Hi Flying Fossil,

In regards to your question on mirror lock up it is essentially a feature where the camera locks the mirror up out of the way prior to shooting. This is useful as it helps to reduce the vibrations and theoretically produce sharper results. The mirror goes up and then after a couple of seconds the shutter opens, it is most useful for landscape and macro shooters.

The KM DSLRs (5D and 7D) had this feature as did the A100, with the A200/300 and A350 Sony dropped it. The only current Alpha with this feature is the A700. Hope that helps.

Andrew

There is a decent write up I did awhile back that after talking with Sony a bit VERY recently on DRO that holds up well in accuracy (I wrote it before I had any contact with Sony).

Here is the link, and I hope it helps some:
http://www.alphamountworld.com/forums/sony-digital-slr-talk/dro-sony-a70...

Glad you like the A700, it is a fine machine that can last through years of abuse.

Carl

Hi Andrew,
Since my only Sony's are the A-100 and A-700, I guess I have this feature. I see in the custom settings where I can choose to lock or not lock the shutter with or without the media card or the lens being attached.
I do not find how the feature is applied to use in taking a photo.
Am I over looking something?

Thanks

Thanks Carl,
I printed out your write up and will study that. This does indeed appear to be "yet another" great feature on the 700.

Fossil fyi you can also take a look at what's tagged with DRO in case any of those are of interest

http://www.alphamountworld.com/forum-tags/dro

in DSLR technology. I am so surprised that more photographers aren't seemingly taking advantage of it's benefits.

To me, in a way, it is much like having 5 ND Grad filters at one stop increments (only with a much more realistic output) in your bag, without all the mess, weight, worry, smudging, etc...

What is great is that even though the shadow areas contain more chroma noise, they hold onto detail extremely well and the prints really come out great!

With the already excellent dynamic range of the sensor, adding this feature gets you just one more step closer to being able to mimic the range the human eye sees. And Sony's DRO+ works with both highlights, and shadow areas.

Canon's new and inferior system adjusts the highlights down (which is backwards from what we are taught as photographers-to expose for highlights and bring the shadow areas up later).

Nikon's D-Lighting only works in bringing shadows up (which is better than Canon).

But none of the systems out there compare to the level of DRO+. I'm pretty shocked that it isn't as popular as it should be. It makes me wonder how many photographers are actually trying to utilize the most out of their cameras.

Carl

Wow - I did the 15 picture test in the bright sun today and it was an interesting experiment. Obviously, the 400 and 800 settings were not for today's shots.
There were two, maybe three in the ISO 100 group, DRO +2 and +3 mainly that looked very natural.

My shots were taken at 125 shutter, f-10 and manual focus. I arrived at this by using "Auto" and half shutter to read the settings, then switched to manual mode.

In addition to these, would the application of EV changes further the "real" quality of the picture?

Sure glad I'm not buying film to do this. hehe.

"In addition to these, would the application of EV changes further the "real" quality of the picture?"

Yes, just like without DRO+ image quality changes.

The key to getting consistent results with DRO is of course getting your exposure correct.

Pretty hot little feature eh?

Now imagine wanting to take a mid day shot, tons of contrast.. .you are afraid the shadow areas will be black, and your highlights on the border of being blown out. Not a problem. Start at DRO+ 2 or 3, use ISO 200 (more dynamic range on sensor) since there is no need to go to a higher ISO, or 100 and try it out.

Here is a shot I got with just these settings w/my A700 (ISO100), x-fine image. Snow and black rocks without loss of detail in bright mid day shooting? Unheard of.

Hi FF,

Assuming we're talking about the same thing (I'm sure we are) mirror lock up on the Sony's is activated by the 2 second timer. There is no separate way to access it. It will flick the mirror up and then when the vibrations have died down take the picture- takes about 2 seconds (hence the 2 second timer...). The lock you are referring to is to allow the camera to take a photo when it thinks there is no lens attached. This is useful for architecture shooters as T-mounts etc have no electrical connections. The lock needs to be off for the camera to fire.

If you turn the lock off you won't notice the difference in day to day photography.

HTH

Andrew

This picture is drop dead gorgeous Carl.
I bought a expodisc to get some readings for custom white balance. With the combo of DRO+ and EV adjustments, I'm not sure I'll ever use it.
Now I have more experimenting to do.