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The A77: My good, my bad, and my unknown

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chadmarek

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I shoot sporting events. Most of my clients' use is in web and smaller print (8.5x11 max usually). Some of the shooting can be high volume. AF tracking and available space in the buffer are of paramount importance. Because of volume, I batch PP and spend time performing specific finishing on maybe one out of a thousand shots.

Good:
  1. AF sensor layout is good and covers the important areas of the frame. More sensors does not mean better. Well placed sensors means better.
  2. Without having handled it, size looks good and ergo looks like it is well thought out.
  3. Articulating screen is useful for some of my shooting situations. The way the screen tilts on my NEX5 is nice, but more flexibility would be welcome.
  4. Top LCD. Ever since I started using a camera with one, I have found it very valuable.
Bad: (descending order of importance)
  1. Buffer size is not sufficient for action photography. Even in JPG mode, just over 1.5 seconds of shooting until the buffer is full. There are few things worse than seeing the money shot, hitting the shutter release, and nothing happening because the camera has no place to put the image.
  2. Frame rate selections (12 fps, 8 fps, and 3 fps) are insufficient. 8 fps is plenty fast in most situations, and too fast in others (especially if trying to manage a limiting buffer size). I will sometimes back that off to 5 or 6 fps to give my (larger) buffer more time to clear and to help prevent running out of card space too frequently. When shooting a party or other non-sports related event, I use 4fps. I found 3 fps too slow, but 4 a touch too fast. Honestly, the 3.5 fps on my X700 and MD-1 was perfect.
  3. SD card. I am heavily invested in CF cards and would need to invest in more money in a different card format. Additionally, I am not a fan of SD cards – they are too small and fragile to handle in the field. Loosing or damaging a card that holds what the client has paid for is completely unacceptible and not a risk I am a fan of taking.
  4. Pixel count is twice that of my current camera.
  5. Rated battery life is half that of my current cameras. That, taken with the pixel count means that I would be changing a card or a battery 4 times more frequently than I currently am.
One more - Lack of a very good, well built UWA zoom (STILL). The rebadged tamron is an unacceptable downgrade from what I am using. No, not specific to the A77, but it does affect the attractiveness of the camera.

Unknown: (the wait-and-see)
  1. AF tracing. AF is supposed to be “lightning fast”. Not sure what that means. However, Sony has a big gap to overcome in terms of tracking moving objects.
  2. Image quality. I have seen a lot of people complaining about the IQ of the sensor. First, most of pre-production FW. Second, at higher ISOs that I use or need (I shoot at MAX 3200 in the worst situations), and third, many of people posting don’t know their workflow, so it is highly dubious that it is a good work flow. The suspicion is that this will be good. Though, I am still hesitant about sony’s application of NR.
  3. EVF – Have yet to see one that is good enough for me. But, have not seen this one.
  4. Write speed to cards (buffer clearing) – I am cautious because SD is currently the slower format, but it is getting better. That does not help me in my shoot on Sunday, however. This is complicated by the increased file size.
Another lens comment - Quality of the 16-50mm. Price still implies quality. This is one of my 2 bread and butter FL ranges.

chad
 
Odd mathematics. If the battery requires changing twice as often, and the storage card needs to be changed twice as often, that's twice as many operations. Not four times as many. For example, if you at taking 2,000 shots and camera A gives 1,000 shots per battery with 500 photos per card whilst camera B does 500 shots and 250 photos per card then camera B requires 12 (4 battery, 8 card) operations, camera A 6 (2 battery, 4 card). That's assuming the same size cards are used.

Also, where's the evidence SD cards are more fragile than CF? Yes, they are smaller, but there are fewer, more robust pins. SDHC/SDXC cards are very common on camcorders, and I've not heard of issues. For security it would be much better if professional cameras allowed two copies two be written to separate cards to overcome any flash card failure issues.
 
Chad, I will refer you to this website. Battery life is showing to be badass on this camera. Refer to this quote:

"Quote: A77's continuous shooting mode, at 12fps, we took around 1000+ photos in one day and the battery was still not flat"

The quote is after the article here: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/sony-alpha-a77-vs-a65-slt-hands-on-preview-17300

Check out that link, awesome review of the camera as well.

Cheers,
Landon
 
As far as we know the 16-50 is not a rebadged tamron. It is a new design, weather sealed, SSM. Sure it may have taken some of the design concepts, but has improved on them.
 
Me too, the other points I can probably live with.

No NR Off function is another.

No NTSC / PAL swich for video is another.
 
Wow, I agree. What good is a super-fast 12fps and fast AF if the camera can't handle the incoming images fast enough to keep up.

Sony crams all those MP onto the sensor, which cranks up the file size, and puts it in a camera with a fast, accurate AF and a continuous shooting speed that can zip off 12 photos in one second, but doesn't think to make the buffer an adequate size to handle those features. Unbelievable.
NewsyL said:
Of all points it is the buffer that has me rethinking how useful this camera will be.

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Newsy http://newsy.smugmug.com
Click to expand...
 
SteveGJ said:
Odd mathematics.
Click to expand...
My mistake. But, changing a card rtwice as aften and changing a battery twice as often when I could be shooting or looking for THAT shot is not what I want to be doing. In business, they call that non-value-added time.
SteveGJ said:
Also, where's the evidence SD cards are more fragile than CF? Yes, they are smaller, but there are fewer, more robust pins. SDHC/SDXC cards are very common on camcorders, and I've not heard of issues. For security it would be much better if professional cameras allowed two copies two be written to separate cards to overcome any flash card failure issues.
Click to expand...
Never had a problem with a pin, and as long as the slot on the camera is well designed, nobody should.

The picture of strength (2 fingers):

 
if Sony were to put in the menu a way to adjust continuous burst speed, say 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, then there would be a work around for continous shooting for me. I was hoping for something a little faster than the A700. Between 6 and 7 fps would have worked for me, but if I could dial down to 6 fps and shoot for 3 to 4 seconds at a burst, that would fill my needs.
--

 
Landon,

I get a lot more out of one battery than the 950 that my camera is CIPA rated for. The thing is that, using the same test method, the A77 is rated at 500, and mine is rated at 950.

In the end, shooting with the same process, that comes out to about half.

chad
 
That isn't surprising at all. On the a55, I have already taken 1000+ shots in the 7fps mode and still had 40% of my battery left. And that's with GPS enabled.

The incremental energy cost of taking photos in continuous advance is small since the LCD/EVF are bigger consumers of energy than the shutter and readout electronics in modern DSLRs. Personally, I think that 'number of shots' is not the most meaningful metric in standardizing battery life, but unfortunately that's what we have.
 
The 1.5 second buffer limitation is a real turn off. I reserve my judgement until I ry it out, but it just seems bizarre they would not think to extend this. It needs to be able to speed shoot for 3 seconds or more. This could have been addressed by allowing more shots at 12 / 18 Mpix, but alas no according to some reports on here.
 
Gotcha, thanks :)
 
Cetonid said:
if Sony were to put in the menu a way to adjust continuous burst speed, say 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, then there would be a work around for continous shooting for me. I was hoping for something a little faster than the A700. Between 6 and 7 fps would have worked for me, but if I could dial down to 6 fps and shoot for 3 to 4 seconds at a burst, that would fill my needs.
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Click to expand...
That's what I'm thinking of for panning action sequences. I would like the buffer to be able to handle about 3 seconds of shots and have a 1 or 2 second reserve and then be ready again for a full burst within 6 to 10 seconds. Some of the reports of the buffer clearing within 15 seconds with high speed cards are encouraging, something firmware can be tweaked for, better than 20-25 seconds which is much much too long.

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Newsy http://newsy.smugmug.com

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...for the short buffer: Sony doesn't really pretend a77 to be a pro's choice. They may be thinking only amateurs will be interested on such a feature-packed machine, but that would be a big mistake!
 
chadmarek said:
Landon,

I get a lot more out of one battery than the 950 that my camera is CIPA rated for. The thing is that, using the same test method, the A77 is rated at 500, and mine is rated at 950.

In the end, shooting with the same process, that comes out to about half.

chad
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what camera your coming from, but the a77 is the first to record video in this super high quality and high fps format with full time autofocus, etc. According to the tests done to measure battery performance, the expected battery life includes some video usage, due to the camera being able to support this. If your camera doesn't support video, it's rating will be much, much higher. See:

so I just read the review here:
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/...news_309393.html?offset=&offset=1
and it says:

"I found that the battery life is impressive, being able to take more than 1,000 images over a couple of days from a full charge."

Is it possible the CIPA rating is less because the camera now has Video and therefore must conform to a different Testing Regime that would include part video shooting. That would explain the quoted 400-500shot that was expected.*

I have a feeling that the actual, real-world use of the a77 in terms of shots/battery usage is going to be much better than it looks on paper.

Landon
 
Copy and paste buggered up, he's the working link:

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Sony_Alpha_77_and_NEX_7_news_309393.html?offset=&offset=1

Addition: The a77 also has GPS that will use some power, but this overview states that many pictures were obtained with it on. You have the option to turn it off. If your current camera doesn't have GPS, that is another thing that will give it a shots-per-battery boost over the a77. If total shots is of high importance, disabling the GPS would increase your shot count. I've just heard many people complain about the actual "spec sheet" battery life of the a77 that have not used it; however, people that have used it seem to uniformity disagree and think that it's stamina is great.
 
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