Maxxum Overdrive: The Sony a700

When Sony acquired Konica Minolta's camera business in 2006, the successor for the Maxxum 7D was already on the drawing board. It wound up being the second Sony-branded DSLR, since the Maxxum 5D successor had already been ready to launch and was simply re-badged as a Sony.

Whereas Konica Minolta had marketed their high-tech autofocus SLRs as "Maxxum" in the USA, "Dynax" in Europe, and "𝛼" (Alpha) in the home market, Sony went with the 𝛼 nomenclature everywhere. The Maxxum 5D replacement became the 𝛼100, while the new high-end camera was marketed as the 𝛼700. (Because I am too lazy to set up a macro, I'm just going to use a lower-case Latin "a" rather than the Greek "𝛼" from here on out.)

Unlike the earlier a100, which used an APS-C sized 10MP CCD sensor, the a700 sported an all-new 12MP Sony Exmor CMOS sensor backed by the latest version of Sony's Bionz image processor. 

Sony had a lot of experience in cameras already, both via their own popular Mavica and Cyber-shot lines of digital point-and-shoots, as well as being a major supplier of sensor chips to other makers. Additionally, they acquired a raft of tech from Konica Minolta.

The sensor featured Minolta's Anti-Shake in-body image stabilization, renamed "Super Steady-Shot" by Sony. It also inherited Minolta's Eye Start, which put a couple sensors under the eyepiece that would wake the camera and start focusing (depending on the setting) when raised to the photographer's eye. The a700 added a sensor in the front of the grip to ensure that the Eye Start sensors wouldn't mistake a tee shirt for a face when the camera was hanging on a strap.

The mode dial had the usual full-auto green rectangle, typical PASM settings, the user-configurable MR (for "Memory Recall"), and then the easy-mode Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, etc. for novices.

Said novices would need to be fairly well-heeled, as the a700 sported an MSRP of $1400 (almost $2200 in current dollars), but gave you a bright pentaprism viewfinder and magnesium front and top body panels for your money.

Oddly, for such a gizmo-laden camera in this price range, there was no LCD status display up top. Instead, when powering up, the 3.0" rear LCD screen would display all the camera's current settings.

The rear panel was high-impact plastic and featured a 3" TFT display, as well as a joystick for moving sensor points and navigating menus and a sliding switch for enabling or defeating the Super Steady Shot picture.

Currently used bodies are running as low as under a c-note and the lenses can be had for a song, as the Alpha mount is essentially orphaned with Sony having discontinued their DSLR offerings.

It gives splendid results for a digital body nearing two decades old.

Down the K-hole: Pentax K20D

The K20D was Pentax's second generation of semi-pro DSLR, replacing the K10D in January of 2008.

While its $1,300 MSRP put it head to head with Canon's EOS 40D, the price leader in the category, its Samsung-sourced 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor offered almost half again the resolution, making it the highest-resolution APS-C camera on the market at the time (tied, of course, with its Samsung-badged clone, the GX-20.)

It was Pentax's top-of-the-line DSLR, but the line in question only consisted of the K20D and the cheaper, lower-resolution K200D.

The mode dial has the usual full-auto (green rectangle) and PASM modes, along with a couple unique-to-Pentax settings. The "TAv" position is "Shutter and Aperture Priority", where the user operates the front and rear dials to manually select the shutter speed and aperture size and the camera automatically adjusts the ISO to try and get the best exposure. "Sv" is "Sensitivity Priority" and functions like Program mode except the rear dial is used to set ISO on the fly, which is useful when operating in an environment where lighting conditions might vary wildly.

It's a physically small camera in the category; noticeably smaller than the Canon, Nikon, and Olympus entries and even slightly svelter than the Sony a700.

It's missing some typical buttons, such as ISO, instead using a combination of the "Fn" button and on-screen menus to select these settings.

The battery and memory card doors are securely latched and the whole camera feels quite rugged. With its 14.6MP sensor and an ISO range from 100 to 3200 (expandable to 6400), the K20D still holds up quite well today and nice used ones can be found for well under two hundo.

This is the first Pentax DSLR I've spent any real time with, and I can see why Pentax fans are so loyal. It's a solid, easy to use camera that's nice and compact.

Semi-Tough: Canon EOS 40D

Of the high-end “prosumer” DSLR bodies that hit the market during 2007-2008, the Canon EOS 40D had the most aggressive pricing…by a whole dollar.

When it was released in late August of '07, Canon had yet to slice the DSLR market as finely as they did in later years. There were the 1D and 5D professional cameras, but lower on the totem pole there was only the plastic-bodied entry-level EOS Rebel XTi, and the 40D, successor to the earlier 30D.

This meant that the $1,299 Canon EOS 40D had to cater to every buyer from well-heeled novices who were too cool for a Rebel to advanced amateurs and professionals who couldn't justify the $3,000+ tariff demanded for the full-frame 5D.

This made for a mode dial that was a little... crowded.

You had your "Green Rectangle" setting, which turned the camera into a fully-automated giant point-'n'-shoot. For the advanced amateur or pro, there was your regular array of "PASM" modes (as well as "A-DEP", which adjusted the aperture to ensure that all subjects covered by the active focusing points were inside the depth of field), and the user-programmable C1-through-C3 custom settings. Finally, for beginners there was the selection of Sports, Portrait, Landscape, et cetera modes. All in all, this sums up to fifteen possible settings on the mode dial. Yikes!

The LCD panel on top gave you pretty much all the setting info you needed to drive the camera and could be backlit orange for easy reading in dim lighting.

The 40D was a pretty iterative update of the earlier 30D. On the back, the LCD was now a larger 3" screen, up from its predecessor's 2.5" unit, necessitating the relocation of of the buttons from a vertical column to the left of the screen to a horizontal row under it.

Under the hood, the APS-C sized CMOS sensor went from 8.2 to 10.1 megapixels and the 40D got Canon's new DIGIC III image processor, the second camera after the 1D to do so.

Despite being well-received and earning the "Highly Recommended" rating from DPReview, the 40D was one of the shortest-lived prosumer Canons, getting replaced after only a year by the 15MP EOS 50D.

Nowadays you can pick up used 40D bodies for a c-note or less, but they still work great.

DSLR Pics: Draft Animals with the Pentax K20D

Here are a couple of photos from the Pioneer Village farming exhibition at the 2025 Indiana State Fair taken with the Pentax K20D and the DA 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6ED zoom lens.

The upper photo is a straight-out-of-camera JPEG while the lower two were processed from the original PEF (Pentax's RAW format) in Adobe Photoshop.

DSLR Pics: Porsches with the Sony a700

Both photos are straight-out-of-camera monochrome JPEGs, shot on different days using the Sony a700. The upper one, the 911 Targa 4 GTS, was snapped with the Sony 16-50mm f/2.8, while the lower 911 Turbo Cabrio used the Sony 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* zoom lens.

Lenses I Live By: The Fast All-Purpose Zoom

I’ve blogged before in this series about “superzooms”, which a lot of folks call “vacation” lenses because they cover a wide range of focal lengths, from wide-angle to long telephoto, obviating the need to bring an array of different lenses on vacation with you.

Thing is, some of your vacation will likely take place indoors, while visits to the zoo tend to happen on nice days, hence why I call these zooms “zoo lenses”. The thing is, the focal length range on these lenses… typically 7X to 10X …precludes both really excellent optical results across the entire focal length range, as well as necessitating slower apertures at longer focal lengths, making them less useful indoors or in otherwise questionable lighting conditions.

Alternatively, most manufacturers make zoom lenses with a slightly shorter focal length range, typically a 24-105mm or 24-120mm equivalent, but better optics and faster apertures, usually a constant f/4 across the whole range, or else an f/2.8-4 or something like that.

These are the real “leave it on the camera all the time” champs for me. They’re long enough for most things short of taking pictures of critters at a distance, and, with any sensor from about 2008 onward, capable of shooting indoors at ISO 800-1000 or so, especially with image stabilization of some sort on tap.

The classics of this genre are full frame lenses from the “Big Two”: Canon’s EF 24-105mm f/4L IS and Nikon’s 24-120mm f/4G VR.

On APS-C size sensors, these translate to 16-70mm and 16-80mm focal length ranges and the heavyweight champion here is the Nikon DX 16-80mm f/3.8-4E VR lens, maybe the best F-mount DX glass ever…

Lastly is my go-to for Micro Four Thirds, the Panasonic 12-60mm Leica DG Vario-Elmarit F2.8-4.0 ASPH, which is a 24-120mm equivalent in that format.