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New A900 owner

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dmcnickle

Guest
I am new to this forum and to the A900.
My A900, 24-70 and 70-400 arrived late yesterday afternoon. I am coming over from Nikon (D700 in fact) and am very excited. I leave tomorrow for 10 days in Colorado and am only taking my new Sony gear. Quite a leap of faith but I am confident I made the right choice. (and the sale of the Nikon gear funded the Sony gear). I had been thinking about it for quite some time and decided to just go for it.

Any tips/advice on settings etc. would be greatly appreciated. It is a bit of an adjustment from Nikon.

I keep trying to move the multi-selector to change the focus point and then realize I have to switch to local focus area first and not be in wide. Is there an easy way to do this.
Also, without sounding too stupid, how do I set the auto review to display the histogram? I had my Nikon set to automatically show a small image and the histogram at the same time.
One more question (maybe :) ): can I set the bracketing to bracket +- 1 instead of .3, .7 or 2? I was used to 5 shots at 1 but I guess 3 at +-2 would get me the same thing. I also used the fn button to quickly set it on Nikon. Any other shortcut on Sony or just the drive button?

Thanks for the help and I look forward to learning from this forum and becoming a part of the Sony family

-Denise
 

Terry

New member
Welcome. I think you will enjoy the new Sony gear. I'm loving it.

Auto review I can answer.... To flip back and forth between the larger view and the small view with RGB histogram hit the C button that has the blue histogram chart to the left of it. If you are in the histogram mode, when you take your shot and it is played back on the screen, it will stay in that mode.

I've used the 5 shots @. 7 and the 3 shots @ 2 EV and have been fine. I think it is a just getting used to it sort of thing. There is plenty of lattitude the files to get you that extra little bit from .7 to 1. On Sony if you hit the function button you can get there with the little joystick controller on the settings page. Both take about the same amount of effort.

There is a nifty trick to spot meter and hold the meter reading by setting up the AEL button to do so. It is a read the manual sort of thing. If I explain it, I will mess you up.

I find the CF much faster than the memory stick card and I've hit the buffer limit on the memory stick after about 5 shots. So, I only keep the memory stick there for "user error" when I forget to put a card back in the camera.

There is a lot of discussion on what ISO is best for "base" there are some that use 320 and many others that use 200. You have to go through a couple of really long threads to get to better understand the differences.

Wait until you see the images come up on your monitor at home!!!!

The menus are WAAAAAAAAY simpler than the Nikon menus.
 
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dmcnickle

Guest
Thank you for the information. I will try 5 shots at .7 and 3 at 2 and compare the differences.
Seems like little quirks to get used to but it does seem easier to get through the menus compared to Nikon.
I am already in love with the viewfinder!!! You can see everything :)
 
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madcat207

Guest
Welcome to the club! The a900 really is something special; it may be "over simplified" compared to others, but I love being able to get to it all quickly. For the bracketing, the 5 shots at .7 gives a pretty decent effect; probably a better one than 3 at 2 for merging and HDR (more realistic).
 
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