A65 and noise... yes, I know, sorry...

So, after a run of bad luck with Samsung NX300's, I decided to try something else.

Sony's A57/65/77 seemed like the best thing for me. I don't know why, but personally, I will be quite happy for mirrors to go the way of the dodo, and after the likes of NX/NEX, M43, this is the closest to the removal or mirrors I can come.

I would have gone NEX, but for some reason the lens choice doesn't quite do it for me, where Samsung lenses were just right.

Anyway, on to the A65 I picked up. It's almost perfect for me.

And I knew there were complaints about high ISO... but I didn't think it would be as bad as it appears to be.

It starts getting relatively grainy from as low as ISO 400. Took a shot of church next door this morning, and the nice(?) blue sky is quite speckled/rough.

As for going to something like ISO 1600, I find the grain almost impossible to remove from RAW without completely destroying details.

I will say, that probably 90% of the time, I can probably live with the results, but this was also going to be a take-on-holiday camera, and I tend to go to places with forests and jungles, in shade.

From my last holiday, I can tell you I had to push to ISO 6400 at times on the NX300, and while I wouldn't consider them great shots, they are still good enough to keep as an OK quality reminder of the holiday.

Though I was mostly using the Samsung 18-200mm lens, which at f6.3 through a lot of the range, is not very fast.

But I am thinking, the only way of compensating is getting some very expensive wide-aperture glass!

But I need to know if the grain I am seeing is normal. I can't post pics right now as am at work, but do peoples experience sound like mine with regards to ISO performance?