E-Books from Gary Friedman are user guides, mines of information and all-round treasuries of inspiration for Alpha owners – see www.friedmanarchives.com for details and how to buy them either as a physical printed book, or a download. His e-Books cover all the A-mount DSLR series and also the mirrorless ranges in APS-C and full frame.
Raw converters
Sony Alpha owners will find that Adobe Photoshop CC series and Photoshop Elements series include a good .ARW raw file conversion, shared with the Lightroom versions. There is subscription based software price for these, with the Photography Plan offering good value. See Adobe’s site.
Competing with Adobe, Serif Affinity Photo and its related publishing and design programs cost much less in the long run and do a very good job on Alpha series raws, but with no browser (you can set up Adobe Bridge to use Affinity Photo).
Ukrainian software house Skylum has a very advanced creative raw converter and editor, Luminar and Luminar Neo, with multiple platforms and desk or mobile forms. It’s one of editors we now use regularly.
On1 has greatly improved their raw conversion recently and offers some of the best noise control and colour profiles around.
There’s a great Mac-only raw file developer for the Alpha, NEX and previous Konica Minolta files – RAWDeveloper from Iridient. This is really fast, allows scaled exports, has superb noise reduction and is a highly professional workflow solution.
Another alternative is Silkypix Developer Studio, a Japanese developed raw file converter, which has something in common with Sony’s Image Converter SR. This is available in both Windows and Mac versions.
DxO Pure Raw and Optics Pro offer highly developed with lens profiles, camera and film based colour looks, and great Sony support.
An excellent top-level raw .MRW/.ARW converter, if a little hard to master, is Capture One Pro made by Phase One, the Danish digital medium-format back manufacturer. You can download trial software, limited editions released for many Sony models recently, or upgrade the LE version provided promotionally to the full product.
RawPhotoProcessor is a simple and deep Mac-only raw processor ideal for the more technically minded. It reveals a lot about the image through reading the makernote and metadata comments hidden in each file. It is fast and small.
Support and resources
For information on the Sony Alpha system, the UK Sony site now has some really excellent resources in place. Use the High Bandwidth option if you possibly can, and explore both ‘Assignments’ and ‘Equipment’: //www.sony.co.uk/nextlevel
You can view a selection of full size images taken with Sony Alpha on David Kilpatrick’s pBase pages. There’s lots of technical information on the tests, examples, and comparison present on these pages. These include comments, captions and EXIF shooting data: //www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick
There is an independent Minolta M-AF forum and website, Dyxum, which offers many useful resources including lens tests and storage card speed comparisons. Unlike dPreview, Dyxum does not ban participants for being associated with specialist websites like Photoclubalpha, and has kindly promoted and helped us in the past: //www.dyxum.com. Dyxum is probably the most active Alpha discussion site, with an excellent lens review and rating system allowing you look up almost any lens ever made to fit M-AF and find a user opinion along with full specs and original selling price. They also have a very good links page which lists just about every other Alpha resource around!
There is a photo sharing site (by far the most popular web activity for photographers!) at Shootalpha.com. This is, after all, what camera clubs and even august professional associations do – share their pictures and pass generally not unkind comments on them to each other, with the occasional bit of constructive crit. Do not expect to encounter the photo equivalent of Simon Cowell stalking the gallery pages, you will be welcomed as a beginner and find your level quickly. There is also an active forum.
Dealers and spares
At Icon Publications Ltd we now have just a selection of Minolta glass filters; MD/AF hard lens cases (many types); Dynax branded original camera straps; Minolta leather cases ideal for iPhones, iPods etc; and Vectis BPS-1 battery base grips for the Vectis S-1.
Former Minolta Club administrator Adrian Paul has his own specialist business selling spares, accessories and smaller hard-to-obtain products from the Minolta and Konica Minolta ranges, and will be offering Sony Alpha system products in future. The Photostore is a mail-order business only and Adrian offers a fast, excellent standard of service and knowledge: //www.photostore-uk.com/
Lens rental is available from hireacamera.com which is a fairly new compay investing a stack in this gear, and charging surprisingly reasonable hire rates. Here’s a quick video interview we did with them:
In New Zealand, the Sony Service Centre for Alpha is //www.phototronic.co.nz/ – they are also dealers, an ideal one-stop shop for purchases and repairs, run by a former Minolta UK Ltd service department staff member.
Pro dealers WEX Photo Video stock the Sony system and have a huge range of accessories, and related lens brands like Tamron, Sigma, Voigtlander, Samyang, Laowa and Zeiss in E-mount.
London Camera Exchange Colchester is a Sony ACE dealer and has committed to supporting this website and our magazine. The branch manager will always try to offer the best deal to Photoclubalpha members! Email them on [email protected] or call 01206 573444.
To find out about the values of used cameras, visit the Monark camera price guide site – //www.cameravalues.com/
Thank you for visiting the photoclubalpha.com site. If you would like to receive future information by email from Sony UK about the Alpha system, and news of future developments for the former Minolta Club of Great Britain, please email [email protected] using the heading ‘Add to Alpha mailing list’.
