A77 Finally announced

[mechawombat]

I think this is what most Sony users have been waiting for

• Magnesium alloy with high grade plastic exterior
• ‘Key controls sealed against dust and moisture’
• XGA OLED Viewfinder
• 12 frames/second at full resolution
• 19 point autofocus with 11 cross sensors
• Full 1080p video
• ISO 50-16000
• Lots of customisation of buttons possible
• Availability – ‘October’
• Weight with battery and card 732g
• Storage through SD card and Memory stick only (no CF)
• 3-inch tilt and swivel LCD monitor, 921,600 dots
• Virtual horizon indicator in viewfinder
• External Microphone jack (but no volume control)
• In-body lens correction of vignetting, CA and distortion (JPEG only)
• Electronic first curtain shutter reduces vibration and shutter lag
• Built in GPS
• Shot Result Preview allows preview of shutter speed, a la Panasonic G series
• Focus Peaking function helps verify manual focus
• Memory Recall function saves three sets of camera settings
• ‘Smart Teleconverter’ shows 1.4 or 2x crop
• 30 – 1/8000 shutter speed
• USB 2.0 – no Thunderbolt
• Shutter designed for 150,000 actuations
• Same FM500H battery as the A700. 470-530 shots per charge

Saving already for October release

[mpb]

Looks pretty good.

24 megapixel sensor!

I love the sound at 12 fps.

electronic first curtain and not mirror to move should have minimal vibration.

[agb]

I read most of the review on dpreview and the camera sounds really top class.
What do Sony do for lenses? I presume they have to use third party ones, it that right?

[davearnold]

I just read the DP review too, did a quick google search for lenses, and looks like they do a few, can anybody advise on the quality of available glass?

[mechawombat]

I use minolta glass but you can get Carl Zeiss if you really are keen

The Sony kit lenses I had are both broken due to a mishap with a 2 year old. however they did give a nice crisp pic

[Boo53]

Sony do have a growing range of good glass, the higher end being a mixture of Sony & Zeiss.

One of the lenses announced yesterday is to be the "kit lens" for the A77 at 16-50 f2.8. The A65 will apparently keep the old, but by no means poor, 18-55.

I'd certainly like to have a closer look at the A77, but the A65 would be adequate for me if it only had the fully articulated LCD

[JM Tran]

only USB2.0, big no no to professionals like me who may need to shoot it tethered, no Thunderbolt either - but I guess its not marketed as a top end pro grade camera. Oh well apart from that the specs look good.

[Sarge]

Looks like a sweet camera! I especially like the fact that it shoots at 12fps at full resolution.

[CAP]

Got all excited about the super fast continuous focus with 12fps at full resolution along with all the other great looking specs but just read an article saying the the 12fps is rendered almost useless by the pathetic buffer along with SD cards.
According to the article the 12fps claim is uncheivable and that the a700 will actually out perform it with it's unlimited continuous 4fps.
Now I am some what confused..... can anyone shed some light?????

[Sarge]

Got all excited about the super fast continuous focus with 12fps at full resolution along with all the other great looking specs but just read an article saying the the 12fps is rendered almost useless by the pathetic buffer along with SD cards.
According to the article the 12fps claim is uncheivable and that the a700 will actually out perform it with it's unlimited continuous 4fps.
Now I am some what confused..... can anyone shed some light?????

That's quite disappointing to read that. Had a quick look and this is what I found:

"Buffer clearing was quite slow with our reasonably fast 30MB/s SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card, at 23 seconds after a maximum-length large/extra fine JPEG burst, and 27 seconds after a RAW+ L/F JPEG burst. We also tried a SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 SDHC card rated for 45MB/s writes. Buffer depths didn't improve with the faster card, but buffer clearing times improved by over 40%, to 13 and 15 seconds respectively."

[CAP]

So how many shots will one be able to crank off before filling the buffer?
or better still how long will one be able to shoot continuous at a reasonable frame rate? (1-2-3 seconds????)

[Sarge]

So how many shots will one be able to crank off before filling the buffer?
or better still how long will one be able to shoot continuous at a reasonable frame rate? (1-2-3 seconds????)

I am interested to find the answer to your question too, so I did a bit more looking and came across this:

"I read the buffer is 13 shots and the camera is rated 12 fps. I think if they didn't pull a BS move and used the SD memory and stuck to Compact Flash, which has very fast 600x cards, then one could shot more than 12 shots and not stand around and wait for the buffer to dump to those slow SD cards.

They should have given two Compact Flash slots and adapters to handle SD and Memory Stick; makes no sense to me to use cards that are inherently slower than Compact Flash, especially in a 24mp 12fps camera!"

That still doesn't answer your question though, but I will continue to look.

[arthurking83]

A quick perspective(from a non Sony user)

GPS may end up being useless, due to battery drain. A much better feature would have been Bluetooth connectivity. Missed opportunity!

Memory Stick?? Seriously? Makes this a low end/consumer level camera, with seemingly great specs. The buffer issue seems to be an issue.
Sony need to get more professionals on board for the elite value they bring to the marque. People aspire to the same equipment used by the pros, seeing the word Sony emblazoned on the gear that captures images at any major event shouldn't be discounted. It's powerful stuff!

There is a very strong chance that this buffer limitation may be deliberate! It leaves Sony a gap for a higher end D400/7D competitor in the future. This bandwidth limitation is about par for course going by the pricing level(in my world that means D7000). Same buffer structure, it's just that on the D7000 it takes twice as long to fill! )

My curiosity is only centred around the EVF. Specs say that it's going to be very close to an optical viewfinder. Definitely not as good in all situations, and considering that this is only second generation technology, I'm curious to see where it's at. Dynamic range is almost certain to be an issue. One day, once they're out an in the wild, I'm going to try to get myself to a shop simply to see it for myself.

[arthurking83]

Just had a quick look through DPR's sample gallery, and there is one landscape image captured at ISO800, and it really doesn't inspire confidence in shooting at ISO800. Way too much NR artefacts and dithering/smearing effect on the details.

They have one sample image taken at ISO12800 and the details are all but gone in the image. The ISO1600 version of the same image looks quite OK tho.
I don't think Sony had a good reputation for noise reduction in their previous releases(compared to some of the other manufacturers using the same sensors), and it looks as tho not much has changed.

[Balian76]

Looks pretty cool to me, i want to upgrade to a SLT but was kinda thinking I might wait for the 2nd generation, especially with the EVF on the a33/55 but it looks like they have come a bit further forward.

[Sarge]

From what I gather after reading this thread the Sony A77 will only be able to shoot at 12fps for 1 to 1.5 seconds before the buffer fills up and then you have to wait quite awhile depending on which settings you are using. The buffer fills after ~13 raw images.

Some of the comments from the thread.

"And its burst depth for JPG is under 20 when previous dSLRs could do unlimited (though possibly at 3 fps). So what's the point of having so many fps if you can only do it for 1 to maybe 1.5 seconds?! Another sony "spec" that is poorly implemented in the large scheme of things! I think the 1D4 does 110 highest quality JPG in a burst at 10 fps. There's a reason why one costs $5000 and another costs $1300."

and this

"I mean 24.3mp is a lot of data to push through. But if they're able to do that... they should've provided a larger buffer, IMO. I suppose at the price point, they decided otherwise."12fps is really quite fast, but what's the point of having this feature if you won't be able to use it for more than one second!?

[CAP]

Buffer issues aside, looks to me that this camera offers some great features for the price.
After all, how much more should we expect in a camera body that will retail for around $1500?

[aussie girl]

Has anyone used one of the Sony cameras with Panorama sweep funtion, where you hold down the button and pan to get a panorama shot??? I have an Olympus and you can use it on panorama mode, but when in this mode, a frame work comes up on the screen so you can line up where one shot ends and the other has to be taken from. Only problem is, of course, that when you try to stitch them together, there is a noticable difference between each frame because of the differing light each time you move the camera. Was just wondering how this camera counteracts this problem. Is there any one who has taken some photos with a Sony with this function that could post one here for everyone to view??

[CAP]

Now selling in Aus, so has anyone got one of these yet?

[Boo53]

Has anyone used one of the Sony cameras with Panorama sweep funtion, where you hold down the button and pan to get a panorama shot??? I have an Olympus and you can use it on panorama mode, but when in this mode, a frame work comes up on the screen so you can line up where one shot ends and the other has to be taken from. Only problem is, of course, that when you try to stitch them together, there is a noticable difference between each frame because of the differing light each time you move the camera. Was just wondering how this camera counteracts this problem. Is there any one who has taken some photos with a Sony with this function that could post one here for everyone to view??

I've got an Olympus mju with the panorama feature you mention, and an a580 with the Sony panorama.

The olympus does allow you to see what you're going to get as you line it up, whereas the sony takes a series of shots as you slowly pan, and then stitches (fairly quickly). The blend in the Sony, with the few shots I've used it for, is pretty seemless and the file size is significantly bigger. A 3 shot pano on the olympus only results in about a 250k file size, whereas a similar view size with the Sony results in a 12-14Mb file, obviously much more detail with the sony.

On our recent Central Australian holiday I took a number (read lot) of panos, but I kept to my normal method of a number of portrait orientation shots stitched with Kolor auto pano and I think that gives a better quality image