Sony SLT A77 ~ Ai-GyaaN™

At first when you pick up the A77, the immediate reaction is, that this is a big and heavy camera. The body of the camera itself is about 700gms add the 15-105mm lens and you get a 1.4 KG shooter. The camera is solid and weather sealed, thanks to the robust Magnesium alloy body. The ergonomics are brilliant and we preferred carrying the camera without a strap since the front grip of the body is nice and rubberized making for brilliant handheld use.

On the inside is where it all happens, instead of a traditional flapping mirror, Sony has instead used a translucent mirror. The fixed mirror sits in front of the 24.2 MP Exmor APS CMOS sensor and allows only 2/3 of the light on the sensor. The rest is bounced off to a 2.1 Million dot OLED viewfinder. The top of the camera has a monochrome LCD, along with controls for ISO, white balance, exposure, and a viewfinder / LCD toggle.There are scroll wheels at the front and rear for your right index finger and thumb, and a very convenient power switch ring on the shutter button.

Controls are aplenty for those who like setups, a button for AE lock, display options. The left of the camera has microphone input, Mini USB and Mini HDMI ports, a PC Sync socket for connecting external lights, a remote control port, and an AC adapter jack.The camera also accepts SD/SDXC or Sony’s MemoryStick duo cards, rather than the usual CF.

Features and Controls

If you are looking for filters on a camera then, you probably need to look in the lower region of the price bracket, a pro shooter like the A77 usually does not carry those. But there is this camera that does HDR, Toy Camera and Miniature, plus a few filters like Vivid and Monochrome. Apart from the multiple face detect, it also has Smile-Shutter and a sweep panorama. You also have selectable 19 AF points and full manual focus guide. The camera body also has an orientation sensor that ensures that the camera is flat with the ground and performs like a bubble meter. We would have rather had a gyro/accelerometer that would have told us that our camera is straight even when looking up or down away from the flat surface.

A full bevy of manual controls along with selectable/dedicated buttons makes the use of the camera simple yet professional. The easy to navigate menu and the robust mode dial are simple enough for a novice user, and advanced enough for the pro-user.

The inbuilt GPS chip, which lets you geotag your photos and then plot them on a map using iPhoto, Picasa, etc is also wonderful, it does drain an awful lot of battery though. The GPS was also about 50-100m off the exact target. But works none the less

Lenses, Viewfinder and Display

The lens we got with the camera was a 15-105mm lens, but there are over 90 lenses available for Sony’s alpha mount and several adapters to allow mounting of Canon and Nikon lenses (Sans Autofocus) and more third party lenses from Sigma, Tamaron and the likes. The lenses are heavy duty and built to last, they do have excellent glass allowing for, dare i say, “crispy” images and wonderful low light performance. The lenses are also relatively cheaper than the lenses of say – Canon or Nikon, because Sony lenses don’t have Image stabilisation. That feature is inbuilt into the camera and works wonderfully well, not only allowing for great handheld video but also, impressive low light performance

The electronic viewfinder is the point of controversy, where some debate that nothing can be better that a optical viewfinder, I personally prefer the OLED viewfinder. My reason is simple, due to the display-esque nature of the viewfinder, a lot more information is available to the user. The ability to preview the image in the viewfinder is even better, so now without pulling out of the camera looking at the LCD and then taking another picture, one can click a picture, preview it within the viewfinder and move on.

But here lies another issue, if you are in single frame shot mode, then each click will show a preview before you click another, hence delaying the ability to click photographs in a scenario where you know your shots are good. You can press the button halfway through the preview, but its still not as fast as it would be on an optical finder. So, consider yourself pre-warned.

The LCD is filled by 921,600 dots, and has the wonderful TruBlack technology, so black infact that it mingles with the accuracy of photos adding contrast on the LCD. It’s viewable in sunlight, but still a little off. The LCD also attracts a lot if dust and grime, fingerprints and face oils so a wonderful screen protector will do wonders. if you cant find one you can always cut a Mobile phone screen protector and make your own DIY project. Although a 3 inch size should be easy to find.

The LCD is flippilty and Floppity! Okay, it has a 3 hinge mechanism (happy?) and allows viewabilty for the camera with any possible angle, even forward. One issue arises here aswell, since the screen can face forward either from below or above the camera, in a situation where one has say a Microphone on top and and the A77 is placed on a tripod, it is practically impossible to view the LCD. In this situation a Canon Style flip-out to the side LCD wins by leaps and bounds.

Interface

The Simple interface is easy to go through, the best part is that its a single menu system that you navigate with the joystick. In Manual and Semi-Manual modes the Fn button allows for customizations of settings such as ISO levels, Shutter Speed and Aperture Size.

The menu is very easy to understand and customise, but is a little slow, the whole camera interface suffers from old man syndrome. Turn on the camera and the monochromatic LCD takes about 3 seconds, click the menu button and there is a simple pause for about a second or two.

We also definitely agree with the proximity sensor issue, that we also highlighted in the video. Though the ability to shift to a full time Viewfinder display is there, its not the best solution. Shifting from the LCD to the Viewfinder, a simple proximity sensor turns off the LCD and turns on the Viewfinder, the lag is sometimes so much, that those precious seconds can make or break your shot.

Performance and Image Quality

Step aside people the A77 has arrived! Remove any and all doubts about the translucent mirror and the 1/3 light loss. The camera uses the same 24.3-megapixel APS-C seen in NEX cameras and possibly Nikon cameras aswell. Colors are accurate and clear, and images are sharp and clean.

White balance problems occur indoors where everything seems a little warmer on the camera, but is easily fixed by selecting indoor on WB settings. The camera is stunningly sharp thanks to the impressive in-body IS that allows for images to be crisp even with shaky hands, even at night.

Low light performance, as mentioned many times, is impeccable. The camera shoots at ISO 24600 with boost, but we don’t recommend that. Images are Noise free till about ISO 800 and then you start to see grain in the images. 1600-3200 is still usable, but beyond that will bring you to the stone ages. By default the A77 will only go up to ISO 1600 in Auto mode, but you can set it to go as high as ISO 12,800 through the menu.

Although there is no real need for a 24.3 MP sensor, the large image size, and the crisp images allow for a 100% crop without any loss of detail. Images when shooting in RAW+ JPEG will take up almost 40-60 MB of space an will slow you down if you don’t have a high capacity and high speed card.

The A77 can shoot 12 full-resolution frames per second, and captures about 20 frames in two seconds before slowing down to allow a Class 10 standard card to buffer, get a faster card and possibly have limitless shooting. The best feature of the camera is now demonstrated, even at high fps, image sharpness and focus is in place. Out of the many continous images you will capture, rarely you will find flaws with it. Making it a semi-studio owners pride and joy.

Video Features.

SLR video is a big thing nowadays and Sony didn’t want to be left out, since video is their thing. Sony not only added Video but did something to set a benchmark for other companies. The SLT a77 focuses so brilliantly in Video mode that it almost performs as good as a professional broadcast camera with auto focus. The ability to capture 1080p video at 60p makes for fun video and playback at high speed or double the frame rate. Other formats include 1440 x 1080 @ 30fps, 640 x 424 @ 30fps, and 1080p @ 24fps.

The ability to add an external microphone and a headphone out for monitoring make for a wonderful excuse to buy this camera, which offers exceptional – shallow depth of field – video.

Conclusion

The A77 is the only camera, that not only lives up to expectations, but out performs them. Roughly a lac (about $2000) for the bundle sets it at a semi pro price point, but as a 1 Lac rupee camera it does a lot more. Brilliant photography is just one element. Video features that wow, fast autofocus, weather sealed body and brilliant in-body image stabilisation just to name a few other. The camera does come with its own set of defects, including the laggy interface and the controversial viewfinder. What adds to the pie is the slow LCD to Viewfinder switch time and honestly the lack of a touchscreen (call me simple, but a touchscreen would have improved video performance ten folds).