Sony A77 firmware 1.03 shipping in Asia and fixs the issues. RAW quality is very good! (C.Garrard)
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, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
A65 at Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-7 Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
Sony NEX-5n Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
Sony 50mm f/1.8 Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
Sony 55-210mm Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
NEX-5n viewfinder Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay.
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Recent comments
Comment from lordallmighty: Sony Release the Firmware 1.03 online so...Comment from acolyte: Better not, except if you're in HK....
Comment from Liam: Is there away to update it your self ATM...
Comment from Clyde: He didn't say "want". He said "need it ...
Don'z
8 months ago |going to check out the a77 at KLPF tomorrow. heard it’s loaded with 1.03.
Kalpurush :)
8 months ago |Nice. Hope I would get mine soon
REVENGE
8 months ago |Nice, that didn’t take very long.
Philippe
8 months ago |on Dpreview you can see that the 5D MKII has a better noise in raw, It’s a pity that a 3 year old 5D MKII work better that the new A77. it’s not bad at all but it’s a pity. I suppose that the new 5D MKIII will be a better noise than the old MKII. If so the new one A77 Sony will be soon far away behind. It’s a pity !
admin
8 months ago |Philippe. It’s wrong to compare a Fullframe camera with an APS-C model!
Maxwell
8 months ago |Well here in Norway Sony themself said the A77 would “knock some FF cameras down in the boots”.
Interesting to compare APS-C sensor performance to FF sensor
performance. E.g Sony A77 compared to Sony A900.
acolyte
8 months ago |‘some’
mXim
8 months ago |You misinterpreted the Sony rep’s statement. To be better than FF does not necessarily mean at ISO performance.
Philippe
8 months ago |I know, but there is the same difference between the Canon 7D and the A77, the A77 is not better,
David
8 months ago |Much better dynamic range and colours, plus 6 more MP than a 7D.
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |The A77 scores 12 (TWELVE) points more than the 7D, has 2 bit more color depth, 2.5 stops more DR and you complain because it’s a little worse on high ISO?
I wouldn’t buy the A77 because I need good high ISO capabilities but, in no way, I’d say that the 7D is better.
And, to be honest, I doubt that Canon’s new sensors generation will beat Sony’s 16mp and 24mp sensors.
There, I said it!
David
8 months ago |Well said Neo
Depends on your needs, and really very people NEED amazing high ISO.
Unfortunately, lots of people THINK they do.
Johnny.M
8 months ago |Perhaps another pity is that the camera was made by Sony, else changing the brand name itself on the camera to Canon/Nikon, it will better. LOL
acolyte
8 months ago |Yeahhhh Sony sucks! Their APS-C can’t beat FFs! They can’t do their job properly.
Ergo Canikon sucks too
klw10
8 months ago |Yeah, it is kind of unfair to compair the noise to a Full Frame. heck the a900 is better than the a77 with high ISO and it is a Sony. Your point is? Go check out the DR and color depth and tell me who beats who?
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Cameras/Compare-Camera-Sensors/Compare-cameras-side-by-side/(appareil1)/734%7C0/(brand)/Sony/(appareil2)/483%7C0/(brand2)/Canon/(appareil3)/371%7C0/(brand3)/Sony
Aalpha100
8 months ago |And then look at the price: you can buy several A77′s (like: 2,5) for the price of 1 5D! What a surprise it’s almost as good or even better in some respects!
Oh and don’t forget the lens difference in price and bulk.
A77 looks really great to me here (and I was very skeptical before!).
Helena
8 months ago |Canon fanboys have pain.
It is a pity XDD
pancanikonpus
8 months ago |Oh yeah! i didn’t know that 5DMK II also sold at $1,399 price tags
pity to you instead lol…
ieR
8 months ago |u didnt know, canon will reuse their 5DII sensor in 5DIII, like how they reuse 7D sensor in all their crop camera ever since… well 7D. there is NO IMPROVEMENT dude.
Aldo
8 months ago |the firmware for the NEX 5N to resolved the click issue??
ShamB
8 months ago |DPReview images show very good impovement over the competition. The A77 is shaping up to be an excellent all round camera.
danny
8 months ago |I have been reading many reviews lately and comments here on sonyalpharumors. I have a A550 for more than a year now and have taken some really beautiful pictures. I will upgrade in the next year for sure. The A77 would have been a good candidate. Af system is really fast and faster than Canon 7D,Nikon D300s, so that’s a good thing for me, shooting birds and on a racetrack. Fps is excellent, 8 or 12fps, but the buffer is just too small, I cannot live with that. I want to shoot bursts longer than my current camera, and that is not the case. Same thing with ISO, not better. I would like a very clean RAW ISO800 for birds in cloudy conditions, and it’s just the same as A550. So it fails at 2 out of 3 important things to me. Spending 1300€ is not worth to me and will wait till Sony handles with these things.
acolyte
8 months ago |Sony won’t perform that well on high ISO anytime soon. Their multi-frame NR works well though. If you want high ISO performance.. I can’t remember whether Canon/Nikon’s better.
Target Sony for their innovation. After all you buy these pricey things not only because it’s great right now, but because it’ll be great in the future. You buy the future :s
Joel richards
8 months ago |Sony does high ISO. The K-5 uses a Sony sensor and the NEX-5n is also at that level.
Joel
8 months ago |Sony does do high ISO. The K-5 uses a Sony sensor and the NEX-5n is also at that level.
David
8 months ago |Danny, an a580 sounds perfect for you. I upgraded from an a500 to a580 as my backup cam.
Autofocus is much better. Image quality is much better. High ISO is excellent!!
Bruce Ramage
8 months ago |Thanks
Bruce Ramage
8 months ago |My comment, relating to what I want, is there is not enough improvement on high ISO. I understand other people have different wants and the A77 works for them. That’s great! Having an investment in good glass, I’m going to wait until Sony provides more on the specifications I care most about. Maybe the 2012 full frames, which I’m willing to wait for (and pay for if they deliver). What I really wonder is how this comment could possibly offend people. What you want is specific to you and your shooting; what I want is specific to me. (But maybe this time no offence will be taken.)
Mike
8 months ago |All the sample pictures in the reviews linked from this news article are useless. None of them contains any full size pictures or crops. How am I supposed to judge picture quality on 1024×768 files?
Jon
8 months ago |@Mike,
You need to download the files, dpreview allows you to do that. The A77 files are 6000 x 4000.
Clyde
8 months ago |I’m wondering in what situation the a77 noise levels will prevent a photo from being used, sold, published, enjoyed, hung on wall… In what situation will any client/viewer claim “If only it had been captured on a CaNiko”?
Page after page of Erik Van Straten images taken with TMX100 on a half frame vintage Oly Pen FT… They are grainy with blocked up black. Not all are focused perfectly either… But I propose that if anyone tried to “fix” them with a low noise modern DSLR that they would lose their charm and aesthetic qualities altogether. The imperfections help relate the atmosphere… Good photos have nothing to do with DSLR noise levels whatsoever.
Straten images here:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51295&page=2
You pixel peepers are really starting to rub my jib. Art is not mathematics.
Clifton
8 months ago |if there wasnt a D7000 on the market, or the 5DII was slightly worse than the A77 we would have threads saying “oh wow, with the A77 I can shoot soccer in the dark” and other rubbish, just because there are other cameras with slightly better performance people think the camera is suddenly useless. The 5DII is an incredible camera, as is the D7000, we finally have an update to our A mount in the same class, with many features that the competition don’t have, I for one am very happy.
Dave Cox
8 months ago |Great comment. Agree 100% – my mate has a D7000 and my A77 is better in so many ways.
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |The thing is: you CAN shoot ISO 25600 with the D7000 (or even 51200 with the K5!) because there is an option to do so!
The ISO 6400 on the A700 is for “emergency only” but at least the option is there.
Clifton
8 months ago |options can, and will be added in firmware updates, I’m pretty sure the option to use 6400 only appeared after I did a firmware update (on my A700), things like ISO 51200 are going to be used by a very select few and Sony are better off addressing other points first (as we have seen, rather badly!)
I am still to use my A700 above 3200, although there have been a few times I’d have liked to, I’ve still managed to rattle off 25k shots with what (considering the current comparisons) must be a VERY inferior camera. Prior to that I had an A100, its a wonder I got a decent shot out of that at all!
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |Are you sure the A700 originally didn’t have an ISO 6400 option?
I can’t remember which firmware my first A700 had (it was bought on December…. was it firmware 3 already?), but it always had ISO6400.
I seriously doubt Sony will release a fw to increase ISO. If they were to release a fw, it should be to improve overall image quality (like it was from fw1 to fw2 on the A700. Of course, the state-of-art was with fw4).
I had quite a few shots with ISO 3200 (and 4000) wit the A700, all very usable if you ask me. Which was, for me, a HUGE step comparing to the A100.
But let me make it clear: the A77 seems to be a hell of a good camera! For those who do not need high ISO, I’m sure it’ll be a fantastic camera!
Unfortunately, it won’t work for me :’(
Steve Jones
8 months ago |The A700 always had an ISO 6400 option (but not the A100).
Pau
8 months ago |I’m planning on buying this camera, freakin’ stoked on it. I’m gonna be shooting mostly video with it though because of that amazing AF. Got a question though, I don’t remember if it was the NEX-5N or the NEX-7, but I saw that you could change the color of the videos/pictures right on the camera, and you got a live view of the changes, can this camera do that too?
Pau
8 months ago |Found it. NEX-7. At 4:24, does the A77 have this function?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2waPaTwM94
Mist
8 months ago |sure, it has
Wirralpix
8 months ago |I’ve had my A77 with firmware 1.02 for nearly a month yet cameras with firmware 1.03 are shipping in Asia. Why isn’t the updated firmware available for me to download now?
Linh N.
8 months ago |Soon my friend. You should be thankful Sony don’t just release random updates that can brick your camera like they did with the PS3 ;p
Twaddler Belafonte
8 months ago |“The only negative review has been written bu a user that doesn’t actually own the camera ”
You forget to mention that the first two reviews, positive reviews, were written by people who didn’t own the camera.
PeterM
8 months ago |OTOH the A77 shows more detail than the 7D until the high ISOs of over 3200. While I’m sure those that compare to 5DMarkmuckity somnething or other and 7Ds will pooh pah and say so what, it will make a huge difference to those that prints start at 11×14″ and go up from there.
hanugro
8 months ago |I am not aware A77 is already available in Singapore. They are still not in the Sony Singapore website.
Gene Stoesser
8 months ago |would be nice if sony could give us a close idea when A77
will ship in USA. Maybe with in a weeks time
Robby
8 months ago |No Kidding… we keep hearing info from around the world but Sony USA says NOTHING!! They shipped in asia, uk, canada… but not even a word about when it will ship in the US.
Veraky
8 months ago |I was told by a san diego sony store employee that they would be receiving a65′s sometime around the middle of November so I would imagine the a77′s might be in a week or 2 before that. Now that’s assuming he actually knew what he was talking about and not just pulling a random date out of his a$$.
Michael
8 months ago |Hmmm… when I look closely at the DPReview comparison tool, even at just ISO 200, to my eyes the RAW of the NEX-5N looks slightly less noisy than the A77. Look around at several smoother places in the studio scene. Is it just my eyes?
Bill G
8 months ago |PLEASE RELEASE IT ONLINE FFS!!!!
PLEASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!
Zstan
8 months ago |Arghhhhhhhh almost all Sony fans in Malaysia can get to molest the a77 in these 3 days except me!! Damnnnnnn life is unfair.
Ken
8 months ago |Can’t DxOMark re do their test (with 1.03) and give it a new score?
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |Thought that fw 1.03 was for bug adjusting only and no change to image quality?
Ken
8 months ago |My bad, I thought it improved the ISO too
Clyde
8 months ago |Neo… your comment above:
“For those who do not need high ISO, I’m sure it’ll be a fantastic camera!”
Do you think it won’t be a fantastic camera for those who do?
What photographer will suffer with this camera?
You guys are making it sound like Vampires suddenly took an interest in photography. I mean… is there a new type of photography out there that didn’t exist 5, 10, 20 years ago… and now we have togs that “need” a Nikon just to shoot some new style that no one ever shot before?
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |Your message made me smile, Clyde
You aren’t wrong.
Surely up until today, photographers found their way through any difficulties they would encounter.
(TBH, I can’t imagine how sports photographers got great photos using manual focusing lenses!)
But, that’s what I think (don’t need to agree with): if technology evolves to the point of simplyfying a certain task (like AF for sports shooters), why not take full advantage of it?
Ok, sometimes we, users, do get a “little” bit too bitchy about something the new camera has/doesn’t have. It’s more about (high) expectations that are not completely fulfilled.
For MY kind of shooting, I realised that I definetly do not like using flash and like to work with natural lighting.
So, a high ISO camera + IBIS + fast lenses could allow me to do things I’d never be able to few years ago AND make my life easier
Then I can concentrate more on shooting than how to overcome dificulties.
(the exact feeling I had when I upgraded from the A100 to the A700)
Clifton
8 months ago |It would be nice if they did, but I guess it would be an endless job to update cameras like that, I read that the A700 got numerous updates early on. I would imagine they would consider doing a retest at the next solid firmware update (ie 2.0)
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |The original A700′s fw didn’t do any justice to the camera and the sensor. Specially the JPEGs looked really soft.
Sony quickly addressed to that and there was a significant leap on image quality from fw1 to fw2.
Jesse Lim
8 months ago |Pre-Ordered A77 and don’t know when they will ship it. Need it urgently for the Paris Weight-Lifting competition…
Clyde
8 months ago |Is this your first camera? You can go to the store right now and buy half a dozen different kinds of cameras that will satisfy that assignment. Or is this Paris competition open only to a77 users?
I swear it’s so funny to hear people talk as if they “CAN’T” do an assignment unless they have “THAT SPECIAL CAMERA” to shoot it with. Did nobody shoot weight lifting until the a77 was announced?
Linh
8 months ago |I swear it’s so funny to hear people talk as if they know what others really want. Maybe Jesse is only interested in the A77. And since he’s already pre-ordered it, he wants it asap to use for the competition. What’s wrong with that? He never said he can’t shoot with anything else, did he? Lower your nose every once in a while, Clyde.
Jesse Lim
8 months ago |Hehe, thanks for the clarification bro, because my company currently owns a Canon 600D with only the kit lens while I have my personal alpha system which my 70-200G is the best lens to pair with the A77 with burst mode to get the job done. Not to mention the A77′s ISO is much better than the A850.
Jesse Lim
8 months ago |Btw, my A850 have shallower DOF compared to APS-C and that’s why I think A77 is a better choice since I will be getting the 1.5X crop, deeper DOF while maintaining the aperture wide open just to cope with the lighting.
Clyde
8 months ago |He didn’t say “want”. He said “need it urgently”.
Jesse Lim
8 months ago |Nah, I just ordered that for my company and since I’m using a A850 and I really need the burst mode for weight-lifting competition. Not to mention I got a 70-200G to pair with the A77, plan not to use my slow A850 on this assignment. Hopes the A77 ships fast…
Liam
8 months ago |Is there away to update it your self ATM?
acolyte
8 months ago |Better not, except if you’re in HK.
lordallmighty
8 months ago |Sony Release the Firmware 1.03 online so I can STFU!
Why the hell are you not releasing the firmware update!