Adobe Camera Raw 4.4 supports A200, 300, 350

Adobe has released updates to Photoshop Lightroom and the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, both available immediately as free upgrades for existing users. The releases provide added raw file support for nine additional digital cameras, including the Sony Alpha 200 (already supported by 4.3.2 whether they knew it or not), Alpha 300 and Alpha 350. Lightroom 1.4 also provides updated printer driver compatibility for Apple Leopard Mac OS X 10.5. Continue reading »

A700, 6400 ISO, seven raw processors

There’s a lot of controversy right now about whether or not the image structure of the Alpha 700 files at very high ISO – mainly 3200 and 6400 – is as clean as raw processed results from other comparable cameras like the Canon 40D (does not offer ISO 6400), the Olympus E-3 (does not offer ISO 6400) or the Nikon D300. At the heart of this is the way different raw processors handle file conversion, and most specifically, the current performance of Adobe Camera Raw 4.3.1. Continue reading »

Sony Alpha 200 – guided tour and overview

The Sony DSLR A200 is now on sale, following the end of Alpha 100 production. Although it is without any doubt the Alpha 100 replacement mentioned by Sony executives in October 2007, when they first revealed that the 100 was no longer being made, it is not an exact equivalent and represents a mixture of upgraded performance and simplified specification. Because it has gone in two directions at the same time, the A200 poses a problem for A100 owners. Continue reading »

Apple Aperture 2.0 processes A700 raw

Apple’s Aperture 2.0 is a tedious program to test, with all its creation of ‘projects’ and ‘libraries’, ‘albums’, ‘vaults’ and nonstandard GUI, and it isn’t fast in processing files or passing them to Photoshop (which it does in 16-bit form, just another step to reverse before saving as far as I’m concerned). However, it’s handling Alpha 700 raw quite well. And it does things differently, with non-destructive raw editing, stacks of image versions, and so on. Continue reading »

How the live view A300 and A350 will work

NOT everyone will want the live view offered by the A300 and A350 – it does turn out to be more or less as we suggested, a secondary optical path adjacent to the eyepiece inside the prism housing. I’ll explain here exactly what the implications are, and why a future model – let’s call it the A500 – offering the 14.2 megapixel sensor without the live view may be worth waiting for. Continue reading »

The A300, A350, A750?

In mid 2007, rumours of a 14.8 megapixel Sony sensor came from the usual Far Eastern ‘inside’ sources. As a full-frame Alpha model (the so-called 900) had been previewed at PMA 2007, it was possible this megapixel count related to full frame, or near-full frame. It now looks as if it may have been a leak of development for currently rumoured 14.2 megapixel (active) Alpha 350, which is an APS-C sensor camera. Continue reading »

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