The range of Sony Alpha cameras is growing as is their popularity. It's not surprising, you can pick up a 24 megapixel full-frame studio camera for under £2,000 right down to their entry-level A290, 14MP camera for under £300, with a lens. Some of the features built into the camera bodies (like image stabilisation) make them even more attractive to those considering the usual camera makes.

Whilst it's true that most people stick with old favourites like Nikon and Canon for their SLRs, at those prices the Sony does represent excellent value for money and the quality of the images are arguably almost as good as their more expensive counterparts.

However there are some little quirks to look out for when shooting with a Sony Alpha in the studio:

When Sony entered the DSLR market in 2006, they bought the technology of Konica Minolta, which included their AF range of lenses and the quirky (non-standard) flash hot-shoe. This makes it more difficult to use third-party speedlights or other outboard flash systems, and for the cameras in the Alpha range that don't come with a standard "PC Sync" connection, which is most of them, an adaptor is needed to convert the proprietary Sony connections to a more standard hotshoe style.

For those Sony cameras that come with an in-built flash, it would usually be possible to trigger a studio flash head from the flash on the camera. However, in practice it's difficult or impossible (Sony users, if you manage to do this, please let us know how!!) to disable to pre-flash on the camera, so before every shot, the camera fires a burst of light, which in turn triggers the studio flash.

As we've recently upgraded all of our flash heads to brand new Bowens 500PRO & 500R strobes, these are programmable to ignore pre-flash from cameras' on-board flash, but it's far easier to use an adaptor for the camera to work the regular triggers.

Sony manufacture their own adaptor which is currently selling for in the region of £120-150. It does offer some added benefits of voltage protection, however thankfully some third party manufacturers also now offer adaptors, including Interfit for a fraction of the price.

We've now picked up the Interfit Strobies adaptor, so now you can use your Sony Alpha in our studio, even if you don't have your own adaptor.