sonyalpharumorsLog in

SAR readers sent me more useful info. As you know Sony Europe and Sony US are no more accepting preorders. Some of our readers told us that most Asian countries like Malaysia (Click here to see a shop full of A77), Hong Kong and Singapore are shipping the camera with the new 1.03 firmware. I can’t wait to see first user reports with that firmware! Let me know if you find something! Sony Korea confirmed at inews24 that the 1.03 firmware will solve the current A77 issues. And here are some more things to read:

Sony A77
Dpreview (Click here) updated the Sony SLT-A77 studio comparison samples with ACR 6.5. And Carl Garrard now had plenty enough time to test the A77 and wrote on Alphamountworld: “In the end I think the A77 is a great camera up to ISO 4000, after that, things get dicey on raw files unless you shoot in optimal circumstances and want to take a lot more time fine tuning them in post processing. I’ve seen some 14mp sensors perform much more poorly than the 24mp sensor of the A77, so with all that added resolution and smaller pixels of the sensor, that’s a good achievement.”
And the first four user reviews are now up on Amazon (Click here to read them). The only negative review has been written bu a user that doesn’t actually own the camera

Sony A65
Sony A65 image samples on Flickr (Click here) by Yannick and first impression by Paul at Dpreview forum.

All new Sony cameras and lenses links:
A77 at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
A65 at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-7 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-5n Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony 50mm f/1.8 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony 55-210mm Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
NEX-5n viewfinder Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.

It was only a matter of time until digital sensor would equal or even surpass the film quality. And with the recent announcement of the Sony F65 camera Sony stated in the F65 brochure (Click here) that this time has now come: “Through all the decades, our design goal has always been to match the photographic quality of 35mm film. But now we’re setting our sights even higher: to surpass the limits of human vision. The F65 image sensor is the first of this new breed”.

The new sensor has a 14 stop dynamic range and a much wider color gamut than film. See the graph below:

I cannot wait to see first video samples shot with the F65. And I do hope that soon the Alpha mount cameras can catch up with B&W film too! I hope the A99 Sony press release will sound as amazing as that F65 brochure

P.S.: A behind the scenes video is available here: pro.sony.com

Via Image Sensor World

DxOmark (Click here) just posted the full NEX-5n sensor review. The test measures the RAW sensor performance without to take into the account the actual resolution. What’s the result? The Sony NEX-5n results to have the best available sensor in the whole mirrorless camera world. With an overall score of 77 points it beats the rest of the world. Click the links below to see the comparisons:
NEX-5n versus NEX-C3 versus Fuji X100.
The NEX-5n also easily beats the new Nikon V1 and Nikon J1 camera sensor.
And it’s only one single point behind the A77.
No way for the Olympus E-P3 and Samsung NX11 to get close to the NEX-5n.

Really an amazing result. And that the NEX-5n is a hot-seller can be easily seen at the Amazon mirrorless camera/lens rankings (Click here). Guess who is on first place? Now let’s hope there will be no more “click” issues on the new stock of cameras. I am sending my NEX-5n to Sony service to make it repair.

Check the NEX-5n price and availability by clicking those links: Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay. Also the external viewfinder is available in most stores: Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.

Thanks Kai

I just got very reliable info from my sources saying that Sony Japan decided to delay the shipment of the A77 until very end October /early November. The new exact shipment date has still to be notified. Meanwhile SonyStore.com (Click here) removed the preorder option! Sony Uk (Click here) says the camera is “temporary unavailable”. Sony Germany (Click here) and Sony France (Click here) say that shipment will start in mid-November. It’s easy to guess that the reason for the delay are the issues with the current firmware. Sony Japan wants to ship the new cameras with the newer 1.03 firmware version which will fix the various bugs.

It hink that’s a wise decision from Sony! Now let’s hope they do not repeat the same mistake with “my” Sony NEX-7!

All new Sony cameras and lenses links:
A77 at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
A65 at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-7 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-5n Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony 50mm f/1.8 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony 55-210mm Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
NEX-5n viewfinder Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.

Sony A65 commercial

Sony announced that the new Sony A65 will start to be shipped on November 11 (instead of October 14). Interesting, it looks like the A65 is not having the issues of the Sony A77 so I don’t knwo why it has been postponed. ANyway, I collected some A65 related news from around the web:

Photoreview (Click here) posted a full A65 review: “Some performance differences between the SLT-A65 and the SLT-A77 were revealed in our Imatest and response time tests. For the former, the drop in resolution with the A65 can be largely attributed to the kit lens. Had we used the 16-50mm lens that was used for testing the A77, the resolution figures would probably have been much closer.”

There is also a Sony A65 hands-on at Dpreview Forum and some new image samples at Lowyat.

German Sony A65 review at Chip.de (The A65 is the best APS-C camera you can get for less than 1000 Euro!). And there is also a new test of the A65, A77 and Nex 5n in the German magazine Colorfoto 11/2011 (there is no online version). Interesting: The A65 compared to the A77 had better results throughout all ISOs.

All new Sony cameras and lenses links:
A77 at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
A65 at Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-7 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-5n Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony 50mm f/1.8 Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
Sony 55-210mm Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.
NEX-5n viewfinder Amazon, B&H, Adorama, J&R, eBay.