Photoclubalpha

I note some in the UK have received their's if ordered from a Sony Centre, andintriguingly, and in what seems a first, Sony Centres are undercutting the price compared to other suppliers - never seen that before.

Some informal correspondence I have had with an early UK buyer: "noisy"

I intended to wait for a review sample on this one, as I'm not really all that confident about buying one and also don't have a lot of spare cash right now to do so. But if they are generally available now, I may buy one. Noisy would seem to be a fair comment.

Done a lot of thinking about the 24 megapixel sensor and conclude that Sony has majored on this mainly to limit the appeal of the Micro 4/3rds models. It's very unlikely that Micro 4/3rds will go to 24 megapixels, so Sony's pixel count will be permanently ahead, and not just by 200 megapixels of whatever, by a full 50% over their 16 megapixels.

David

David Kilpatrick wrote: Done a lot of thinking about the 24 megapixel sensor and conclude that Sony has majored on this mainly to limit the appeal of the Micro 4/3rds models. It's very unlikely that Micro 4/3rds will go to 24 megapixels, so Sony's pixel count will be permanently ahead, and not just by 200 megapixels of whatever, by a full 50% over their 16 megapixels.

David

I am sure 24 MP sensor was in the pipeline long before Nex and even before M 4/3rd. I don't think Sony was even planning to release advanced Nex model (i.e Nex-7) last year when they launched the Nex series. They initially intended Nex as a p&s like system with a bigger sensor and a few basic lenses that beginners can swap. They themselves appeared to be surprised by Nex success.

Actually, I believe Sony planned the 24 MP sensor in response to Canon's 18 MP sensor (specifically a response to Canon 7D).

You might want to hold fire on getting an a77 just yet - reports are surfacing of early adopters having faulty cameras (or at least faulty firmware) - see various dpreview posts and Dyxum posts - some already gave up and returned their cameras...

David Kilpatrick wrote:I intended to wait for a review sample on this one, as I'm not really all that confident about buying one and also don't have a lot of spare cash right now to do so. But if they are generally available now, I may buy one. Noisy would seem to be a fair comment.

Done a lot of thinking about the 24 megapixel sensor and conclude that Sony has majored on this mainly to limit the appeal of the Micro 4/3rds models. It's very unlikely that Micro 4/3rds will go to 24 megapixels, so Sony's pixel count will be permanently ahead, and not just by 200 megapixels of whatever, by a full 50% over their 16 megapixels.

David

Yes, the reports of faultys are worrying. They are surprising because the prototype A77 models being used for demonstrations have not frozen up or had any similar issues. I don't even remember slowness to display aperture changes, or any other specific annoyance with display startup time etc - but I am used to the A55 of course.

I always disable eye start AF, and set the camera for manual switching between LCD and finder. If I do not do this, the A55 will use a battery in four hours and will overheat even if no pictures are taken, because it will constantly activate the OVF which has a very high power consumption.

David