Why I chose Sony

From doing photos at the clubs to talking to random people I bump into when I'm out taking photos, I encounter this question quite a lot. Why did I choose Sony over Canon and Nikon? And there were quite a few reasons actually. I probably wouldn't have put much effort into looking at Sony DSLRs if it weren't for Marione. When we first began researching which DSLRs to get we looked at quite a few brands, from Canon and Nikon to Pentax and Olympus. I remember Marione telling me she saw an ad on tv about the Sony a350 and we began researching about it. I did quite a lot of research on the net about Sony and I began to really like what it offered.

One of the main reasons why I liked Sony was because of the in-body stabilization, otherwise known as "Super Steady Shot". This meant that the sensor inside the body physically moved to compensate for camera shake. The advantage of this is that every lens you attach to the camera body becomes stabilized. In addition, you don't have to pay extra for lens stabilization that you get with Canon and Nikon and as far as I know they don't offer stabilized wide angle prime lenses. In body stabilization does have a disadvantage though, which is that you can't see the effectiveness through the viewfinder but thats not a really big deal to me but others may have a problem with it.

Another reason I chose Sony was because of the Carl Zeiss lenses. Anyone who knows anything about optics know that Carl Zeiss  make some amazing lenses and they're partnership with Sony is something that also swayed me over to the Sony camp. I know that they make lenses for other brands but they're all manual lenses as opposed to the auto-focus lenses that you can use in Sony. After handling the Carl Zeiss 24-70mm lens I loved the IQ and build of it and its a great lens that has won quite a few awards in its range. My only problem is that its expensive.

Since Minolta left the DSLR market around 2005-2006, Sony picked up where they left off. Meaning Sony acquired the rights to Minolta and was able to use they're lens mount to enable backward compatibility with Sony's Alpha range. This was good news for Minolta users who had a future with they're lenses and this was good news for new people coming to Sony DSLRs because they could acquire great cheap lenses. I currently have the Minolta 50mm 1.7 and its a great fast lens in good condition that I was able to get it off ebay at a cheap price.

The User Interface also swayed me to Sony. I like how the menu and layout is set out and easy to navigate between. This is a personal preference so its obviously different for everyone. I also found this after I started using my a350 that it offers accurate battery life with the infolithium battery. Its a small thing but very convenient.

What I also began to like with the Sony system was they're flash system. Its not as good as Nikon's Creative Light System (CLS) but its almost like it. Also Sony's flagship flash is great with its "Quick Shift Bounce" where it allows the user to easily change the direction of the flash from landscape to portrait. Its a great feature that other flashes don't have at the moment.

Hvl-f58am flash mounted on Sony a700

Lastly I love the image quality. I know everyone has they're own preference of what they want their photos to look like with different tones in the color, be it warm or a bit cool but I prefer something towards true color. A person that I recently found that has this sort of image quality narrowed down is Alonso Diaz. His flickr link is on his name and I must say he takes extraordinary landscape and portrait photos with his a900. The quality of his photos are something that I would like to achieve and he makes great use of his strobes as well.

Those are pretty much the reasons why I chose Sony. At the end of the day it all comes down to what works for you, the photographer. We all have our own preferences and techniques that we use. I don't regret getting Sony. It was actually really cheap to get cause my parents bought it through Duty Free. 

I'll be uploading the photos to my 319 project tonight or tomorrow cause my cap restarts tonight.

Thanks for reading everyone! =.)

EDIT: Turns out I'm not uncapped yet and I'm pretty behind on my photos. I'll start uploading tomorrow night but I might just do two photos a day to avoid a long photo post.