Of course - it was Bill Gates when he bought his first DSLR.

ACK!

How are you finding that lens, now that youv'e had it for a
while?

-Mike

I have 6 Minolta lenses that benefit from A/S every time.

VR is better by about a stop v. A/S, but at least I don't have to
replace my 100 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8 and 28-70 f/2.8, all fairly expensive
lenses.

To get more light... I can't always light my products, or they are lit by
available light on stage.  I like to take live shots of things in use. Of
course, I would like to have a Canon with high ISO, to achieve the same results,
but that would have cost $2000, not $1000.

I never said I do sports photography. In fact, I have no shots of a basketball
in my collection...

Carl Zeiss good enough for you? Anyway, you don't have to buy one, it's a free
country.

I can cherry pick Minolta lenses v. Nikon and deflate the myth.  Minolta
don't have as many lenses but they do have excellent lenses in the right
categories ... For example, the 100 f/2.8 macro, the 80-200 f/2.8 and
20mm f/2.8 are sharper than their Nikon counterparts.  The differences
are so small, of course, as to not matter vert much at all.

Of course you're not going to get this in a "kit" lens where Minolta and
Nikon each have good and mediocre lenses.

Cheers,
Alan

I can't imagine not having a vertical grip. I was dubious when I got one
for my old film camera, but once you use one, you'll never be without it
again.

All,

My review of the A100 (also posted on the amazon web site)....

The Sony A100 is the first in the new line of "a" series (pronounced
Alpha) cameras from Sony. The A100 comes in various forms including
body only, single lens (18-70mm) and twin lens (18-70mm and 70-300mm)
set. The body of the camera is available in all black, or a mixture of
Black and Silver.

I purchase the twin lens set in all black. In the bright metallic box,
you get the Camera body, the twin lenses, a memory stick duo to Compact
flash converter to put in the camera, camera strap, Battery, battery
charger (charging is off camera), USB to computer lead, USB to tv lead
(to show the pictures on the TV), software disk (containing a USB
driver, RAW file editor and basic file viewer), a user guide (black and
white, fairly cheap paper manual about 90 pages), and several brochures
on lenses and other products, and then the product guarantee.

The cameras headline features are the 10.2 megapixel sensor, the new
anti-shake (now called super shake) system, vibrating image screen to
remove dust, and fast image processor. Beyond this, it has all the
features you could possibly want from a digital camera.

The battery is charged off camera, and you get a UK 3 pin plug. The
camera can charge the battery though a power port directly into the
camera body, but the cable for this is an optional extra. If you are
travelling abroad, different plugs are also optional extras. Charging
the battery takes about 2 hours, and gives you power for around 750
shots (assuming flash on 1/3 of shots).

Photos are captured onto a memory card, which can either be a
CompactFlash or a Memory Stick Due. A dummy CompactFlash comes with the
camera that acts as a converter inside the camera for the Memory stick
Duo. You cannot use full size Sony Memory sticks in the camera. No
memory comes with the camera, so you will need to purchase one to take
pictures. I went for a 4Gb card, which will store 982 full size, hi-res
photos in JPEG format, or 292 RAW photos.

The camera has a very sharp and bright picture display on the back.
This is used for the control of the camera settings and viewing
previous pictures. However, when taking a picture, the current view
cannot be shown on this screen (for say, taking shots over the heads of
a crowd). Instead, you need to use the viewfinder. When you put your
eye to the view finder, the main display goes off saving battery life.
In both the viewfinder and the main picture display, all the
information is show including memory status, speed, aperture, histogram
of picture, index of pictures, settings of camera (colour settings,
exposure etc). The menu and controls are access via two control wheels,
a spin controller and a menu direction control. I found the controls
and menu options very easy to use.

At the top of the camera, the two wheels control different functions.
On the left, settings are available for settings ISO levels, colour
controls, system overrides, advanced controls etc. The wheel on the
right controls the picture modes (landscape, portrait, macro, night,
sunrise/sunset, sports), speed/aperture priority etc. The control wheel
sits in front of the shutter trigger, and is perfectly placed for
changing the settings whilst looking through the view finder.

Taking pictures is a joy, and the results are stunning. However, the
movement of the mirror inside the camera is fairly loud (there is a
clunk when you take the picture). I have a small worry that taking
pictures in quite places (churches etc) may cause a few heads to turn
in my direction. If anything, the clunk is the only downside of the
camera. Lens focusing is very quick, reasonably quiet, and works well
on both lens sets. The lenses that come in the pack are both Sony, and
to be honest, are not that impressive to look at (no nice guide
windows), but they do the job, feel robust and take nice pictures.

The camera sits nicely in the hand, and isn't too heavy. My hands are
fairly large, but the buttons seem to be in the right place. The only
button I had a problem in finding is the focus preview button which is
located at the front of camera below the lens. I scrabbled around to
find this, but should not be so much of a problem once I get used to
it. The build quality of the camera feels good, at least as good as the
Dynax range I have previously. The top of the camera has a strange
mottled look which is a bit odd.

One thing that I found most impressive is the bracketing and multi-shot
options. Pressing the multi-shot button allows 10 or so picture options
including single shot, multi shot, bracket, multi-shot bracket, self
time (2 seconds), self time (10 seconds), remote etc. Because of the
new image processor chip, the multi-shot is very very fast - I kept my
finger on the shutter release and it took 3-4 shots a second, and
produced 2 bracket shots per shot, which resulted in around 12 shots
being stored per second without delay or pause. I tried to see if the
memory in the camera would cause the multi-shot to fill up and stop,
but it kept on shooting the pics - very nice.

As I say, all the options are here including; Setting resolution sizes
(smell, medium, large and fine), output format (JPEG, RAW or both),
colour levels, balance levels, exposure settings, manual control, auto
control, flash options (fill, red eye, back flash, forward flash, sync
etc).

All in all, very happy with my purchase.

Jaffa

The camera is absolutely clean and new - maybe it was just a random from the
factory, or maybe they test it that much. Did you know some printers have 10,000
prints on them tested at the factory?

Since I don't have my Nikon I can't directly compare the 2 lenses.... bummer!
But I don't remember focusing that close...

One test I made the other morning was of the forest line off the road, DR on and
off. The DR on 'Advanced' was a definite scene booster. All of the wet tree
trunks that were just black lines came out as brown wet trees. (Because they
are)  Also some of the dark foliage was brought out as well. The sky was left
alone.

However, another test I tried showed no difference... not sure why. It gets
cancelled in certain modes...

Ya, I gotta go play in the traffic...

Did I tell you the VR at 70mm can give a good focused shot at 1/10 sec?
Impressive!