Sony Alpha A99

Not a lot of difference here, at ISO 100. The Sony A99 manages a more refined rendering of the red swatch and the threads in the pink swatch below it, but both cameras turn in a good performance.

The Sony A77 holds its own surprisingly well against the full-frame A99 at ISO 100. Again, the A99's rendering is a bit better overall, particularly in the red swatch, but the differences at ISO 100 aren't that evident.

The Canon 5D Mark III clearly has more sharpening applied to its default JPEG images, which results in higher local contrast in the fine details of the mosaic on the bottle label, but it's a bit artificial, and intersections of the "grout" lines end up overly-bright.

Here, we'd give the nod to the D600, if only by a nose. Really fine detail is better preserved, and the contrast levels on the red fabric swatch are closer to reality in the D600's image.

The Nikon D800's higher resolution is clearly evident in this shot, easily resolving thread detail in all the fabric swatches, and with better resolution on the finest detail in the bottle label.

Several years of sensor and image processing development are clearly evident here, with the A99 showing both dramatically less noise and better detail preservation than its now-aging predecessor.

Here, too, we see how big a difference a full frame sensor's larger pixels make. While the A77 did surprisingly well at ISO 100, at ISO 1,600, the Sony A99 easily pulls into the lead. To its credit, the A77 does a good job of suppressing chroma noise while still preserving some detail, but it's no contest against the A99.

We have to give this round to the 5D Mark III, if only by a little. The 5D manages a better balance of lower noise while simultaneously preserving fine detail. The 5D's heavier-handed sharpening helps it here, bringing out some of the fine detail lost to noise suppression.

A pretty even match here. While a little softer overall, the A99 to our eye does better with the detail in the bottle label, without introducing artifacts like the slight, errant color tints seen in the D600's version. The D600 does much better with the red swatch, but not as well with the pink one. We call it a tie.

The larger pixels of the A99 do better with background noise in the crops at the top, and don't lose as much detail in going from ISO 100 to 1,600 as the D800's smaller pixels do. On the other hand, the D800's handling of the always-difficult red swatch is dramatically better. Despite its poorer showing on the red swatch, we'd give the nod to the Sony A99 here.

Yikes - The A900's images really fall apart at ISO 3,200. An easy win for the A99.

Again, an easy win for the Sony A99, thanks in part to its larger pixels.

Again, the 5D Mark III's shot shows less noise in the background, and comes off crisper-looking, but the fine detail in the bottle label is very irregular and artificial-looking. Somewhat a matter of taste: We personally prefer the A99's image, but understand that many people might place more importance on noise suppression in smooth areas. Call it a toss-up.

Interesting, the A99 does much better with noise in the shadowed background, but the D600 has the edge in the bottle label and the red (but not the pink) fabric. We call this one for the D600, albeit not by a lot.

A really tough call for us here, the D800's noise in the shadows is to the point that we find it objectionable, but the Sony A99 starts to lose detail in the bottle label, and the red swatch. The decision could really go either way, but we lean a bit towards the A99, finding the D800's noise in the shadows too objectionable.