Next Tuesday Sony will announce the new A57 SLT camera with 16 Megapixels. And stores are already preparing the new preorder pages. So it comes that you can now find the void A57 listed at Redcoon Belgium, Redcoon Germany and Redcoon France.
A part of the new 16 megapixel sensor and the 1,44m dot viewfinder the A57 is pretty much the same camera like the A65. I will cover the A57 presentation here on SAR on Tuesday morning (6-7-8am London time). Stay tuned!

[shoplink 3032][/shoplink]
And here we are again with the SLT versus DSLR discussion ;)
Techradar (Click here) had a talk with MR. Paul Genge from Sony UK. Paul once again confirmed that. “We made a clear statement during IFA, our president made a statement that we were going to be looking at full-frame as the next introduction for SLT“.
As you know Sony discontinued the production of the A580, A850 and A900 cameras and doesn’t list those cameras in their Sonystores anymore. Asked about this Paul said: “We have no SLRs in our line-up today, and our intention is to develop the SLT technology and make that a real stand-out in the market.”

I guess this puts an end on all DSLR hopes. SLT is the future! But if you ask me , the only real long term future is NEX and other future FF mirrorless systems. I think that will be the future of Sony!

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Here are the search links to the last three DSLR cameras with optical viewfinder (you may will not find them anymore):
Sony A900 [shopcountry 3032].
Sony A850 [shopcountry 3028].
Sony A580 [shopcountry 5509].

On March 13th Sony will announce the A57 and it will cost $699 (body only). The camera will ship in April. That’s $200 less than the Sony A65 ($899 on Amazon). The only major differences withe the A65 are the lower resolution viewfinder and 16 Megapixel sensor. The design is 99% the same of the A65 pictured here on top.

One more thing: With the new splitting-up announcement strategy Sony decided to introduce the A37 some times after the A57. NEX and camcorders are also coming within the next two months.

Reminder (SR = Sonyrumor):
SR1=probably fake rumor
SR2=rumor from unknown sources
SR3=50% chance it is correct
SR4=rumor from known sources
SR5=almost certainly correct!

To protect my sources I can’t tell you the full story but I have been told that the Alpha Lens roadmap contained an error and the 70-400mm and 70-200mm G II lenses will arrive in late 2012 early 2013 and not in early 2012. Again, it wasn’t my or the sources error. I should get some details about the definitive roadmap soon. Also about the NEX lenses.

Sorry guys, I know this are news you don’t like to hear from me :(

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I already told you in previous posts that the A57 is almost equal with the [shoplink 8459]Sony A65[/shoplink] in terms of features and design. The main difference is that it uses the same superb 16 Megapixels [shoplink 8452]Sony NEX-5n[/shoplink] sensor. But there are also other differences. I have been told that one of them is that the A57 will uses a 1,44 million dot viewfinder instead of the 2,4 million dot OLED EVF of the A65. My sources said you don’t really notice a major difference. On paper the A55 had a 1,44m dot viewfinder too but only 1m were actually used. The A57 will “use” them all.

The biggest plus of the camera is the lower resolution sensor that in theory should give you less noisier images at High ISO. But we will see if that hope becomes true when the camera gets announced on March 13th.

One more reminder: The NEX-F3 and the new Sony camcorders will be announced in April. And I have been told that there will e an announcement in May too!

According to new sources Sony will release a new firmware update for the A850 and A900. But we shouldn’t expect anything spectacular. The only new feature of the update will be the support for the one lens that none of us will probably ever buy…the super expensive 500mm f/4.0 SSM lens (Click here to see it on BH). I have been told the new SSM motor is too fast for the current firmware to handle. That’s why an upgrade is needed.

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Sony A900 at [shopcountry 3032].
Sony A850 at [shopcountry 3028].

The first SLT/NEX related announcement of the year is the 500mm lens in February.

You may remember the huge day back in August when Sony announced the new [shoplink 8461]Sony A77[/shoplink], [shoplink 8459]A65[/shoplink], [shoplink 8454]NEX-7[/shoplink], [shoplink 8452]NEX-5n[/shoplink] and the new [shoplink 8457]16-50mm[/shoplink], [shoplink 8450]24mm[/shoplink] and [shoplink 8448]50mm[/shoplink] lenses. Sony learned the lesson and will not repeat the mistake to announce too much stuff in one single day. You may have noticed that Sony already had three compact camera announcements this year, one in January, one in February and one in March. The same thing will now happen with SLT and NEX stuff. Sony announced the release of that huge 500mm lens in early February. On March 13th Sony will announce the new A57 and a couple of weeks later Sony will announce the new camcorder for the NAB show and sometimes in April the new NEX stuff (like the [shoplink 7207]NEX-C3 successor[/shoplink]).

I think this is a very correct move. It gives us more time to learn more about a single camera or lens. From now to September I expect new Sony stuff to be announced almost every month, like the 70-400mm and 70-200mm G II lenses, the new NEX cameras, and of course all firmware upgrades.

Stay tuned on SAR, firmware and A57 news are next ;)