Concentration & Understanding... of the Sony α700.

Last week, I just made the biggest purchase of the year. And that is when I purchased my Sony Alpha α700! As I mentioned two post back, It's my dream camera. During that post, I had to make a decision of either to get the α700 or the rumored soon to be released a750. I bought this camera 2nd hand and It's still under warranty (Luckily).

During my time, dreaming of owning a α700, I've always knew how it was gonna be a breeze to use and how much the functions will simplify my photography experience. Boy was I wrong. Upon  holding the α700, I realized that the weight of the body alone is heavier than my α200 WITH the vertical grip and two batteries! BUT, the feeling of the camera's weight, gives me the sense and feel the solidity of the Magnesium Alloy body. Not to mention how the grip feels so comfortable in my HUGE hands. Just as the α200 did. But I seriously CAN'T imagining attaching a Vertical Grip on this camera. Not to mention two batteries!

The Body

Just Perfect In My Hands

Another thing about the body of this camera compared to the α200 is the addition of the rear scroll wheel! Which in Manual mode, lets me control my aperture while the front wheel lets me control the shutter speed. Now that's simplified!

LOVE The Rear Scroll Wheel!

Memory wise, with this camera, I get to have two memory option! It's either I use the standard CF card OR a Sony Memory Card Pro/HG Duo. Which really would help me during long events where I sometimes run out of memory space when shooting RAW.

Two Memory Slots!

And with this camera, I can shoot via wireless remote! Without having to buy a separate remote because the package already provides one! Lucky me!

The Remote Reciever on the grip

Now so far I've just been talking about the good part about this camera. Now, what's really bugging me about this camera is the White Balance Settings and the Creative Style Settings. I know, some of you might say that I can always just set the camera to use Auto White Balance or leave the Creative Style to Standard or Vivid and not touch any other settings, But during the 1st day of shooting with this camera, 5/8 pictures I shot were EXTREMELY BAD! I'm not going to put up samples here, I just want to note that setting up the white balance and creative style settings on this camera is really challenging! Which I like, somehow. But seriously it makes me feel lost sometimes.

After all this, now I need to go out and keep on shooting, just to get myself used to the settings and to understand when and where to use what settings. This somehow made me think of what would happen if I were to buy the α850 Full Frame camera rather than this α700. Seriously can't imagine how the settings would be on a FF camera. Maybe I'm NOT ready for FF.

But the Main Fact is, I LOVE this camera and all the challenges that comes with it. Now all I need to do is go out and shoot more and more pictures and get used to the different settings. Anyway, here's three pictures that I've taken with this camera. Comments?

I Think It's A Bee

Little Issac Imbat Roderic

My Brother-In-Law and Future Brother-In-Law playing Chess