Alphatracks

Can Sony really make a full-frame dSLR? Not will Sony…but CAN Sony really do it?

Some months back, I wrote that I expected the so-called “flagship” Sony Alpha (possibly named the A900?) to carry a full-frame sensor. I still believe that to be true, however I’m hedging my bets a little. It will be “almost” full-frame or “close” to full-frame. It may not be the actual size of a 35mm negative, however, which is the definition of a full-frame dSLR to most photographers.

It isn’t that Sony lacks the technology to build an actual full-frame sensor. Sony has the ability to build just about any sensor they could wish.

Super Steady Shot doesn’t play well with a full frame sensor

The problem is the Super Steady Shot (anti-shake) system. Not that there is anything wrong with SSS itself, the in-body image stabilization is one of the Sony Alpha dSLR’s major advantages. However, one of the Alpha’s other major advantages is that it can use the extensive line of Minolta A-mount autofocus lenses. And thereby hangs a tale.

Twenty-some years ago, when Minolta engineers were designing the original A mount glass, there were no digital SLRs and no anti-shake systems. Thus, there was no reason to design a lens to cover anything other than the standard 35mm film image.

Thus the AF A mount lenses were designed to project a circle that would encompass a 24 X 36mm area at the camera’s film plane. There was no need to cover a larger film plane, because no Minolta SLR offered a larger negative size.

Maxxum 7D and Antishake: no worries

When Konica Minolta engineers developed the Maxxum 7D, they designed an in-body anti-shake system. The system works by moving the camera’s sensor in relation to camera movement. In essence, if there is camera vibration, the sensor stays in one place, despite the lens and body movement. The same system is used in the Maxxum 5D, the Sony Alpha A100 and the Alpha A700. All of these dSLRs use a 17 X 23mm APS-C sensor.

See the problem? If Sony develops a 24 X 36mm full frame sensor, any lens will need to cover an area larger than 36mm — at least when SSS is turned on. If vibration occurs in an up and down motion, there is room for the sensor to move in relation. If, however, the sensor moves to the left or right, it could move outside of the area covered by the lens. Update: I was in error about room for up and down motion. See these remarks by an optical engineer to understand why the image would be clipped in any direction the sensor moves.

This isn’t an issue with the current Sony/Minolta dSLRs, since the smaller APS-C sensor has plenty of room to move in any direction without moving outside of the lens coverage. When you move up to a full frame sensor, however, there isn’t nearly as much breathing room.

Lens coverage varies

Of course lenses vary. Some of the existing Sony/Minolta lenses may offer enough coverage to allow the SSS system to move — but others would probably exhibit some vignetting if the sensor moves too far to the left or right. Who wants to drop a ton of cash on a professional dSLR when many (most?) of the available lenses might display some vignetting?

How will Sony handle the full frame design?

Sony can tackle this problem in a number of ways. The first could be to drop SSS for the flagship model. That makes little sense, since Sony would then have to develop a line of image stabilized lenses. If they are going to develop an entirely new lens line, they might as well design larger coverage lenses and retain the in-body image stabilization.

Neither of these options are very credible, however. As I said, one of the Sony Alpha’s major selling points is that you can use those millions of Minolta A-mount lenses. Start redesigning the lenses and there is far less reason to choose the Alpha over the competition.

The rumor sites are suggesting that Sony could eliminate any vignetting problem by reducing the sensor size. The sensor could still be much larger than the current 1.5 crop sensor, but not exactly the size of a 35mm film negative. The figure bandied about is 1.1 crop. That would indicate a sensor of something like 21.6 X 32.4mm.

I want my super wide angle lens back!

Loosing 3mm on the width and 2.5mm on the height doesn’t seem like a lot — but it will affect the camera’s ability to display the widest angle of view with current lenses. One of the biggest problems with the APS-C sensor is that most of the original A-mount wide angle lenses aren’t very wide any longer. Cropping a 35mm lens to APS-C size yields something equivalent to the “standard” 50mm lens on a full frame camera. A 24mm lens is now closer to a 35mm. Even a 16mm fisheye is will only show what you would see with a 24mm lens on a full frame camera.

So one of the prime reasons for choosing a full frame camera is to make all those Minolta wide angles truly wide again. A 1.1 crop would be much better than a 1.5 crop in this regard — but is it enough? That 16mm would now be equivalent to 17.6. A 35mm would look like a 38.5 lens.

Those differences seem fairly insignificant, but there are times when you need the widest angle of view you can get. I hate to give up even a millimeter when I am working with an extreme wide angle.

There is one other option that Sony could adopt. Create a full frame 24mm X 36mm sensor and allow the camera to use the full sensor only when SSS is turned off. Turning on the image stabilization would automatically turn off the outer ten percent of the sensor. This would give the best of both worlds. When SSS is engaged, the sensor size is reduced so there is no chance of movement causing vignetting. Turn the image stabilization off and you get the entire full frame area and the ability to shoot at your lenses widest field of view.

Taking a page from Nikon’s book?

This isn’t as far fetched as it seems. Until recently, Nikon didn’t have any full frame cameras in it’s line up, and they sold a ton of APS-C type lenses to go with their 1.5 crop dSLRs. With their all new full-frame D3, Nikon users who owned a bag full of 1.5 crop lenses faced a big problem. “Big N” sidestepped the issue of the APS-C lenses not covering the FF sensor with a switch that reduces the sensor to APS-C size when shooting with a 1.5 crop lens.

Sony could do the exact same thing with their offering, simply reducing the sensor to 90% when SSS is turned on. Of course to be truly useful, there would need to be some way of indicating the crop area in the view finder. This would probably be in the form of engraved lines on the ground-glass to show the crop area.

Would this be worth it? I’m not sure it would be worth the trouble and cost — but it would sure be slick.

If you were on the Sony design team, how would you handle this issue?

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File this under “Be careful what you ask for…”

By far the most sought after information on Alphatracks has concerned Vertical grips for the Sony A100 and the KM Maxxum 5D. Neither Minolta or Sony offered a vertical grip for these dSLRS — a major oversight considering how many people are searching for one. I’ve linked to web stories on making your own grip as well as the DiCain and Ownuser aftermarket grips.

Until recently, however, to obtain one of these units you either needed to live or travel in the Orient — or take your chances trying to order through a non-english website without much in the way of firm details.

At last, however, there is an English language website that offers aftermarket grips for the Maxxum 7D, the Maxxum 5D and the Sony A100. You still have to order from Hong Kong, but this site has contact phone numbers, a return policy, detailed photos of the products and a secure online ordering method. Oh yeah, Gadget Infinity also sells on eBay, where they have a 100% positive feedback ranking of 31,380. That indicates to me the company is legit and I wouldn’t hesitate to order from them.

The information about the grips is fairly minimal, but I think Gadget Infinity is selling the Ownuser grips, although it doesn’t give any brand information for the hardware on the site.

I can’t speak for the quality or how well these grips work. Still they look impressive. If you’re looking for a Sony A100 battery grip or you can’t locate a genuine Minolta 7D vertical grip it looks like GadgetInfinity can hook you up.

Gadget Infinity Website (opens in a new window)

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A few weeks back, Michael Blum posted a comment link to a Taiwan outfit called Ownuser. Sort of a strange name, but they have an extensive online catalog of custom made photo equipment, including a vertical battery grip for the Minolta 5D and the Sony A100.

This appears to be a completely different manufacturer than the Korean DiCain aftermarket grip that I wrote about a few month back. The specs for the new grip look excellent. The wiring harness is external, because there are no grip connectors on the Alpha or the 5D. But I can live with that.
There is just one problem. There is no US distributor as yet. In fact, there seems to be only a smattering of users who actually have got their hands on the grip anywhere in the world.

Is it a real product … or just a fantasy?

Of course, most photographers understand that specialty items from a small company might take a while to produce. To design, test and mass-produce a product such as this is no small feat. The Alpha 100 was only officially announced in June. It didn’t start shipping in any quantity until August.

So it is understandable that Ownuser might need more time to bring the grip to market.

Unfortunately, the Ownuser story predates the Alpha 100 introduction by a very long time. Long before the Alpha started shipping. Ownuser was promising a vertical grip for the Minolta 5D, as well as various Nikon and Pentax dSLRs. These products, as far as I can tell, are scarce to non-existent in the Orient and completely unavailable in North America. Some US users apparently have been quoted a price of $100 for the grip — a bargain it it is well made and works as advertised. However, I haven’t heard of any North American photographer who actually ordered one or who even was able to learn what the shipping would be.

Obviously, Ownuser has not yet ramped up for major production. It is the old chicken and the egg syndrome — the company needs orders to produce in quantity, but few people will order the unit until it becomes widely available.

Will the Ownuser grip ever be available in the US?
This isn’t the first company to offer a product that they haven’t yet produced. The software industry is famous for promoting “vaporware”, which is software that is promised but never actually gets produced. The photographic industry isn’t immune to this either — anyone still waiting for the widely promoted Silicon Film digital adapter for 35mm cameras? Their website first appeared in the late ’90s. Last year I ran across their website — still promising they would be shipping product soon.
Still, there is reason to hope. An aftermarket vertical grip is, after all, a reasonable product. Silicon Film was attempting to produce something that had never been made before. There ware all manner of technical hurdles to overcome. In the end, the company couldn’t overcome those hurdles and produce a product for an affordable price.

But a vertical grip is a different animal. While there are undoubtedly some engineering challenges that must be overcome to make a grip that will fit a particular camera, it isn’t exactly rocket science. There are numerous vertical grips in existence for Nikon and Canon. Even the Minolta 7D has an excellent, but expensive grip available. How hard could it be to study the available grips and then create an aftermarket grip to fit the Alpha 100 or the Minolta 5D? I’m not saying there wouldn’t be snags, but with existing grips to model your product after it doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult.

Grips appearing Asian markets?

There may yet be hope for an afteramarket grip for the A100. While Ownuser products continue to be unavailable in the US, there are reports of some users acquiring grips in the Pacific Rim. Over on the Steve’s Digicams forums, someone from the Philippines posted several pictures of an Ownuser grip they recently acquired for their 5D.

So if the grip is available in the Philippines, how long before some enterprising importer brings it to the states? The demand is string, so I would guess that the grip would sell very well at a street price of $100. If you absolutely have to have a vertical grip, however, I wouldn’t count on the Ownuser or DiCain grips until you actually see them offered for sale by major photo outlets. I’ll probably order one — as soon as I get my Silicon Film adapter that will allow me to shoot digitally with by old Minolta XK Motor.

Until next time, stay focused!

The Ownuser Website

Update July 2007: I’ve added a new post with a link to a website selling aftermarket grips: Aftermarket battery grips for Sony and Minolta

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One of the complaints leveled against the new Sony Alpha 100 is there is no vertical grip available. Minolta did offer a nice vertical grip for the Maxxum 7D, but there is no official VG for owners of the Maxxum 5D and Sony’s new A100.

Not having used the A100 yet, I can’t say whether that is a real problem or not. On one hand, I have shot thousands of vertical images with film and digital SLRs — and never used an auxiliary grip. On the other-hand, I can see where having a little something to hold onto below the lens might come make things easier. I usually just hold the regular side grip in my left-hand and allow the camera to rotate 90 degrees so it is hanging downward from my left-hand. I use my right-hand to steady the camera and trigger with my left index-finger.

It works fine for me, but many people say they have trouble shooting vertical images because they he big hands. Others feel that adding a grip on the camera bottom makes the SKR handle better.

Of course, most vertical grips also provide additional battery power. I’m not sure how relevant that is to the A100, as Sony claims that the camera can shoot around 750 shots on a fully-charged battery pack. Even if they are pushing the numbers to a best-case scenario, it seems that a single battery pack should allow most photographers to shoot for a full day. Buy a second battery pack and you would have the capacity to shoot 1200 – 1500 shots without recharging.

Still it seems like a lot of people want a vertical grip — it looks like Sony failed to anticipate this.

Never fear, if you want a VG for the Sony A100, there are options.

A Korean Company named DeCain is in the process of selling hand-made grips for the Minolta Maxxum 5D. It looks like they are just in the process of ramping up production, so its a case of ordering and waiting. Haven’t read any reviews yet, so I can’t say how well this grip works on the 5D.

Information on the DeCain Grip for the Minolta 5D

Will the DeCain grip work on the Sony A100? Since the A100 was derived from the 5D and uses the same power and remote connectors, it seems that it just might. If not, it would seem that only a few changes would be required to make it work. Since this is essentially a hand-built piece, I’m guessing that DeCain could easily make changes and offer a grip that would fit the Alpha.

Of course, if you can’t wait, or you want to hack up something of your own, I’ve run across several home-built VGs for the 5D.

This post in the Digital Photography Review site shows off a vertical grip made of wood.
Wooden grip for Maxxum 5D

It looks pretty good — and it isn’t any special exotic or hardwood, either. It is painted black, but if you scroll down to the construction section, you can see he started with what appears to be an ordinary 2 X 4.

If wood-working isn’t your forte, there are also numerous people who have adapted the Canon BP-200 grip to the Maxxum 5D. This will require some hacking and soldering, but it looks fairly simple. The hardest part — assuming you have or can find an used BP-200 unit — is to find a connector to fit the 5D’s remote port. (As I said earlier, the A100 uses the same port.)

Industrious hackers have found modifying removable contacts from old electronics gear to be the simplest option here, as the connectors to fit the Minolta remote port are not readily available. It seems audio cables from old CD-ROMs can be made to work, as will as some internal cables from junked VCRs. In most cases, the plug will need to be reshaped with various tools to get it to fit right — but it can be done.

Here is a site showing step-by-step how to modify a BP-200 work on a Maxxum 5D. I’m fairly sure that most of this information would apply to the A100 as well.

Modifying a BP-200 for the Maxxum 5D

This is the kind of hack I really enjoy. There is no need to modify the camera. All the hacking is in the grip itself. As long as you careful not to short anything in the electronic circuitry, you don’t’ have to worry about modifying or damaging you expensive digital SLR.

So let the hacking begin!

Until nest time, stay focused.

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