Perhaps the most important part will be how serious she is about learning to use the system (camera+lens) properly.
Everyone makes good kit nowadays, so teasing out the differences in a given price bracket and for a given use case can be analysis paralysis. Also, because all the kit is so good, do your best to ignore any brand zealots and be as objective as you can in the amount of analysis you do :)
With that out of the way, you might give Sony a nudge for ease and accuracy of AF. Or to put it another way, the Sony's coverage of AF points across the frame is actually a pretty important feature compared to Canon/Nikon.
The 9-pt Canon AF is a far cry short of the AF in their higher-end bodies (and the AF in the $$$ bodies is very good). I think the AF in the lower-end Nikons is a bit better than in the lower-end Canons.
But back to the first point, even if we totally ignore artistic inspiration, bike racing can be fairly difficult to photograph from a technical standpoint...lots of things could contribute to poor images, and if the intended subject (you) is only coming by once a lap (CX/crit) or even worse, once or twice in total (road race/TT), diagnosing technically poor images and making technically strong images is more difficult than you might think!
Good luck and happy to chat more.
edit: I see ggeiger replied while I was composing my post; he's probably the most qualified person on the forum to discuss cycling photography, so yay for that!
Eliot
blog thing - strava thing
Everyone makes good kit nowadays, so teasing out the differences in a given price bracket and for a given use case can be analysis paralysis. Also, because all the kit is so good, do your best to ignore any brand zealots and be as objective as you can in the amount of analysis you do :)
With that out of the way, you might give Sony a nudge for ease and accuracy of AF. Or to put it another way, the Sony's coverage of AF points across the frame is actually a pretty important feature compared to Canon/Nikon.
The 9-pt Canon AF is a far cry short of the AF in their higher-end bodies (and the AF in the $$$ bodies is very good). I think the AF in the lower-end Nikons is a bit better than in the lower-end Canons.
But back to the first point, even if we totally ignore artistic inspiration, bike racing can be fairly difficult to photograph from a technical standpoint...lots of things could contribute to poor images, and if the intended subject (you) is only coming by once a lap (CX/crit) or even worse, once or twice in total (road race/TT), diagnosing technically poor images and making technically strong images is more difficult than you might think!
Good luck and happy to chat more.
edit: I see ggeiger replied while I was composing my post; he's probably the most qualified person on the forum to discuss cycling photography, so yay for that!
Eliot
blog thing - strava thing