The Man Who Said No to the A-700

The Man Who Said No to the A700

Last month (April 2008) a significant event occurred in the short history of Sony digital SLRs. Best Buy, a national US electronics retailer and major Sony dealer, held a closeout sale on the current high-end Alpha DSLR-A700. The camera was introduced just six months ago and is still selling through other US sources at prices ranging from $1200 to $1400; and typical European prices are considerably higher. But during the last weeks of the month, almost every store in the Best Buy chain marked the camera down to $840. To top it off, most locations also honored an additional 10% off coupon good through the end of the month, bringing the pre-tax purchase price for many buyers to an astonishing $756. There was apparently no formal announcement, but news of the sale spread quickly through the Minolta/Sony message forums. Nobody seems to know what motivated this action, but it is speculated that the A700 may be too expensive for typical Best Buy customers and has thus been languishing on the shelves. (And since most or all of them appear to have shipped with version 1 firmware, this sounds correct.) Be that as it may, the cameras have now flown off those shelves en masse.

I bought one of them. Even though I had no intention of buying a new camera for another two years or so, I just couldn't resist such an amazing opportunity. However... three days later my A700 was on its way to a new owner. I now have a little extra money in my pocket (while offering the buyer a very attractive discount as well) instead of a new camera.

Why?

The A700 easily beats my Konica Minolta 5D in almost every specification and performance measure, and it clearly represents a major upgrade to all previous KM/Sony DSLRs, including the highly revered 7D. So why didn't I gleefully keep it? Simply stated, I don't care a lot about most of the improvements the A700 offers because they don't matter for the things I like to do. I really don't have a need for more pixels, better autofocusing, higher frame rate, and so on. And there are some things about the camera that I strongly disliked. After all is said and done, I think I'd rather stick with the 5D for now, and I'll explain why. (Oh, by the way... although I received the camera with version 1 firmware, I upgraded it to version 3 before doing any testing.)

Things I Liked (More or Less)

There are definitely things about the A700 that impressed me favorably; and other things that are okay but not really important for what I do...

Shutter: I very much like the sound of the shutter mechanism - smooth, quiet, and decisive. This is probably my favorite thing about the camera, and I wish the 5D sounded like that.

Autofocusing: As is well documented by other users, the A700 has much faster and more accurate autofocusing than any previous KM/Sony DSLR. But I'm rarely in a hurry when I shoot, so nice though it is, even this benefit is of somewhat limited value to me.

Resolution: Although the A700's 12mp sensor certainly captures more detail than my 5D can, the difference in the final image is not as dramatic as one might expect. It turns out that in order to get the full benefit of the higher resolution sensor it may also be necessary to replace my lenses with much more expensive premium lenses - something I'm not willing to consider right now. I never make huge prints, so I really don't need microdetail in my photographs. And the larger file size makes double demands on my storage and computer processing capacity, nudging me toward a computer upgrade path that I'd rather not take.

Whiz-bang tech stuff: These are things like the wireless remote control, computer software control, and HDMI interface. They are cool features, but I'll never really use them.

Various other advancements: The camera has many capabilities that go a step beyond what I have now, but that I've never missed or needed... top shutter speed of 1/8000s vs. 1/4000s; continuous shooting at 5fps vs. 3fps; flash sync at 1/250s vs 1/160s; ISO settings up to 6400 vs. 3200; built-in flash sync connector; and faster overall response with more customization capability. I know other people are enthusiastic about many of these features, but frankly they've never been on my wish list. There are probably more that I've forgotten to mention, but you get the idea.

Things I Didn't Like

More troubling, the camera also has a few characteristics that I dislike...

Handling: The A700 is large and chunky. Many people like that in a camera, but not me - it feels too big and too square. I also found it fumbly to handle. The very first shot I fired was completely accidental, as were several of the later ones. I kept pressing the shutter button inadvertently while trying to do other things. The 5D is more comfortable for me in size, shape and handling.

LCD: This is another thing that's too big. Although I appreciated its high resolution display, I was unable to handle the camera more than a minute without smearing the huge LCD surface with fingerprints and nose grease. (Aside from its size, the LCD also has an anti-reflective coating not found on the 5D. I've had the same type of coating on eyeglasses before, and it's literally a grease magnet.) Certainly the quality of the image during playback is impressive, but otherwise it's an annoyance to have so much of the back devoted to the display rather than my fingers. An LCD really only needs to be capable of showing me whether I captured a shot well, and the A700 is over the top here. Even Sony may have found it challenging to fill that big screen with data, because some of the menus appear to have their information spread over too much area. Another puzzlement was the LCD's inaccurate color rendition. The image shown there does not very closely match the image captured, and that was never an issue with the 5D. Finally, I didn't care much for the heavy use of 'Sony Orange' in the menus. That may sound facetious but a user spends a lot of time looking at those menus, so they need to be attractively designed.

Image color and quality: I'm a JPG shooter, and the A700 just doesn't seem to do JPGs very well. The 5D's colors are more lively and pleasing and its white balance presets are excellent, especially outdoors. In comparison, the A700's JPGs didn't look right somehow, and its white balance presets were definitely off. The JPG algorithms also seem to have trouble maintaining good image detail. Other people - analytical users who like the A700 aside from its JPG capabilities - have also commented on these things in the message forums, so apparently it's not just me. The consensus is that RAW shooting is necessary to get the expected image quality from the camera, and I regard that as a drawback.

DRO: I think this was the biggest disappointment for me. The A700's Dynamic Range Optimization is something I hoped could be really useful for my purposes. However, I didn't see it as all that great in practice. Test images in which DRO improved the dynamic range also displayed excessive noise. In the end, they weren't necessarily any better than my non-DRO shots adjusted after the fact with software tools. I'll pass.

No Hard Feelings

So, there's the story. Although the A700 is better, it doesn't mean that the 5D isn't good enough. Please understand that it's not my intention to knock the A700. It's a fine camera with a multitude of enthusiastic supporters who simply have different needs and expectations than I do. It's a worthy competitor in a contentious marketplace, and I'm glad it's out there. I just thought some readers might find it interesting to know that at least one person still prefers to use the 5D.

Did I perhaps judge the A700 too hastily? That's very possible, since I only had it for a few days; and I'm known to be a stubborn old coot sometimes. Maybe somewhere down the line, when anybody can easily pick up an A700 for $800 or less, I'll be willing to give it another go.