I'm not planning for any scheduled updates, but do check back here from time to time for the latest price on the Alpha A900, body only.

Click on the links to access the latest in-stock and availability information.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Sony A900, body only: $2,679.00 (no change in price since the last update).

Battery options and accessories for the A900
Before checking out your A900 purchase, decide whether or not you need a second battery and the vertical grip:

1. Sony NPFM500H Alpha Rechargeable Battery Pack: $46.95
2. Sony Alpha VG-C90AM Vertical Grip for DSLR-A900 (holds two NPFM500H batteries): $269.88

The Sony A900 is designed to work best with UDMA CF (Compact Flash) cards, and according to Rob Galbraith's CF Performance Database, the Sony A900 has the fastest write speeds (rated at 35.5MB/s when shooting in RAW mode) of all DSLR cameras (at the time of writing) when mated with a Sandisk Extreme Ducati CF card.

At the time of writing, the four fastest CF cards are SanDisk Extreme Ducati 4GB, SanDisk Extreme IV 2GB, SanDisk Extreme Ducati 8GB and SanDisk Extreme IV 45MB/s Edition 16GB.

Newer, faster and higher-capacity UDMA CF cards are now available. Some examples are Lexar Professional Series UDMA 16 GB 300x, SanDisk 60MB/s Extreme and 90 MB/s Extreme Pro series cards.

Good luck shopping for your A900!

Price History Archive / Trend

Friday, May 14, 2010
Sony A900, body only: $2,679.00

Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Sony A900, body only: $2,699.00

Monday, January 11, 2010
Sony A900, body only: $2,699.00

Monday, November 02, 2009
Sony A900, body only: $2,699.00

Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sony A900, body only: $2,999.95

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Sony A900, body only: $2,999.95

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3. Download the Sony A900 Manual

This post is a compilation of Sony A900 professional reviews, user opinions and experiences, ratings, conclusions, tests and feedback.

Full attribution is given by linking to the source and where available, the author's homepage or photo gallery.

Sony Alpha 900 DSLR Digital Camera Review at Buy-n-Shoot.com

The A900 earns a Platinum award in this review, and Katrina Putker, the reviewer, writes:

While it is often easier to talk about the bad than good, overall the Sony A900 is undoubtedly a solid performer in the DSLR arena: it’s resolution is superb, it performs quickly and efficiently across the board (thanks in part to its dual BIONZ image processors), and at lower ISO speeds is capable of producing high quality images that are detailed, sharp and fairly accurately coloured.

Iliah Borg on the A900 vs Nikon D3X

Iliah Borg of libraw.org mentions briefly that he prefers the spectral properties of the sensor in the A900 over that of the Nikon D3X by a good margin, even though they share the same, basic sensor.

User opinion by Vern Dewit

Vern Dewit is a former Canon 5D owner and weighs in on this thread which asked for opinions on which full-frame camera to get: the Sony A900, Nikon D700 or Canon 5D Mark II.

In his reply, Vern says that the A900 is currently the best camera for landscapes, giving huge amounts of dynamic range and incredible shadow detail. He also shared a stunning photo of Mount Carthew and Buchannon Ridge in Waterton National Park, Canada in the post.

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Vern further recommended the use of a Sigma 24mm f/1.8 (Sony mount) or Sony 50mm f/1.4 as a smallish lens that will cover landscape and indoor photography.

Hasselblad H3, Mamiya AFDIII, Sony Alpha 900 – A Comparative Test

This test was conducted by seasoned MF (medium format) professionals, who gave high marks to the Alpha A900 for excellent all-round image quality. I like the verbose summary by Tomasz Maciejewski, where he says:

Whenever the lights in the image burn out, Sony A900 clearly shows the details. Similar holds true in the shades. This is very important to the final processing of the reproduction. When one compares the pictures blown up to the same dimensions, the printout from Sony A900 is the most impressive. It has the best focus, it gives the greatest amount of “information” and is the clearest. Colors are natural without visible dominant colors.

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1. Sony A900 Samples
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Bear in mind that the majority of these photos are resized, and may have gone through postprocessing, retouching or other edits. I just thought that it would be interesting to see, at a glance, what Sony A900 owners and users are shooting with their camera. Full-sized images, where available, will help with judging the image quality

Full attribution is given by linking to the source and where available, the author's homepage or photo gallery.

CZ 24-70mm fashion and portraiture samples from a D3 owner

Jeffrey Anderson, a Nikon D3 owner, shared some fashion and portraits taken with his new A900.

Jeffrey also provided a full-sized portrait JPEG image. All that were done to these images in post-processing was WB (white balance) and exposure adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR).

He bought the new A900 mainly because he wanted higher resolution to work with, but the Nikon D3X proved to be too expensive for his needs. To a question on how he intends to use both the D3 and A900, Jeffrey said:

I am going to keep my D3 for higher ISO stuff and use the Sony for landscape, low ISO and studio work, and things that I want to print BIG. I don't intend on using the A900 over 400 iso.

He mated the Sony 24 -70mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T zoom lens to the A900 for these images, and he was mightily impressed with the output.

The photos are a bit on the bright side, but James M Hughes saw no unrecoverable blown highlights, and provided a corrected version of the samples.

Sony 24-70mm and 70-300mm cropped samples

Thanks to Jono Slack who shared a couple of re-sized Sony A900 photos and 100% crops.

Lenses used were the Sony CZ 24-70mm f/2.8 and Sony SAL70300G 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 SSM ED G-Series Compact Super Telephoto zoom lens.

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1. Sony A900 Reviews
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3. Download the Sony A900 Manual

The owner's operation guide is available for four regions, United States, Canada, Brazil and Latin American. Right-click this link to download the US version directly to your hard drive.

If the above link doesn't work, or if you want another version of the manual, go to Sony's eSupport Center for DSLR cameras, and manually make the necessary selections to download the DSLR-A900 manual.

Unlike Nikon product manuals, Sony doesn't restrict the printing of this document to only those with a serial number.

The printable document weighs in at 3.5 MB (megabytes).

The guide discusses the features of the A900 and how to use the camera, for instance, how to use the supplied IR (infrared) wireless remote commader, the Sony Alpha RMT-DSLR1, on page 30 (the screen capture below is of page 31):

For those who prefer an RF (radio frequency) wireless shutter release remote, consider the Phottix Cleon S6 or Mega Cleon S6 (same functions, but features a more powerful transmitter). Read my reviews of the Nikon and Canon versions of the Cleon to get an idea on how the remote operates.

The receiver unit of the Cleon plugs into the remote terminal on the left side of the A900, as shown on page 40 of the manual:

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