Some may be surprised, but the history of the Sony Alpha begins under another name: Konica-Minolta. Konica-Minolta is a name embedded in the history of photography that precedes even today’s giants like Hasselblad, Nikon or Canon. Indeed, it is worth remembering that Konica started its photography business in 1873 (predating even Kodak), while Minolta followed suit in 1928.
Over the years, Minolta (after its merger with Konica dubbed Konica-Minolta) has produced many legendary names such as the DiMage series, the Dynax series or the Maxxum. Although the Alpha system bears the Sony name, its origin lays within a project of the Konica-Minolta laboratories dating 2005. After Sony acquired the photography division of Konica-Minolta, the Alpha project was pushed up resulting in the 2006 launch of the Sony Alpha 100.
The Sony Alpha 100 was a pretty advanced piece of technology at its time and although it’s been discontinued, it still holds its ground today.
The features of the Sony Alpha systems are not to be disregarded. It was the second system to use an image stabilization system based in the body (in truth, it should’ve been the first but Pentax released theirs earlier), allowing the use of image stabilization with any lens. Secondly, it used a technology called Eye-Start, which allows the camera to start focusing when it senses the photographer’s eye close to the viewfinder, saving time. Also innovative was the camera’s ability to clean the sensor by shaking it before being turned off.
Probably the best advantage of the Sony Alpha, however, is its support for legacy Minolta and Konica-Minolta lenses. Thus, a photographer can save money by buying old real glass lenses at a cheap price.
The system is not without downsides though, as it tends to overprocess images. The Sony Alpha’s performance at high ISO sensibility settings is also extremely poor, resulting in noisy unclear images. Although the latter is improved in more recent models, with Sony Alpha 100 one couldn’t correct this even when shooting RAW images.
The Sony Alpha system is definitely a contender on the market today, giving the elders (Pentax, Canon, Nikon) a run for their money. If Sony would consider lowering its prices we would definitely witness a turn in the digital camera market.