Comments on: Sony A900, We hardly knew ye. Goodbye flagship?

By: Martin Pont

Martin Pont — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:10:08 +0000

Hi guys. FLASH TRIGGER VOLTAGES FOR A ..

Have bought a used Sony a850 (I don’t want to know about APS-C cameras.) Now I want to mate it to my venerable, powerful, Vivitar 365 flash unit (of 1981 vintage.) This has a number of manual flash controls esp for fill-in. Its flash trigger voltage is reckoned to be 46 volts.. not rec for the ‘hot shoe!’

Q. Okay to use with an Alpha 850? – The instruction book says “up to 400 volts.” I ONLY want to use my flash off-camera via the camera’s ext. PC socket, NOT the hot shoe! (Putting a flashgun there is THE worst place for it to be!)

By: Heiko

Heiko — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:31:26 +0000

What nonsense!!!

The A900 ist still there and I have the A850…which is fantastic btw.

Why in the world did the author thought that Sony would stop production of the A900???

By: Jayme Maurice

Jayme Maurice — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:10:17 +0000

For me its not the cost.

I want the biggest brightest viewfinder the camera can have: no EVF for me

I want to be able to instantly control AF zone selection: >9pt does not work – at least allow limit in software

I want a display which stays off when I turn it off.

I want a quieter faster shutter/mirror – like the maxxum 9

I want the in viewfinder display to be dimmable and capable of all the important displays as you adjust them.

No HDMI, its just another port to let water short out the electronics

No joystick, it will get dust in it and a dpad is fine.

Selector knobs are awesome. Would be really cool to see a manual exposure compensation knob. The a100 multi selector was also a good design. Shooting mode is such a waste – why cant I hit a button and turn the shutter/aperature wheel or go through a menu.

Better sealing of components… get rid of the flappy rubber and hide the usb port behind the card door or something.

Allow stopping the aperture down immediately after firing with the 2 second mirror lockup timer and not in continoius/predictive AF.

Grip could hold an additional battery(ies) and additional multiple memory stick media slots… but grip shouldn’t replace original onboard battery.

Software should roll-over a full card/interleave writes on configuration preference.

Make it full frame or don’t make it.

I’ll still probably buy the A55, but I wont like it.

By: Peter Blaise

Peter Blaise — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:33:17 +0000

I imagine the Sony Alpha A900 DSLR is antique, was low production, and has finished the inventory of parts dedicated to it’s original production expectation. It’s time for a new SET of “top of the line” models. I say SET because I see purist, simplified cameras on the one hand, and do-everything video on the other. People looking for the highest qualities in still images don’t want to sped extra for video, and people wanting HD don’t want to spend extra for large still image qualities. I see the “top of the line” specification targets bifurcating.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:55:39 +0000

It’s not really a rumor that the HK site has it as discontinued, but more of a rumor that the a900 is discontinued as a whole. As for the HK site, it definitely shows it as discontinued:

http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/alpha/a900_e.jsp

look just below the orange text that says “12 month warranty”