For eight days in the middle of April, Philip Andrews put Sony's 700 through a wilderness torture test in the wilds of Tasmania, Australia.

Before the trip, I had already used the 700 on a range of assignments and had been particularly impressed with the general ease of handling of the camera and the overall quality of the images produced. Controls were well placed and the feature list is what I would have expected from a prosumer camera at this level. Being a fan of the 'shoot and review' method of capture, I found the high resolution LCD (640 x 480 pixels) was able to provide me with substantially more detail than other cameras I had been using.

On the glass side of things, I had played with everything from the 16mm fisheye right through to the 300mm f2.8 and found that Sony had remained true to the Minolta heritage with good sharpness throughout. This is hardly surprising as a good proportion of the lens range have just had their badges swapped to reflect the new ownership. This is not the case for the brand new line up of Carl Zeiss offerings though. Ranging from the pin sharp, T* coated 85mm and 135mm models through the newly introduced 24-70mm f2.8 and finally onto my default standard, the 16-80mm f3.5-4.5, Sony has smartly bought some of the finest glass available to the DSLR shooter.

With these initial impressions in mind I headed to Tasmania for eight days of wilderness shooting.

Tasmanian Adventure

I had been shooting with Sony's 700 for several months before being invited to join with 20 photographers from all over the world on a trip to the World Heritage listed regions of the island of Tasmania in southern Australia. Immediately I jumped at the opportunity. Well, why wouldn't you? Shooting with the likes of 30 year National Geographic veteran, Bruce Dale (www.brucedale.com), in some of the most beautiful and unspoilt environments in the world whilst being guided by park rangers who knew how to get to the best spots in the region. Titled the Lightroom 2.0 Tasmania Adventure, the plan was to spend our days shooting and our nights enhancing with the new release of Lightroom. Cool!

Hit the beaches

The first main shoot was a pre-dawn exercise in the aptly named Friendly Beaches area. Myself and two other photographers made the chilly journey in the darkness down to the water's edge and then positioned ourselves near some rocky out crops facing out to sea. With my Gitzo tripod securing the camera body just above the in-coming surf, I stopped the wide angle lens down to f22 for maximum depth of field, pre- focused a third of the way into the shot, switched to manual focus and then added a neutral density filter to the front element. Without a cable release handy, I made use of the supplied wireless remote to activate the shutter, but this did mean that it wasn't only my tripod legs that were constantly getting wet.

Trying to manipulate the camera controls in the dark can be a tricky affair. This is more the case for the knobs and dials on top and front of the body. Menu selections are easier via the LCD screen and the multi-selector toggle. In the end I resorted to a small torch to aid my straining eyes. Adding a neutral density filter in such conditions meant that I was able to use very long shutter speeds (10 - 20 seconds) which in turn turned the rolling surf into a smooth textured blanket. During such exposures it is not unknown to have stray light hit the sensor via the viewfinder (especially if the photographer is using a torch to check his settings!). Thankfully Sony includes a viewfinder cap on their camera strap. This neatly fits over the viewfinder effectively blocking the unwanted light.

Like most DSLRs when using a long exposure the 700 automatically applies a noise reduction algorithm to the frame straight after capture. There is no doubt that this feature does reduce the noise in the images but it does take some time to process. After the first few images I switched the option off. My reasoning was that I have a variety of noise reduction tools that I can make use of back at the desktop. Now I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not, as I haven't had the time for side by side comparisons of the effectiveness of each noise reduction route, but it certainly speeded up my capture process.

Down at the bay

In another shooting session, I found myself photographing yet more long exposure moving water scenes, this time around the Coals Bay area. Again basing myself in amongst the rocks, I took a couple of shots and then during the review process (thank you Mr Sony for the high resolution LCD) realised that I had some marks on the images. Initially I thought that I had picked up some dust or dirt particles when changing lens down on the beach, so I activated the sensor cleaning routine via the camera's menu system. This failed to correct the problem, so I knew that it wasn't sensor dust, so next I checked the lens surfaces and sure enough I had picked up some water droplets from the surf that had dried onto the glass elements. I was surprised that these had imaged so distinctly until I remembered I had been shooting at f22.0. A quick, careful, clean and I was back in business.

Now one of the key 'selling points' of cameras has always been the body based image stablising system called SuperSteady Shot (SSS). Having vibration reduction feature seated firmly in the camera, rather than the lens, means that any lens attached to the body becomes image stabilised. With the 700 it is possible to shoot shutter speeds between 2.5 and 4.0EV slower than when using a non-stabilized system. It is certainly true that when shooting Tasmanian Devils at dusk later in the trip, SSS enabled me to get a sharp image despite having no flash and not being able to use my tripod, but for longer exposures the feature can sometimes be counter productive and at the very lease a battery drain. So for long exposures I generally switched the system off.

Rainforest trekking

The colours and contrasts of the rainforest areas made for challenging picture taking. For most days the forest lived up to its namesake, dumping plenty of water on us at regular intervals. For the lighter showers I relied upon the gasketed system of the 700 design but for heavier downpours I resorted to an old photographers trick – a plastic shower cap.

With diffused, soft, lighting being supplied by the canopy, I reached for the portable flash unit to provide a bit of contrast to detail photos. For one close up of a mushroom, I switched the camera 's pop up flash to wireless mode and then used the flash gun off camera to provide side lighting. The wireless trigger worked flawlessly and the exposures were all consistently good, irrespective of where I placed the portable flash gun.

Into the wilds

For most of the trip I had been trying to capture the archetypal Australian landscape image to no avail. It was only in the last couple of days when roaming around the Cradle Mountain region that I found the environment I was after. After a small trek I positioned myself with in the swampy ground (yes complete with leeches) and waited for the sun to peak its head through the low cloud. During the next 20 minutes I shot continuously as the cloud formations changed and the sun lit different portions of the scene. Finally the sun hit the trees on the right and at the same time a portion of the hill on the left. This was the money shot.

After thoughts

Before the trip, I had already used the 700 on a range of less demanding assignments and was definitely an supporter. After using the camera for eight days in Tasmania in all manner of conditions, my confidence in the camera not just as a good performer but, as a solid workhorse, has grown tremendously.