Reviewer of A700; is He Qualified?

[OldFlower]

Read the article below, and tell me whether this guy knows his onions in terms of performance comparison of a digital camera BODY.

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Fri, May 02, 2008
The Straits Times, Digital Life

Sony A700 DSLR camera

Sony Alpha 700 (A700)
» $2,199
MY FIRST experience with a Sony DSLR was enjoyable. I welcomed the uncluttered organisation of buttons and dials. The extra large fonts on the menus are much easier to read on screen compared to the others.


It also has good handling and design.


Call me old fashioned, but I really like the twist dial button that controls the camera's exposure modes and preset scene selections.


Looking with wide-angle lens, you'll note that Sony keeps up with current technology, equipping the A700 with a HDMI terminal. This allows you to connect the A700 camera directly to a HDTV and share your pictures immediately.


It has in-body image stabiliser and a dual card slot. Other than the standard CompactFlash card, the A700 accepts the MemoryStick.


Like the competition, the A700 also has features like Creative Style and noise reduction.


One grievance: I miss the Live View function and the ability to delete images instantly at the preview mode. I also didn't like the proprietary flash shoe that accepts only Sony-compatible flash units.


Picture quality is generally good but to nit-pick, I found images shot on this camera lacking in finer details. The rock wall in my test shots, for example, looked flat and fairly smooth compared to the test shots from other cameras in this round up.

 

[Kit]

Every Tom, Dick and Harry can do (and will) reviews from time to time. You just have to pick up what's useful and move on.

 

[nightwolf75]

digital life. enuf said.

search on CS, and you will find all the gaffes that DL printed over the last few years.

 

[Yatlapball]

I uh... Wun slam the press.. but as readers, be more discerning lah! :bsmilie: It's easy to spot a biased and/or lousy review from a mile away...

 

[OldFlower]

I would have been more forgiving if he had been reviewing a lens, and not a DLSR body; see last paragraph.

I think he forgot he's reviewing a body.

 

[Yatlapball]

Why? He would not be wrong if he was commenting on the sensor's resolving capabilities?

I am uh.. of course assuming here that "other cameras in this round up" have been tested using the same lens.

 

[blive]

He probably reviewing P&S or prosumer mah... Its not much of a review though, just on his experience in handling the camera body though. I would just put it down to personal experience.

 

[synapseman]

Basically, I don't really trust any local reviews, however, what makes a reviewer "qualified"?

And I don't think there's anything wrong with his statement about images lacking finer details when using the camera. Sensor resolution, noise, noise-reduction algorithms all affect how much detail is presented in an image.

 

[varf]

remember who the target audience is.