{"id":1012,"date":"2008-01-10T01:18:59","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T01:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2008-01-10T01:18:59","modified_gmt":"2008-01-10T01:18:59","slug":"a200-and-the-300mm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/?p=1012","title":{"rendered":"A200 and the 300mm!"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nShots from the Sony Roadshow in Midvalley Megamall:<\/p>\n


\nPre-sale Sony A200 for RM1999 with kit lens and 2 GB memory stick.<\/p>\n


\nEXIF included.<\/p>\n


\n100% crop of the ISO1600 image. To be fair, I picked a darker area of the picture to show you how much noise will appear in the midtones. It gets much cleaner in brighter areas.<\/p>\n


\nEXIF included.<\/p>\n


\n100% crop of the ISO3200 image.<\/p>\n

It seems that the A200 lies somewhere in between the A100’s decent ISO400 and the A700’s decent ISO1600. I didn’t shoot at what would theoretically be the A200’s decent ISO800.<\/p>\n


\nThe camera feels nothing like how the studio shots portray it; the right thumb rests on a very, very nice candybar\/soap shape. Some people have complained of the A100\/A700’s “chins” stabbing the flesh of their thumb but I think this will not happen with the A200.<\/p>\n

The buttons were a wee bit small (being used to A100 Nintendo-gamepad-size buttons.) The D-pad was excellent, even better than I remember on the A100. The body feels more unified, unlike the A100 which had different textures front and back.<\/p>\n

I LOVED that the switches were much less rigid. On the A100 the AF\/MF switch was a pain to flip. On the A200 it feels like a spring is helping you.<\/p>\n

Quick Navi is not implemented as is on the A700, sadly – instead you press the Fn button and you see a menu of 6 functions. I prefer this to turning a rigid dial on the A100 as it’s truly all in your right thumb now!<\/p>\n

When I tried the A200 with Sony 16-105mm F3.5-5.6 DT, I saw the focus slide smoothly in, and recognized that giddy feeling from when I first tried the A700. Yes, they got the fast motor!<\/p>\n


\nIt can track with 3 FPS with the 16-105mm. Comparing it with the A700 in 3 FPS Drive Lo mode it felt the same!<\/p>\n

Of course, going back to a 2.7″ 320×240 screen is a bummer. You do feel it. They retain the speedy scrolling through images. Go Sony! (Show this feature off to Canon users, whose 40Ds will wear out fingers just rolling dials.)<\/p>\n


\nMore EXIF!<\/p>\n


\nTo be honest, I am not fully convinced on SSM, USM or SWM. They all feel the same – smooth, but not always working as easily as you’d expect on super tele lenses. It felt like when I touched a Canon EF 600mm F4L IS USM and wasn’t impressed<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\nThe one shot that got away due to a safe ISO800 instead of ISO1600 on their demo A700 unit. If only I’d set it to ISO1600, you wouldn’t see motion blur as she flutters her eyes.<\/p>\n


\nBokeh is of course superb and liquid. I dare say it has liquid bokeh priority, sharpness second, ala Minolta.<\/p>\n


\nSorry guys, there is no Depth Of Field Preview button.<\/p>\n

Funny thing is, the 3 main things that the Sony A100 had over all other brands, which I was proud to point out and used extensively, are missing in the A200.<\/p>\n

– Direct Manual Focus
\n– AEL button becomes Spot Metering Toggle
\n– DOF button (which doubles as AE and AF lock, did you guess?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shots from the Sony Roadshow in Midvalley Megamall: Pre-sale Sony A200 for RM1999 with kit lens and 2 GB memory stick. EXIF included. 100% crop of the ISO1600 image. To be fair, I picked a darker area of the picture to show you how much noise will appear in the midtones. It gets much cleaner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}