Of all the cameras I've used from Sony (a850, a77, a57, A7ii, A7rii, RX10, RX10iii, Nex-7, etc.) the one that always stands out by a wide margin from all the rest as an all-around winner has got to be the a99. It was a full framer, with the semi-transparent non-moving mirror, a super nice 24 megapixel sensor and a selection of really stellar glass. It also had a color science to it that ended with that model.
I always thought of it as the last brilliant thrust of Minolta engineering before the photography department of Sony was totally overthrown by a new staff of boring camera engineers and equally lackluster marketing teams.
The color out of that specific camera was beautiful and the lenses were amazing. The 70-200mm f2.8 was especially good.
I was sad to let the system go but it was becoming quickly apparent that this would be an orphaned construct that would cease to be supported at all in very short order.
This was a working shot from a video course I did back in 2013 for Craftsy.com. A fresh face. A nice lens and some playful lighting.
Sad when new owners of technology homogenize out the secret sauce and move on.
R.I.P. Sony a99. (Or should I say: Minolta a99?)