Low light performance of the Sony a850 DSLR
I just replaced a stolen Sony a850 with a pristine copy from South Korea. I took it out at night to see if I could get any decent photos in town, hand-held with manual focusing at f4 and autoISO. I had the antishake feature turned on. The samples are attached. The first two were taken with an AF Sigma 28mm f1.8 Aspherical lens and the last with an AF Minolta 50mm f1.7. I was blown away by how the camera and Sigma lens handled the conditions. None of the shots needed any processing. They are straight OOC. I did, however, notice significant noise on the shot taken with the Minolta lens, and I had to do a certain amount of adjusting using Lightroom and Nik Viveza II. Both lenses are described by owners as very sharp on Dyxum. Can anyone account for the difference in the results obtained? The a850 doesn't have very good high ISO performance and I set the maximum ISO to 800 and two of the three shots were at ISO 800, one from each lens.
Here's the Minolta photo. I tried to post a TIFF but again it was reduced to a relatively small JPEG. The noise may not be noticeable at this size, but it should be obvious that the picture lacks the crispness evident in the others.
A photo obtained using the SMC Takumar 35mm f2 lens using the same settings as before. This photo required some post processing and shows more graininess than the Sigma and Super Tak 55 but less than the Minolta 50.
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