Hi, I have a couple of questions that have been bugging me for a while, and I hope to ask them in an honest way and avoid a flame war:
1) I'm wondering are there any professional photographers around that shoot Sony?
2) Are there others who have switched to or from Sony and why?

I'm hoping to move into shooting portraits/families sometime in the next year, and thus looking to upgrade my gear. The trouble is that whilst I love my a700, I've been patiently waiting for its replacement for 3 years now. The single biggest improvement that I'm looking for being high ISO performance.

I am also nervous about Sony's apparent focus on marketing gimick style improvements in new camera bodies i.e. inclusions that will appeal to newer dslr buyers (i.e. high megapixel count, in camera processing and others) as opposed to features that are important for pro work e.g. better weather sealing, af micro-adjust, customisation options, dual card use etc.

I also wonder about Sony's image with my potential customers - I don't mean to sound vain, but I do want potential clients to feel that I have "the pro gear". Maybe I give the general public too much credit about this one... but at least in some photography circles, Sony has a bad name.

All told, I'm feeling reluctant to invest more money into the Sony system - selling my CZ16-80 and beercan for 2.8 glass, another flash, then eventually going full-frame when I might end up making making the same switch later on and it costing a lot more to do so.

I'd love to hear any thoughts, and if others have ever had teh same thoughts and which way they ended up going.

SimonG