Sony's new flagship SLR
new sony photo machine.
Sony announced its forthcoming "flagship" Alpha-branded SLR on Thursday at the Photo Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas.
Its chief defining feature so far is its use of a 24.8-megapixel sensor that's unusually large--the size of a full frame of 35mm film. That move makes Sony only the third digital SLR (single-lens reflex) maker, along with Canon and more recently Nikon, to aim for that part of the market. Sony's flagship is geared toward advanced amateurs, but Sony hopes professional photographers will like it, too. The camera is scheduled to go on sale later this year.
The back of the SLR features a large LCD and controls on the attached, but optional, vertical grip.
This is a prototype showing the flagship model with a transparent housing. This shows the camera size without the vertical grip.
The 24.8-megapixel CMOS sensor is shown here mounted in Sony's Super SteadyShot housing, which moves the sensor to compensate for camera shake.
The right-front view of the Sony flagship SLR.
Sony showed six lens prototypes. Shown here is a super telephoto zoom.
Shown here are a super telephoto and a telephoto, both with fixed focal length. Much of the bigger lens is actually a lens hood to shade and protect the outermost lens element.
A trio of wide-angle lenses: a large-aperture wide-angle zoom, a wide-angle fixed-focal-length lens, and a large-aperture wide-angle lens with a fixed focal length. Wide apertures mean a lens works better in low light or at freezing action, but it also makes a lens larger, heavier, and more expensive.
The unveiling of the flagship SLR was accompanied by a prototype of a new external flash unit.
The left side of the transparent version of the flagship model is pictured here.
The left side of the flagship SLR, shown here with a Carl Zeiss lens.
Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com
