at all (in case you didn't notice  ).
To add insult to injury, all three of these cameras are heavier and much larger than they should be. Even the Sony, which is the best built of the three, should be better built for the price. And the price is very high for cameras with such flaws.
As someone above said, pick your poison, because none of these cameras are anywhere near perfect. I suppose that's the result of just three Japanese companies "competing" against each other.
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However, I agree that I'd go for the a900 over the a850, if improved low ISO were important (and I was changing systems). As to color, using a Macbeth chart or WhiBal when shooting only takes a few secs.