Alphatracks

Now is a great time to add to your memory card collection. Prices have been falling steadily for the last year, and you can snatch up some very large Compact Flash cards for not a lot of money.

Case in point, Office Depot is offering the SanDisk Ultra II 8GB Compact Flash card for $29.99. No rebates or trickery, just show up and pick the card off the shelf.

Since Summer is coming up, I took advantage of the deal and scored an 8GB card for $31 and change with tax.

I can’t guarantee that all Office Depot locations have the card at this price, but I can tell you that the stores in the Charlotte, NC area are advertising the cards at $29.99 through 4/4/2009. I believe you can also buy the card online as well.

There is a trick to finding the card at this price online. When I searched for Compact Flash cards on the Office Depot website, the Ultra II card did not show up. To actually find the card on the site, I had to open the weekly sales flyer from the Office Depot homepage. The flyer is interactive and the card is shown on page 4. Clicking on the card in the online flyer opens the order page on the Office Depot site.

I had to input my Zip code to see the flyer for my area. If the flyer for your Zip code doesn’t list the card for $29.99, use Zip code 28056.

It’s true this is the Ultra model card, which lacks the performance of the Extreme III cards from SanDisk. From my experience, however, the Ultra cards work very well in the Sony Alpha A350/A300 models. Perhaps the Extreme cards might provide an advantage with the faster continuous rate of the A700 and A900. Even with these cameras, the Ultra cards are more than adequate for most types of shooting.

8GB will store a lot of images, and I wanted a another good size card as a backup, and I felt I couldn’t go very wrong buying a SanDisk card at this price

If you are williing to to forgo instant gratification, MeritlineOnline has the Kingston 16GB Elite Pro 133X Compact Flash for about the same price. Currently they will sell you the Kingston card for $30.99.

I’ve never used a Kingston CF card, so I can’t vouch for how well they work in the Sony Alpha. I have had very good results with Kingston RAM memory and PCI cards in various computers, so I have an overall high opinion of Kingston products.

I have also ordered various gadgets from Meritline in the past. My experience with Merritline has been quite positive. So I wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of this deal either. Especially since MeritLine is offering free standard shipping. There is no indication of how long this price will last, so if you want one, I would act now.

If any Alphatracks readers have experience using Kingston Compact Flash cards (especially the 16GB one) in the Sony Alpha or Minolta Maxxum dSLRs, why not leave a comment with your opinion.

With the price of nearly everything else going up, it is nice to see Compact Flash memory coming down in price. Only a short time ago, a 16GB card would sell for well over $100.00. With this deal, you can have one shipped to you for 31 bucks.

Time to add to your Compact Flash collection!

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March 4, 2009: Yesterday Sony has just announced six new optics to the Alpha dSLR lens lineup. They are:

• Super Telephoto Lens

• DT 50mm F1.8
• DT 30mm F2.8 Macro
• DT 18-55mm F3.5-5.6
• DT 55-200mm F4-5.6
• 28-75mm F2.8

No word on pricing or when they will be available, but Sony says they are coming.

I find it interesting that four of the six lenses are DT lenses, intended for APS-C sensors. These lenses will not cover a full-frame sensor like the one in the A900. Sony hasn’t promised any further full-frame dSLRs, but as sensor technology evolves, full frame dSLR cameras are becoming more and more common.

I have to assume that Sony will offer more full-frame dSLRs, but based on these new lens offerings, it appears that at least some of the future Alpha lineup will feature APS-C sensors. Why introduce new DT lenses unless you intend to offer further APS-C cameras?

This is significant, when you consider that The A200, A300 and A350 were announced twelve months ago and the A700 is nearly 18 months old. On average, dSLR models are refreshed or replaced every 18 months. That means that at least some of the APS Alphas are due for replacement or a major update in the next year.

You don’t introduce four brand new DT lenses unless you intend to continue selling APS dSLRs. So I expect that Sony has some more APS-C dSLRs up its sleeve.

At the same time, I wonder about the wisdom of buying into these new lenses. If you expect to move into a full-frame dSLR at some point, these aren’t the lenses to buy for the long haul. You can use DT lenses on the A900, but not at full resolution. Basically a DT lens will turn the full-frame camera back into a crop camera, at reduced resolution.

On the other hand, you can use a full frame lens on a crop camera without a hitch. I think I would prefer to buy full-frame lenses so they could be used with either format.

Of course Sony hasn’t given us an indication of the price of the new lenses. Possibly Sony will bring the DT lenses in at an attractive price level. We will need to wait and see.

I also wonder where the new 18-55mm lens fits into the lineup. The standard kit lens has been the 18-70mm zoom. Unless the 18-55 offers a significant improvement over the 18-70mm, I don’t see any reason to introduce a new lens in this focal range. When you already have a solid 18-70mm lens, why replace it with one that lacks 15mm in the telephoto range?

If it is not a replacement, who will buy this lens if the 18-70 is still in the catalog? If the new lens was significantly faster or offered macro capabilities, perhaps I could see its value. As it is, unless it offers superior sharpness or better auto focusing, I don’t understand this lens’ purpose at all.

Also somewhat puzzling is the announced DT 55-200mm F4-5.6 lens. Sony already offers a lens of this exact speed and focal length. Perhaps the new model will offer improvements not available in the current 55-200mm zoom. Still, you would think that Sony would concentrate on filling out its lens line with optics that are not available, rather than replacing one 55-200mm with another.

Sony is also offering a new 50mm f1.8 DT lens. It will obviously be priced lower than the existing f1.4 50mm, but it is a DT lens. I think the old Minolta f1.7 50mm, which will cover a full frame sensor, might offer a better value equation, unless the new Sony comes in at a very attractive price. It will be interesting to see how the new lens affects the pricing of used Minolta 50mm f1.7 lenses, which have steadily increased in value as the Sony Alpha line has expanded.

Some people are already wondering aloud about the 30mm f/2.8 macro, but to me this makes perfect sense. Remember it is a DT lens, so it isn’t really a wide angle macro, as some have suggested. On a APS-C sensor, it will offer the equivalent of a 45mm macro. Since Minolta sold truckloads of 50mm macro lenses, I would guess there is a place for this lens in the Alpha lineup.

That leaves the mystery “super telephoto.” I take the term “super” with a grain of salt. Not that I don’t expect it to be a good lens. It has the appearance of the highly regarded G lenses, so I expect this will be a G lens as well.

Sony has gotten into the habit of calling any lens greater than 300mm a super telephoto. If you look through the Sony lens catalog, most of the G lenses as well as the 500 mirror are listed as super teles. So super doesn’t indicate this is an extraordinary lens — it simply means the lens is probably greater than 300mm.

The mystery lens does have a tripod collar, so I assume it will be fairly heavy or fairly long; or both. The recently introduced 70-400 G lens does not have a collar, so I am banking to this lens being faster or heavier.

If looks are any indication, it will be a fast lens — but what focal length? There is no indication whether it is a zoom or a fixed focal length lens. It appears to be finished in silver, like the other recent Sony G lenses.

About the only thing we can say for sure, it that it will probably be excellent. And expensive!

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Tom Bonner
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