sonyalpharumors

From looking at the specs, there are a good number of tradeoffs: (and I am sure I have missed some)
The VG20 will cost you more (1600+400 for the adapter), will have a lower number of auto focus points when shooting with said adapter, and will not have steady shot for alpha lenses. In exchange, you have a slightly larger lens selection, touch screen to select focus (which the NEX7 would also give you), and better audio without going with a separate recorder, the ability to shoot longer videos. As for sensor quality for video, you will probably need to wait for more reviews to find out more on that, though one review has noted that the video on the A77 was somewhat cropped from the image, so that could be a down side. I would make sure to try the VG20 before going that direction though; I liked the VG10s when I rented them, but I would not have wanted to own one, and while it looks like a lot of the issues were fixed (touch screen and menu dial moved to the outside) it is a lot of cash to spend with out playing with it first.

Wow.. That’s a scary comparison.. I hope the new sensor it’s really not worse than previous models on IQ side.. It would be suicidal from Sony. I think they had the opportunity to kick really hard with A77 NEX-7 but if IQ falls short it will be a fail..

Imaging Resource also posted several raw files with all ISO settings from 50 to 16.000. As mentioned, they can be converted in Raw Therapy, though colours are quite odd because there isn’t any camera profile yet. I get the best results with demosaicing set to “vng4″. The standart setting seems to be “amaze”, which produces odd textile-like patterns when viewed at 100 pct. Conversions in RT (vng4) result in nice grain-like noise structure. ISO 50 to 800 go from noise free to very fine grained noise (not likely to show up in prints at all). ISO 1600 and 3200 show some noise, but in a nice film-grain style. Colour noise is showing up as well, but cleans up nicely with simple noise reduction. In print sizes up to A2, I personally don’t think I would do anything much to reduce luminance noise at these ISO settings. Even at ISO 6400 noise seems OK if you like prints with a little roughness. ISO 12800 and 16000 are noisy indeed, but not utterly useless. Colour noise cleans up, but luminance noise (grain) is rather persistent.

Another observation: The dynamic range seems very (!) promising. The shots from Imaging Resource of the large white house in harsh sunlight show no signs of highlight clipping at all. And detailed shadows are retained and it’s even possible to open up the shadows quite a bit. Apply a little sharpening, and the low ISO files show amazing qualities – and very odd colours, still High ISO files doesn’t worry me a bit any more. The A77 (and 65) seem quite capable in this direction.

If experimenting with Raw Therapy seems too excessive, try Googles free Picasa 3. It reads the raw files too, and the conversions are not too bad either (still rather odd colours). No advanced settings, though, but try auto contrast and auto colour, and expect to see all the colour noise and luminance noise the files contain – but not a shade of watercolour effect…