A Day At Alta With The Sony Alpha A55

[Photo-John]

Nice scenic shots... The one action shot isn't bad either... The poor student is lagging pretty far behind the instructor though.. ;) I like the separation, the instructor is looking good and sharp, at least at that size...

Using kit lens, or did you have another on there? How's the camera on exposure for snow? Are you dialing in a stop of compensation while shooting, or dealing with it in raw later? My a700 and a900 tend to prefer about + .7 dialed in, but do occasionally nail it on their own. When I actually remember, +.7 insures I have something usable, without blowing it out...

- G

The ski instructor is super sharp. I was shooting with continuous auto focus and it was rock solid. I am very pleased with the A55's auto focus unless I'm trying to focus on plain snow. For that, I think Canon and Nikon would do better. However, I haven't actually tested back to back to make sure that assumption is correct.

For exposure I always use the histogram to make sure I'm on target. One nice thing about the A55's EVF is you can see the histogram in the viewfinder while you're adjusting the exposure. So the exposure depends on the scene. It could be +.7 or it could be +1.3. For snow photos I just try to adjust so the histogram is pushing towards the right without clipping the highlights. Then I fine-tune in Lightroom and Photoshop. I am not at all a straight of the camera guy - too much darkroom experience

I have two lenses - the 18-55 kit lens and the Sony 70-200 f/2.8. The ski instructor photo was taken with the 70-200. It's a sweet lens. It's even white - like a proper 70-200mm f/2.8 should be

[Ken Nielsen]

unless I'm trying to focus on plain snow. For that, I think Canon and Nikon would do better.

I don't think so. I have the Canon 7D which has one of the most advanced AF systems out there, but there are certain situations that defy AF, plain sky, reflective surfaces, shooting through glass windows, plain undefined surfaces (like snow,) among others. If you can find even one tree, or a shadow, anything that offers contrast and at the distance that you want to shoot, then you can do a pre-focus on that and then switch to manual to hold the focus is one way of holding a focus setting for another subject at the same distance. AF is pretty neat and very accurate in most situations. On the Canon, a half-press of the shutter button activates AF, but you can choose to change that to a separate back-button on the camera to activate AF, then you can preserve the focus when shooting without the AF being activated again.