But the lens does work once I figured out how the aperture control works, I've made it a point to check that lever for operation and spring tension on all the lenses I've picked up.)
I don't use it a lot I have four other lenses, three manual zoom and one prime, and even with my limited experience, I find a manual zoom a bit easier to use and control. I suspect it might have been the 'kit lens' included with some xi packages back in the day.
However, I actually have three xi-series bodies-that I'm actually enjoying using!-and one xi-series lens, the 35-80/3.5-5.6 'Power Zoom' lens that came with my first SLR camera ever, a 3xi. I don't think there are too many of those around.and something tells me that a lot of the regulars here aren't particularly bothered by that ems the whole xi-series isn't exactly viewed as Minolta's finest hour. (This thread piqued my interest because it concerns an xi-series lens. And here I was originally wondering when I first read this thread if there was some kind of compatibility problem using an xi-series lens (which was specifically designed for the xi-series film cameras) on an a350.but that doesn't make sense, since people have been using older lenses than those successfully on the newer KM/Sony bodies. Either way, it might be fixable, but probably rather delicate work. Possibly that tension spring came loose somehow. Scroll down for a JPEG and RAW comparison from the Alpha A350, or head on over to our A350 studio resolution results page.can you move that lever easily back and forth, or does it bind or feel 'sticky'? If the lever moves easily, try gently rolling or shaking the lens and listen for anything rattling around, especially near the mount end. We’ll be retesting the A350 with higher quality optics in the future, and check back soon for results comparing the A350 against the new Canon 450D / XSi. So if you want to see what the A350 is really capable of, you’ll need to equip it with a better quality lens, such as the Sony DT 16-80mm. The Sony DT 18-70mm is a fine model for the money and it’s served the entry-level Alpha’s well, but the 14.2 Megapixel sensor in the A350 is pushing it a bit too far. It’s also clear the default A350 settings apply less sharpening than the 400D / XTi, and this is something you’ll see in all our sample images taken with the Sony in this review – most can certainly handle a boost in sharpening.īut perhaps the biggest thing you’ll notice below is the impact of the respective kit lenses. When comparing a 14.2 Megapixel DSLR against one with 10.1 Megapixels, you’d assume there’d be a significant difference in resolved detail, but as our 100% crops below reveal, there’s arguably no more real-life detail recorded with the A350 kit than there was with the Canon 400D / XTi kit. The A350’s DRO was set to the default Standard.
The crops are taken from the upper left, centre, lower right and lower left portions of the originals and presented here at 100%.
The image left was taken with the Sony Alpha DSLR A350 at 24mm f8 and with a sensitivity of 100 ISO the original JPEG measured 5.74MB. Both models were fitted with their respective kit lenses set to f8 and adjusted to deliver the same field of view. To compare real-life performance we shot the same scene with the Sony Alpha DSLR A350 and the Canon EOS 400D / XTi within a few moments of each other using their Auto modes, best quality JPEG and lowest ISO settings. Note: to see how the A350 compares to the A300 and Canon 450D / XSi, see our A300 results. Outdoor resolution / Studio resolution / Real life Noise Now let’s look at the A200’s studio-based resolution. If you’re willing to tweak, it’s possible to achieve what most would consider to be superior results.
Of course the benefit of shooting in RAW is having greater latitude to make adjustments, and Sony’s supplied software gives you plenty of options including the ability to apply the D-Range optimiser with numerous settings, adjust the noise reduction and fine-tune sharpening. The RAW file processed using the default settings (and with DRO set to On) appears virtually identical to the JPEG, although is a fraction sharper. This was then reduced to 8 bits and processed the same way as the original JPEG for presentation here.
The RAW file was converted using Sony’s supplied Image Data Converter SR 2.0 using the default settings, then sent to Photoshop in 16 bits. We photographed the scene here in Large Fine JPEG + RAW mode and have presented crops below from each file for comparison. Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 results : Outdoor resolution / Studio resolution / Real life Noise