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Sony Alpha A900

First Impressions Review

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September 24, 2008 By Tim Barribeau
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Model Design / Appearance
The Sony Alpha 900 is not a thing of grace, subtlety or style. It's big, resplendent, and if you drop it on your foot, you may break a toe. That said, it's powerful, fast, and you wont be spending $3000 on this camera because you want something sleek and sexy.

Size and Handling
The Alpha 900 is large. And heavy. Not unusably so, but it is a big, and you should definitely try and keep a good grip on it at all times. It weighs in at 1 lb. 14 oz. (850 g) without battery, memory card or lens, and measures 6.13 x .63 x 3.25 inches (156.3 x 116.9 x 81.9mm). This isn't a camera you just throw in a bag for a day on the beach, but rather would most likely be used on dedicated photography missions. One advantage to having a camera of such a size and complexity is that almost every function has a button to call its own, minimizing the need to browse through menus.


Holding the Alpha 900 requires a firm grip

Menu

The menu system is large and advanced, but is at least laid out extremely logically. There are four tabs: Recording, Custom, Playback and Setup. Each of these has multiple pages which can either be scrolled through item by item or page by page. This allows you to access the setting you need as quickly as humanly possible. The menus are all clearly labeled in bright type against a dark background. In an excellent design decision, Sony has positioned many of the most commonly used settings at the very top of their respective menus.  Changing image size and quality, for instance, takes only a couple of button presses, rather than going through pages and pages of settings.

 


Ease of Use
The Alpha 900 strikes us as both easy to use, or not, depending entirely on your level of familiarity and comfort with slightly more advanced photography. If you know what you're doing, then all the options are laid out clearly, the buttons are obvious, and the settings easy to control. If you've only used entry level SLRs, the huge variety of controls will be overwhelming. 

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Sony Alpha A900
First Impressions Review
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Previous: Page 2

Components

Previous: Page 4

Modes