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So there we were, about two-dozen journalists cruising around Frenchman's Bay in a small charter boat, photographing the spectacular scenery and abundant wildlife off Mount Desert Island in Maine.
The new Sony Alpha 700 cameras we were using were more than up to the task -- and that was the problem.
Sure, we were all impressed with the build quality and ruggedness of the new 12.2MP DSLR, and the well-designed control layout. And the shots we were chimping on the fine-grained 3-inch LCD monitor looked wonderful. But come on, we're shooting scenery from a boat cruising at a stately three knots on calm water, on a perfect blue-sky day. You could get great shots with your kid's pocket compact.
That's when the biplane attacked.
"Incoming!" shouted a Sony tech rep. "Switch to continuous AF!"
And so we did, also switching to continuous drive. Being the conservative type (at least as far as memory card space goes), I first opted for 3 fps, but, as the stunt pilot buzzed the boat at progressively closer distances (you could clearly see the evil grin on his face), I went to 5 fps, with AF set to autotrack across the 11 points of the frame. Those were shots you couldn't get with your kid's pocket compact. Yet all of us came away with keepers. With a 5 fps JPEG burst rate limited only by the capacity of the card, this new camera never choked on those 12.2MP shots. And the AF did exactly what it was supposed to -- track the plane both as it was approaching, and as it roared across the frame.
The stunt came during a trip to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park during the last week of August. Sony sponsored the event to introduce the Alpha 700 to the press, and the biplane provided a perfect demonstration of the camera's capabilities. Just to reinforce the concept, the Sony crew also brought on a team of stunt water bike riders, and the 5 fps drives went whirring again, capturing many a mid-somersault action shot. Clever, these Sony folks. (A special commendation here to Sony's Hirokuni [Rocky] Miyai, who managed to swap out and download our memory cards -- indexed to specific users, no less -- onto a small Vaio notebook PC, on bobbing boats and careening buses. Nobody missed a shot due to a full CF card.)
Unfortunately, we can't show you any of these pictures because Sony was nervous about the pre-production cameras we were using -- the Sony reps even collected our memory cards at the end of each day. We all agreed that they were being overcautious. When we later viewed some of the images (unenhanced) on big HDTV screens, it was clear from the sharp, saturated images that the cameras were working very well. We will try to wangle some of those shots from Sony to show you, but in the meantime we've posted shots we've taken around town with one of the first production A700s. Click here to view photos.
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