Sony Alpha A900

	Design & Handling Summary
• Camera feels bulky and slightly off-balance when shooting • Grip well textured but not perfectly shaped • Positioning of four key control buttons behind shutter makes reaching them difficult while shooting • Dual control dials work efficiently • "Multi-selector" joystick, which feels clumsy, is used frequently
	Controls	Page 11 of 18	Speed & Timing

Handling (5.00)

The Sony A900 is a bulky piece of gear, good for building up the forearms but not the kind of camera you're likely to casually carry along just in case a photo opportunity happens to pop up. The body alone weighs nearly two pounds (30 oz., or 850g) and measures 6.25 x 3.25 x 4.63 inches (156.3 x 81.9 x 116.9mm). We did most of our shooting with the relatively modest-sized 25-105mm zoom, which adds another 14 oz. (395g) to the party. We also tried out one of Sony's premium lenses, the 16-35mm Carl Zeiss wide-angle zoom, a lovely $1800 construction for shooting close-ups that happens to weigh as much as the camera body itself.

Of course, you expect full-frame cameras in this class to be hefty (the Sony body outweighs the Canon 5D Mark II by just over an ounce. but is actually lighter than the Nikon D700). The real question is, how well does the camera handle when you're shooting? And the answer here is, OK, but not great.

On the plus side, the LCD information displays rotate automatically from horizontal to vertical when you pivot the camera (vertical in either direction, it should be noted). And while this behavior can be defeated with a menu setting, we found it enormously helpful. The camera grip is nicely cushioned and textured, and there's a useful thumb rest at the top back to help balance the load, but the positioning isn't quite right. Either we kept the tip of our thumb on the rest, which keeps you from wrapping your fingers firmly around the front grip, or the thumb rest balanced against the thumb joint, which means the tip of your thumb cruises up against the metering and multi-selector controls. The balance isn't ideal either: holding your index finger over the shutter, located quite near the righthand edge of the camera, again pushes the meaty part of your hand away from the grip. And if you need to reach the top buttons for exposure compensation, drive mode, white balance and ISO setting, you're going to have to reposition the camera entirely to gain access,

Holding the camera comfortably can be a problem: note the odd thumb position on the right.

Controls (9.50)

The two control dials, one mounted nearly vertically up in front of the shutter, one mounted horizontally just above the thumb rest, work nicely together. There is some confusion about which control handles what settting in some instances. Sometimes either one will do; when setting exposure compensation, for example, or browsing pictures in playback mode. When navigating through the menus, though, the rear control dial takes you from tab to tab, while the front dial moves the cursor vertically through the list of settings. Working with the camera on a regular basis, though, we got used to these idiosyncracies.

The controller that continued to bother us, though, was the multi-selector, which we're inclined to call a joystick. For changing settings and moving through the menu system, you can use the stick if you like or ignore it and use the wheel controls, which we much preferred. But you can't get away from it entirely, because pressing it in toward the camera body is the equivalent of an OK button, which we found uncomfortable to maneuver (especially when we were in a hurry) and imprecise.

Back Controls
	Off-On Power switch
	Menu Launches on-screen menus; back out of menus and submenus while navigating selections
	Display While shooting, toggles the rear LCD display between off, detailed display and enlarged display. During playback, shifts between three information display modes.
	Delete Brings up image erase mode during playback.
	Playback Toggles between shooting and playback modes
	AEL Autoexposure lock, customizable to automatically use spot metering. When shooting with flash, uses slow sync mode when held. During playback, toggles thumbnail image display. Metering mode lever surrounds the button.
	Autofocus/Manual Focus Temporarily switches to manual focus when shooting in autofocus mode, or vice versa, when the button is held down.
	Rear Control Dial Used to adjust values and quickly navigate the menu system by jumping from tab to tab..
	Multi-selector Joystick control used in menu system; moves cursor from tab to tab (horizontal movement) or up and down lists (vertical movement), highlights items in on-screen lists, confirms selections by pushing in.
	Custom By default, brings up the Creative Styles menu during shooting. Can also be set to 15 other functions via the recording menu. During playback, switches to histogram view.
	Function Toggles the LCD information display to Quick Navi mode, allowing direct settings changes.
	SteadyShot Turns SteadyShot image stabilization on and off

We were less than thrilled with the positioning of the exposure compensation, drive mode, white balance and ISO buttons on top of the camera. There's really no convenient or comfortable way to press them: they require you to remove your finger from the shutter button, and move your hand and/or the camera substantially to push a button.

Top Controls
	Mode dial Selects shooting mode from Auto, Program, Aperture-priority, Shutter-priority and Manual. The 1, 2 and 3 posiitons access user-defined settings combinations.
	Shutter Comfortably positioned, with a clear distinction between half-pressed and fully-pressed state.
	Exposure button Accesses exposure compensation, which can then be set comfortably using either control wheel or uncomfortably using the joystick.
	Drive button Access the drive mode menu. The menu is navigated using the front control dial or pressing the joystick vertically, settings entered using the rear control dial or pressing the joystick horizontally.
	Display panel illumination Briefly backlights the small monochrome LCD
	White Balance button Accesses the white balance menu, which is navigated using the front control dial or by pressing the joystick vertically. White balance settings can be fine-tuned using the rear control dial.
	ISO button Accesses the ISO selection menu, Turning either control wheel or pushing the joystick vertically controls selection cursor position.

Menu (7.00)

There are basically two parts to the Sony A900 menu system: the traditional tabbed on-screen display you bring up by pressing the Menu button, and the Quick Navi screen, which makes all the settings displayed on the full-screen LCD information display changeable by pointing, clicking and scrolling.

The back information display toggles between two levels of detail by pressing the DISP button (it can also be turned off entirely in the same way). At either detail setting, pressing the Fn button makes this screen interactive. An orange highlight shows which setting is active — the highlight can be moved using the joystick. As for changing the highlighted setting, you can scroll through the available choices sequentially by rotating either control dial, or press the joystick in and opening up a menu screen of choices.

One smart feature in the on-screen menu system is the fact that all settings available on a page are immediately visible, without having to scroll down to discover them. Each menu section — Recording, Custom, Playback and Setup — consists of multiple pages. Turning the rear control dial or pushing the joystick horizontally moves directly from page to page. Turning the front control dial or pushing the joystick vertically moves up and down the menu pages, scrolling to the next page in order if you continue beyond the bottom of the current page.

Menus
	Overview The orange-on-black menu system is relatively unattractive (unless you're a big Halloween fan), but at least you can see all the items available in an individual page without scrolling down below the bottom off the list.
	Recording Menu Most of the choices in the Record menu are setup selections rather than settings you're likely to change frequently while shooting, such as white balance or exposure compensation settings, which are accessible separately via dedicated buttons and the Quick Navi system.
	Custom Menu Most of the settings in this section are used to map non-default functions to buttons and dials. You can set either control dial to access exposure compensation without first pressing the exposure compensation button, a potentially useful, potentially dangerous choice, and determine whether the preview button below the lens will acces a traditional depth-of-field preview function or Sony's Intelligent Preview system.
	Playback Menu Given the dearth of in-camera editing capabilities, there's not much to do in this brief menu beyond mass image deletion, memory card formatting, DPOF file creation, and a rudimentary slideshow utility.
	Setup Menu Setup allows you to specify input/output and file storage settings, change the LCD brightness, turn system noises on and off, and set date, time and display language.

Manual & Learning (5.25)

The camera instruction manual is quite small, which is handy if you want to carry it in your pocket, but does lead to squint-inducing type sizes. The material is well organized, written clearly and adequately illustrated. There are lots of cross-references to other relevant sections as you work your way through the manual, which makes up for an index that could be more complete.

Sony A900 Manual

Software documentation is handled entirely through the individual applications' help system. We would have preferred some kind of printed (or even disk-based) quick-start guide, but the writing and presentation are clear enough to making the learning process smooth, especially if you have enough screen space to keep both the program and the on-screen instructions visible simultaneously.