I am grateful for all the comments. Cool. As to the original question, I think the overwhelming consensus is that A850 is (much) superior in color rendering. This is my own conclusion as well.
However, I am somewhat surprised by the almost total absence of support for the D700 here. Could this be due to the A900/A850's overwhelming superiority, or that people here in this part of the forum (Canon users by way of sufferance?) just don't use the D700 that much?
A lot of us prefer full frame cameras and at least some of us only moved to Sonolta (Someone please tell me this word has been used before! If not, I kind of like the sound of it) after they released the a900/a850.
Chris48 wrote:
I am grateful for all the comments. Cool. As to the original question, I think the overwhelming consensus is that A850 is (much) superior in color rendering. This is my own conclusion as well.
However, I am somewhat surprised by the almost total absence of support for the D700 here. Could this be due to the A900/A850's overwhelming superiority, or that people here in this part of the forum (Canon users by way of sufferance?) just don't use the D700 that much?
This is an alt forum and Nikon cameras are not as readily adaptable to non-F mount lenses. So, the majority of posters here do not primarily shoot Nikon. Post your inquiry on the Nikon forum and you will probably get a different answer, or try the Canon forum. Canon and Nikon dominate Sony, but, here the playing field is a little more even. Now I'll take my hits.
The D700 is a wonderful camera with great lowlight performance and AF. While it is certainly usable for low ISO landscapes with great results, it isn't geared towards this kind of shooting like the A900 is. It's like comparing a Miata and a Jeep. I know many shooters who own both cameras.
Chris48 wrote:
I am grateful for all the comments. Cool. As to the original question, I think the overwhelming consensus is that A850 is (much) superior in color rendering. This is my own conclusion as well.
"Much" superior would be significantly overstating the situation. I would say that the people who have posted to this thread have a subjective preference for the way the Sony's colors. It's not clear to me that one is objectively better than the other (and the Sony devotees with dispute this), just different. And it is not totally clear that the differences can not be totally or at least partially compensated for in raw processing calibration. A lot of conjecture based on some technological differences, but nothing that demonstrates (IMHO) the objective superiority of one over the other in practice. A lot remains to be seen. You mostly have opinions of satisfied Sony a900 users seeking reasons for their satisfaction (there is nothing wrong with that, and in fact, its objective pursuit should be encouraged).
Chris48 wrote:
However, I am somewhat surprised by the almost total absence of support for the D700 here. Could this be due to the A900/A850's overwhelming superiority, or that people here in this part of the forum (Canon users by way of sufferance?) just don't use the D700 that much?
I think basically, you have all the a900 users doing most of the responding here. The D700 is very highly regarded. Personally, I'm waiting for the 24mp chip version of the D700. On balance I think that set up would be the best overall choice considering all aspects of performance. (although I'd be interested in seeing a revised a900). The original question basically compares a 24mp camera (with excellent low ISO performance) with a 12 mp camera (with excellent high ISO performance) so it's hard to make a reasonable comparison. Not many Canon users care about the comparison and most Nikon users are less frequent visitors.
So, on balance, I would not draw strong conclusions to what you read here. Rather I would say that, among a900 users, a subjective preference for Sony's taste in color. Statistically speaking, you don't have an unbiased sample in this thread. Of course, if you prefer the Sony color rendering, not much else is important, is it?
Lotusm50 wrote:
You mostly have opinions of satisfied Sony a900 users seeking reasons for their satisfaction (there is nothing wrong with that, and in fact, its objective pursuit should be encouraged).
Ha ha. There is also the possibility that the equation goes the other way, no? That is, there are specific reasons that users of the a900 are satisfied.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Ha ha. There is also the possibility that the equation goes the other way, no? That is, there are specific reasons that users of the a900 are satisfied.
I didn't mean to exclude that possibility, but indeed, to include it. There very well could be a reason why it might be satisfied, and I hope we will be able to figure out what that might be. There certainly are reasons why there are differences, the reasons why these differences might be preferred or more satisfying are different and perhaps less straight-forward.
I think the reason most people here are saying A900/A850 and not the D700 is because the OP said he is looking for a landscape camera with great colors, not because they are shooting with a Sony. He specifically said he doesn't care about high ISO (although he also said he doesn't care about high MP). I think the reason they said Sony is because it performs so well as a landscape camera and because colors are one thing that stands out in the A900. Although OP said he won't print bigger than 20X24, A900 (and 5d2) would still have more detail. I can't really think why one would want to pick the D700 for landscape over the Sony or Canon, not to say that it will do a poor job... but it's just not the first camera to pick based on IQ for that purpose IMO. Although if colors are your main priority, then D700 might be better than 5d2 ( I don't know).
Lotusm50 wrote:
I didn't mean to exclude that possibility, but indeed, to include it. There very well could be a reason why it might be satisfied, and I hope we will be able to figure out what that might be. There certainly are reasons why there are differences, the reasons why these differences might be preferred or more satisfying are different and perhaps less straight-forward.
For me, it definitely has to do with the film-like shoulder response in the highlights. Being able to keep a little more detail and color tint in those highlights is key to the look of a900 files. To get close with the 5D required quite a bit of underexposure and subsequent tweaking (usually fill light + brightness and perhaps some recovery) in Lightroom. I do find the color hues more subtle with the a900.
Lotusm50 wrote:
I didn't mean to exclude that possibility, but indeed, to include it. There very well could be a reason why it might be satisfied, and I hope we will be able to figure out what that might be. There certainly are reasons why there are differences, the reasons why these differences might be preferred or more satisfying are different and perhaps less straight-forward.
Lotusm50, I think many here are mixing up color rendition with color separation. I was talking to Iliah about this a while back, and he was explaining that better color separation results in more detail/less "mushiness" in overlaping channels. He frequently uses the A900 rather than the D3x (and 5Dii,) because foliage is more detailed (and I believed he's even had his D3x AA filter removed, if I'm not mistaken.) Now, he is in a good position, because he owns a copy or two of all of these cameras, so he gets to pick and choose, and he certainly prefers the D3x to the A900 as far as shadow details are concerned, so it really depends on the scene one is shooting.
Canon is certainly leading the way to better high ISO with the more transmissive CFAs that they've been openly advertising for the last year or so, and the fact that the red channel is more of a yellow for the 50D, 5dii, 500D, 1D IV etc, is a pretty obvious indicator of that. What we're seeing here is not so much an interpretation of color as it is a trade off, and that shouldn't go unnoticed. Granted, nuances in high ISO noise are much more obvious in tests than at low ISO, so that may be the right way to go.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Ha ha. There is also the possibility that the equation goes the other way, no? That is, there are specific reasons that users of the a900 are satisfied.
Or it could be dissatisfied canon users looking elsewhere. I was aware of the sony's color separation and film like rendition well before I bought the a900.
douglasf13 wrote:
Lotusm50, I think many here are mixing up color rendition with color separation. I think the wikipedia excerpt taken from a kodak document says clearly that CFA density and demosaicing algorithms are jointly responsible for color rendition. Good color separation requires dense cfa and directly affects color rendition.
douglasf13 wrote:
Good point, Edward. As an aside, did you see that Marc sold his D3x and the rest of his Nikon gear for the A900? I wasn't expecting that. link
Has anyone compared the colours/rendering of the a850 to the a900. I know they are said to be identical but not sure if anyone has actually verified if this is the case. Still a bit concern about sony lens offering (and lack of announced roadmap) but to be honest the samples I see do look quite nice.
Also which standard lens to most folks use on the sony? (sigma 50? zeiss zoom? sony macro 50 ?)
