Sony upgrade..noise issues

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hey Guys,
i'm up grading my sony alphas but, i want to stick with sony as i already have some nice lenses. The thing is i want to do wedding photography and i need to find a sony that can cope with the high iso as my old cameras are rubbish above 400iso. I've been looking at A65,55 ,580,35 and a few more but it's allgetting confusing!!
Any help would be appreciated
cheers Andy
 
The a580 has the same sensor as the excellent Nikon D7000 and Pentax K-5 and Nex-5n etc. and has very good high ISO performance. Perhaps buy a couple of those? The SLTs lose some of the high ISO capability due to using a translucent mirror, but have a much larger viewfinder.

The other option would be to buy a couple of full frame a850 or a900s, which is what I'd be doing if I was a die hard Sony fan wanting to shoot professional weddings.
 
andytaff said:
hey Guys,
i'm up grading my sony alphas but, i want to stick with sony as i already have some nice lenses. The thing is i want to do wedding photography and i need to find a sony that can cope with the high iso as my old cameras are rubbish above 400iso. I've been looking at A65,55 ,580,35 and a few more but it's allgetting confusing!!
Any help would be appreciated
cheers Andy

What Sony's have you got at min?
 
A580. Best overall for noise. Think it might even be equal to the full frame sonys as it is a much newer sensor. Build quality is squeaky. I'd get a couple of those. They're also nice and light so if you are holding them for ages you'll notice the difference. Not waterproofed though so you'll have to come up with a plan for inclement outdoor shots. A77 might be the answer as that is a weather sealed body. 2 580s and an a77 would be about £2k if you can find any 580s.
 
i need to find a sony that can cope with the high iso as my old cameras are rubbish above 400iso.
they'll pretty much murder anything else at base ISO though (&tbh I would have said that 800 was OK if shooting RAW & pp).
It's the difference between CCD & CMOS & you obviously now need something with CMOS for higher ISO work.

Budget?
 
cheers guys.. things have changed for the better so now looking at the A77..should do the job nicely.. Anyone else using the A77 with different ideas?
 
the rumour site suggests that an A57 will be announced next week.
Supposedly it's basically an A65 but with the 16MP sensor.
 
cheers guys.. things have changed for the better so now looking at the A77..should do the job nicely.. Anyone else using the A77 with different ideas?

cheers guys.. things have changed for the better so now looking at the A77..should do the job nicely.. Anyone else using the A77 with different ideas?

Funnily enough I've just caved in and bought an A77 despite agonising over the technical fact it's SLT does mean it's high ISO noise is always going to be worse then the equivalent non-SLT camera..

What made my mind up was seeing some actual output from ISO3200 on the camera in-store, and looking at people's experiences using the A77 at moderate ISO (upto 3200) on other forums, the output is more then acceptable and kicks my previous DSLR's into the weeds.

Just as an example, here's DPReviews studio comparison tool, I've used JPEG since this is the worse case PP you can expect, they don't use noise removal in their RAW conversions so you aren't seeing the final output)
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/stu...8&x=-0.3574924260079235&y=0.16942404579658346
Getting over ISO3200 and it's all damage limitation.. The A77 starts to look noticeably worse, but I'm willing to take compromise on that for all the other things the camera offers.

So with acceptable ISO performance, that leaves you with the rest of the camera, and the A77 offers a very good mix of potential benefits, depending on the user and their preferences or willingness to adapt.

There are lots of features that people some to like or hate, or maybe it's the fact that some good features have small side effects that on paper puts people off.. you certainly have to 'embrace' the EVF and the way it works, if you do this, as I am finding, you can make it work for you to the point you do wonder if this really should be where SLR's ought to be heading..

The two surprising features that are an instant hit with me are the focus peaking (Manual focussing with very shallow DOF is a joy now, and 100% reliable), and the rear screen live view is so usable that I'm actually using it for once, the triple articulated screen augments this and for the first time ever I've found that it suits some style of shooting much better!

I've been practising using the panorama mode as well, getting all the neighbours/family out to line up and see how it deals with static crowds.. it's very good and I can see that being used in the wedding books a lot.. I've done manual pano's a few times, but it's way too time consuming to setup and post process for me normally!

All horses for courses, if ISO performance is all you care about, I'd agree with the A850/A900 route.. they might offer only basic camera stuff these days, but they still are top performers in many ways (being FF)..
 
I have an A580 and can't really fault it, I think the next step for me will be an A77...

Used the A77 a few times and it feels well built and nice to use, unlike the entry level SLT's, which all reel rather tacky, nothing wrong with the images they produce, they just don't feel as if they'd last that long.
 
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