Sony DSLR

Jaisus

Jaisus

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Jai
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Have never really looked at Sony Camera's before for me it was always going to be Canon or Nikon, However I was just looking at my planned upgrade (D7000) and then I saw the Sony SLT-A65VK so I thought I would have a peek. it fires off 10fps! and then the Sony SLTA57K fires off 12fps.

Now I am not sure on the D7000 I am loving the idea of the speed that the Sony's seem to have and everyone always seems to be banging on about Sony Sensors being all soooo good..


Is the image quality on the Sony really good? better than a Nikon? Confussed now :thinking: might just even get a Sony just as a dedicated sports shooter at those speeds, but are they any good?
 
Its Sony sensors in your d5100 probably the same one as the 2 Sonys you mentioned and the nex3-5. Images a great, you will loose a bit of iso performance though due to the translucent mirror. In body stabilisation is a nice feature too.
 
I'm a Sony A77 owner and interestingly enough I've borrowed a D7000 from a friend for a week to play around with since I've been wrestling with the decision to either buy the A99 or D600.

What I will say though is as a sports shooting rapid fire camera I don't think you will be happy. The main reason is that when shooting, the EVF goes black then into a slideshow mode. So it makes panning/tracking fast moving subjects quite hard.

The other thing i dislike is the small buffer on the Sony which means with 12FPS, I can fill it up in 1-1.5 seconds. Using a fast SD card helps a tiny bit but not much. If you are shooting RAW then it takes ages to clear the buffer. Often this means I've missed the key moment and my camera is a small brick whilst it's writing the data. Usually I put my camera into continuous advance mode which fires at a much more sedentary 8fps or 3fps. 12fps is simply too quick with such a small buffer.

Image quality, I have to say that I preferred the IQ coming out of my Sony than the Nikon. And that was when paired with the 50mm f1.4G. It just seemed the photos coming out of my Sony are just more vibrant. My opinion only, YMMV.

What I do have to say though is that 2 years after switching from OVF to EVF is that I have no idea anymore how to shoot with an OVF. It's like being used to the heads up display from a jet fighter then being told to fly a spitfire. Shooting with an OVF just seems so quaint now.

The downside is that ISO performance on the A65/A77 are not as good as the D7000. So if you are going to be shooting a lot at 3200/6400 then the D7000 is probably the better bet. That said the difference was smaller than I actually expected and easily sorted out in PP.

But as an all round camera I have to say that I prefer my A77. The A65 is essentially the same minus some buttons, weather sealing and the top LCD. The latter isn't important on the Sony aside from making the camera look more pro. I get all the info fed to me in the EVF. But I found myself using the LCD all the time on the Nikon.
 
I have no intention of getting another Camera till next year or until maybe Bargain price hits the D7000, So I might even order me a Sony when I get back from Holiday and have a play with it, see what I think.. The 12fps probably is far too fast and I can see how it would fill the buffer up very quickly, but simply having the option to decrease the fps to say maybe 6-8fps gives me a greater speed than I already have.

I will wait and see, give it a field test like I did with the D3200 & D5100 and make a choice from there.
 
gadgeteer said:
The other thing i dislike is the small buffer on the Sony which means with 12FPS, I can fill it up in 1-1.5 seconds.
Click to expand...

I am always a little amused when I see mention of the 'small' buffer on the A77.
It's not that the buffer is small, it's that the A77 shoots very fast!

The buffer holds ~15 images (full RAW), much the same as on the A700 & A900. That is fine on either of these older models, as they 'only' shoot 5fps, and I've yet to find a situation where I'd want to shoot a burst or more than 8 or so shots (usually 4-5 is plenty).

This changes on the A77, as in the time I'd get 8 shots, you would fill the buffer (and then have the pause while it cleared).

I would agree the A77 should have a bigger buffer, but it's not small. :)
 
It depends which way you look at it. A kind of cup half full/half empty argument.

You'd have thought it was common sense for Sony to have put a buffer into the camera which was big enough to cope with at least 2-3 seconds. Yes the buffer would have to be much bigger and that would add cost. But this is not a cheap camera. It is/was their flagship model.

Don't get me wrong, I love my A77 and what I've realised is that even if I did switch to a Nikon that chances are I'd still use the A77. So subject to the pennies, it's looking like an A99 for me.
 
The buffer on the D7000 is 10 RAWs. The buffer on the A580 is 20 odd. Think you can do about 40 jpgs with the latter so it's more or less continous with a fast card. That's mostly why I chose the a580 at half the money...

I think buffer size is important. It should be several seconds at full tilt or it's not actually usable. If you can do a burst, break, burst, break for as long as you want then that is also ok.
 
I'm on my second SLT and, frankly, the top speeds on both are far too fast for most practical purposes. I find 4 or 8 fps to be plenty for most sports or wildlife action. 10-12 fps is just for water drops and showing off in front of canikon users. ;-)
 
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