Pop Photo really likes A77

[hrstrat57-RI]

http://www.popphoto.com/gear/2011/09/la ... ps-c-dslrs

I am still mulling over what to do about my busted A 700....switch systems, grab a used one from KEH or take a chance on the A 77.

This is an encouraging review.

[bfitzgerald]

I know I tend to be overly negative
But pop photo seem to be the exact reverse they are utterly besotted with Sony SLT products and don't really want to be critical in any respect.

I'd try to wait for a few more reviews from sources that don't sound like a Sony sponsored advertising campaign, even the wording they use is inappropriate for any review site and only fuels suspicion of an ads deal with Sony and an attempt to please the company with a glowing review.

[Greg Beetham]

Sheesh ‘Overly negative’ Barry? That seems a little harsh on oneself I think, perhaps ‘constructive criticism with occasional mild negative connotations for emphasis’ would be better.
But yeah Popular Photo seems to be in love with the SLT design in general and Sony in particular. Although to be fair they did offer a couple of mild annoyances about the A77, one was about the couple of times it went into limbo or some kind or funk for a little while and the other was the EVF not being available (it goes off the air too) when it should be available for the taking of photos or checking composition, but accompanied by the rejoinder that Sony will fix that for sure with a firmware update, so I guess you could say the ‘review’ was not totally one sided.
What bugs me about reviews is they never seem to test cameras for flash functionality, I don’t think they even flipped up the onboard flash, and this camera being a 7 series one would think they should at least pay some sort of attention to the flash system.
Greg

[tom power 53]

I bought my first DSLR - A100 - because of the Pop Photo review and camera of the year award. Good advice for me.

I think they do a reasonable review but not super technical. After all the people on most forums are detail oriented hobbyist that are very interested in the smallest details of getting the absolute top performance for their - cat shots? Pop Photo is more interested in reviews for the average consumer that could care less about 1/2 stop of high ISO performance on a camera they occasionally use and rarely do any significant PP to.

Pop Photo does a decent job for it's primary audience - not a technically oriented magazine though.

IMO the A77 is a fine camera for the average DSLR user and it's many features are fantastic for that user. For high end amateur techies it will not be the best choice for all situations but will perform better for PPer's when LightRoom is set up for converting it's RAW files. Obviously in hindsight many improvements could be made but seems like it is a pretty darn good all around camera.

Likely not the camera for people that are looking for specifically the best high ISO performance and are avid PPer's or need specialized auxilliary accesories such as tilt shift or long large aperture lenses. But then Sony has never made a camera for these people.

A77 is what it is - not what it is not. JMO but Pop Photo judged it for what it is - not what it isn't - which is a reasonable thing to do.

[bakubo]

They noticed one of the same EVF problems that I have seen in earlier cameras:

The main problem we saw with the EVF compared with an optical finder is that the EVF isn't always on. If it were, it would be a major drain on the battery, so it makes sense that the sensor near the finder activates it when you raise the camera to your eye. However, there were times that the sensor was inadvertently tripped while we wanted to change settings using the LCD. At other times, the EVF took too long to turn on, and we were left waiting before we could frame our shot. This didn't happen often, but the few times it did happen left us a bit annoyed.

[Dr. Harout]

Could that be a firmware bug?

[twm47099]

A general statement about US photo magazines is "they've never met a sponsors product they didn't like." In the past PopPhoto wasn't the worst and actually had some scientific measurements, but you needed a code book to figure out when the praise was really carefully worded criticism. Other mags are even worse, just rewriting (or not) the manufacturer's press release. Gee I wonder why no one ever accuses them of plagiarism?

I found the Brit magazines less universally glowing, but they had the entertaining feature of fanboyism depending on who the editorial staff were. It was always interesting to see how they could take an excellent Minolta product such as the 7 or 100 f/2.8 macro and downgrade its high points - The Dynax 7 had quick to use interface, but being non-standard was downgraded for being confusing to use (writer was Mr. Canon's brother in law), the 'Minolta 100 f/2.8 was the sharpest macro tested, but the higher price ($20 ish) results in it being ranked below the xyz.'

tom

[Dusty]

Could that be a firmware bug?

Nope! It's a hardware bug - that never happens on a DSLR!

Dusty

[Greg Beetham]

A general statement about US photo magazines is "they've never met a sponsors product they didn't like." In the past PopPhoto wasn't the worst and actually had some scientific measurements, but you needed a code book to figure out when the praise was really carefully worded criticism. Other mags are even worse, just rewriting (or not) the manufacturer's press release. Gee I wonder why no one ever accuses them of plagiarism?

I found the Brit magazines less universally glowing, but they had the entertaining feature of fanboyism depending on who the editorial staff were. It was always interesting to see how they could take an excellent Minolta product such as the 7 or 100 f/2.8 macro and downgrade its high points - The Dynax 7 had quick to use interface, but being non-standard was downgraded for being confusing to use (writer was Mr. Canon's brother in law), the 'Minolta 100 f/2.8 was the sharpest macro tested, but the higher price ($20 ish) results in it being ranked below the xyz.'

tom

Tom it was fascinating at times over the years reading how reviewers managed to downgrade Minolta camera equipment vs. the competition but somehow always neglected to mention the origin of quite a few innovations that became standard features eventually in the competitor’s cameras. I remember (moving to more recent times) that a reviewer complained (was really trying hard to find some way of criticizing the KM5D) that the seams where the body fit together wasn’t as good as C or N, and the buttons above the thumb grip (mainly the Fn and +/- buttons) were in danger of being pressed accidentally. Of course I looked at the seams on my KM5D in order to find the poorly fitting ones and came to the realization that the fit was very fine indeed everywhere I looked, so I guess the reviewer somehow got a bad one, and I have yet to accidentally press one of the buttons that he complained about, funny thing, the later A100 had an even bigger deeper thumb grip with buttons in the same area as the KM5D so if anything an A100 user would be more likely too accidentally press one of those but no similar criticism was levelled at the A100, that I remember anyway. (I have never accidentally pressed one of the A100 buttons either)
I suppose there could very well be some kind of gratuity happening between Popular Photo and Sony but I also get the impression (strongly) it gained high praise because it can do continuous PDAF during video, an impressive feature to have in a still camera for sure but the 7D and the D300 are both better still cameras (especially the 7D with it’s high ISO abilities), taking response times, reliability and camera photo taking availability/viewfinder lag/processing etc. into account, but then who needs a still camera to excel at taking stills when it can focus during video? I guess the actual focus speed and the subject tracking ability itself is worth high praise though just the same.
With the ascendancy of electronic everything cameras I think it’s time that reviewers looked at more than just the gee wiz features, I can remember when you could use any alternately manufactured lens or flash (third party) on your particular brand of camera and it would work just fine, now it’s virtual Russian roulette whether a given flash or lens that worked quite ok with a previous model would mysteriously have developed glitches with the latest model camera or some important function would cease to work. So I’m thinking now it’s time the reviewers tested the new cameras with a selection of popular third party flashes and lenses to advise on compatibility issues as well.
Greg

[edrice]

I know I tend to be overly negative

...a master of understatement.

But pop photo seem to be the exact reverse they are utterly besotted with Sony SLT products and don't really want to be critical in any respect.

I'd try to wait for a few more reviews from sources that don't sound like a Sony sponsored advertising campaign, even the wording they use is inappropriate for any review site and only fuels suspicion of an ads deal with Sony and an attempt to please the company with a glowing review.

Maybe you'll feel better reading reviews by those besotted to Nikon... or maybe Pentax.

I've been reading reviews in Pop Photo for over four decades. Haven't been burnt yet. I've found any camera I bought to be pretty much the way they describe it.

Ed

[tom power 53]

Yes they seem to do a reasonable job considering that they do need to sell ads to all these companies.

If you really read their reviews, of course some are better than others, you just need to realize they are grading on a curve where no camera can be reported as a bad value and not to buy it. You will see faint praise for many cameras they review though so some interpetation will give you their actual impression.

Also, again, it must be realized their reviews are geared for all buyers not just advanced shooters.

Pop Photo has actually been fairly positive on recent Sony cameras with the "gadget stuff" advanced DRO,HDR, multishot noise reduction, sweep panorama and video capability being big plusses.

[bfitzgerald]

The problem with Pop photo is they rave about models based mostly on technology alone. A55 camera of the year..yet in actual use it's far from it..of course that's my own view.

Frankly I'd rather have the slightly skeptical UK mags than something like Pop photo they just can't take the gloves off almost everything really is great..that is doing the reader an injustice. A review should be critical and frank expressing good and bad points. Pop photo is one of the worst out there..

I don't want to see rave Nikon or Pentax reviews either I want the gritty hard nosed objective take.

[bakubo]

Frankly I'd rather have the slightly skeptical UK mags than something like Pop photo they just can't take the gloves off almost everything really is great..that is doing the reader an injustice. A review should be critical and frank expressing good and bad points. Pop photo is one of the worst out there..

I don't want to see rave Nikon or Pentax reviews either I want the gritty hard nosed objective take.

The way I see things now is that since everyone is human no one can be totally objective. Therefore, I just read several reviews if it is a camera I am interested in. There are reviews done by people who are fans of the company and they tend to be biased toward the camera. There are reviews done by people who are fans of another company and they tend to be biased away from the camera. Then there are reviews where the person tries to be unbiased (but can never completely succeed). They are all good. The ones written by people who are fans of another company tend to dig deep to find bad points about other brands. That is really good because sometimes they write about things that the other two types miss (or for fanboy reasons decide to ignore). You just have to read reviews from all types to get a more rounded view of the camera in question.

[edrice]

A55 camera of the year..yet in actual use it's far from it..

That statement seems to fail the logic test.

I want the gritty hard nosed objective take.

I see, and everyone else wants smoke up his @$$? The implication appears to be that a gritty hardnosed objective take and positive findings must be mutually exclusive. This again fails the logic test.

[bfitzgerald]

The is no logic test simply journalists who do reviews. Yes Henry is right it's impossible to be completely objective every review is influenced by the person who does it. But time and time again Pop photo have missed some pretty obvious points with their reviews..people do make mistakes but not to the degree they do.

Their choice of wording is also overly dramatic. They did mention the EVF/OVF aspect and did a not bad job balancing that one. But using words such as "Sony's A77 Is The New King of APS-C DSLRs", "The other guys should be worried", "Sony has, once again, radically changed the world of DSLRs with its A77. Plus, it has done so without compromises in the shooting experience or in image quality. The A77 now reigns supreme over APS-C format DSLRs" Interesting mention about no compromise on IQ as well something which is ignoring one drawback of the SLT design

It's just overplayed fluffy nonsense and this is the problem with Pop photo when was the last time you saw them do a tear down on a camera review? Everything is great which isn't very informing for the reader.

Onto the A55 IMO no it's not a camera of the year it's about journalists getting over excited about something new (well not that new but new for the DSLR world) DPR did the same thing. It's too small, fiddly and not nice to hold that's my view but hey that's pretty much very important for something you use in your hands.