Sony A100 - a good buy nowadays? (1 Viewer)

A good friend of mine has offered me his old A100 with kit lens in excellent condition for £100. The only trouble is my trial shots through the kit lens have been less than impressive. I want the camera for wildlife particularly birds.

My binoculars are Nikon HGs and scope is a Kowa TS613 so I'm familiar with how good glass can be and also how expensive. I've drawn a balance by buying secondhand and have saved a fortune.

The Minolta 70-210 looks like an excellent lens, if only I could win one on ebay, but I'm adding another £110 with (for me) unpredictable results.

£210 is a lot for me to spend at any time of the year but just before Xmas, :eek!:

A couple of things worry me. You dont see much Sony camera gear for sale in the classifieds here, its all Canon, Nikon etc. Also the present results arent wow factor.

Does anyone have any advice please? To be honest I wasnt particularly looking for a still camera right at this moment, but the opportunity to try and buy for £100 what was a £500odd camera seemed rather too good to miss.

The A100 was (and still is) a good camera, at £100 with a kit lens is sounds like a steal... if you don't want it put him in touch with me! The kits lens is not great, but it's not bad as a cheap general purpose lens. There are a lot of good old Minolta lenses out there, some of which go quite cheap, though for birds you'll be wanting to look at something longer than 200mm.

Minolta 100-300 APO is an excellent lens.
Sigma 70-300 APO is also good, but beware, older ones get the lens AF gearing wrecked by Sony camera's, but they're fine manual focus.
Try and get an APO, you'll be disappointed otherwise.
Don't know anything about Tamron!

The Tamron 70-300mm is a fine piece of kit, with reservations. In high contrast the chromatic abberation is a pain. Other than that, it doubles up as a macro for larger insects.

The A100 was just under £1000, on release, and 10% of that ain't bad. High iso can be a problem, as with many older bodies.

Have a look at the sedge warbler in my gallery - that was taken with the A200 and Tamron 200-500mm combo.

Carl

Thanks for the comments. I dont want to get this to make quick buck! Its mates rates as we have done each other some big favours over the years, as you do with mates.

What I'm hearing is encouraging. I think I'll get the camera now and keep bidding on lenses on ebay.

The thing I've picked up about photography nowadays is that unlike the old M42 days you are now buying into a system, and I dont even want to start down the Sony-Minolta route if I'll be thinking of upgrading within a year.

This a100 is so cheap that changing the system won't be any problem ... if you will not fall in love with Sony.

BTW - a100's big disadvantage is low useful ISO. I do not like to use anything above 400. In low light and long lens this may be a problem. But for that price...

A good starting point and I agree with carl over the tamron 70 to 300, I also got a Minolta 500mm mirror lense that I get useful results with.

I have a Sony A100, the lens for birds I think is the Sigma 100-150mm. The 500mm reflex which is fixed at f8 is not good in low light. I got my camera off Ebay and I'm happy enough with it.