SLT a55

[Dusty]

And you'd really be complaining if you can set the ISO with your eye to the VF and actually get a full time display of it too. Pretty handy really..so I'm the only one who wants that then?

Okay, I'm now with you on ISO in the VF. The other night it was warm enough for our 'pet' raccoon to come out of the tree and beg for food, and I set the camera to 3200 for my last shots. The next night I went to a cousins Christmas party didn't realize until the end that I still had it set there!

I guess it's a corollary of being able to adjust ISO at whim. In film days you kept it where it belonged!

Dusty

[bfitzgerald]

Yup done the same thing even missed the stupidly high shutter speeds (which tend to give it away being at a very high ISO) Ok user error but you'd not be long seeing the problem if you get it displayed 100% of the time. The problem with the older bodies is you only got it when you pressed the ISO button..so you didn't know what the ISO was unless you pressed it or took your eye from the VF. No idea what ISO you were at on Auto ISO either.

Sony in their infinite wisdom decided this was simply too hard to put into a model so they actually took away the ability to see the ISO even with the ISO button pressed (progress is great isn't it!) None of the A5xx models support ISO in the VF even with ISO button pressed

Back in the film days you rarely changed ISO the odd one mid roll but it was not needed as a display in the VF. It is very much needed nowadays. Worse you have no option to set Auto ISO (this cuts both ways being able to limit how high it goes or letting it roll up higher) ISO 1600 is the setting you get on the new ones, yet these modern sensors are so good now you'd have no problems at ISO 6400 if needed.

You could argue some don't care..and you can work around this. But isn't it just a lot easier to just do the above stuff?

[Greg Beetham]

I guess ISO in the VF would be handy just to confirm what ISO you have; I did a klutzy thing one day, I forgot to re-set the ISO for outside, I walked out from taking photos inside a church and after a few minutes I decided to take a few shots of the Frangipani flowers and totally forgot that I had some horrible ISO like 1600 or such, the A700 didn't complain though it just set some high shutter speeds...until I noticed that is, and changed back down to a more reasonable ISO for daylight. But usually I check the rear screen and select an appropriate ISO for the occasion. So yes Barry the ISO display in the VF would be useful for people like myself, who are getting forgetful in their old age.
Greg

[Dusty]

My problem last night, Barry, was that it was all indoors, so I was using the pop-up flash. I on;y noticed when I hit the ISO button taking the camera back from my 2 year old, who had wanted to take a picture of the Frosty the Snowman toy.

Dusty

[edrice]

Most button pushers don't take good photos they take pretty lousy ones actually. Not all but most. Nothing at all to do with "tech" you can't make that take good shots for you. That's why I attended a portrait shoot today if people could take their own good shots they would..they can't so they hire somebody that can. Does not matter how good the tech gets you'll be in the same situation as before no super intelligent auto mode takes great shots, it might help a bit for some users but it does not make decent shots. (if folks took a bit of care and thought they might get better shots)

Probably not the best example. Portraiture is a dying proposition. Like the buggy whip business, it's getting run over by technology. And tastes change. Today's mugshots are more casual and spontaneous and that's a freeing thing and at the hands of any button pusher.

Yes we all know what counts but then we're looking to be moving forward and not backwards some minor bits are actually pretty handy to have, on their own few are actual deal breakers..added up their loss can be more than a tad annoying. I'm kinda puzzled why NEX users get DMF yet the DSLR ones do not.

Blowing in the wind...

And you'd really be complaining if you can set the ISO with your eye to the VF and actually get a full time display of it too. Pretty handy really..so I'm the only one who wants that then?

Too manual and time-consuming. There is a more advanced technique now - called Auto ISO. That way you don't have to be winkin' and blinkin' into the VF and maybe miss a shot. Besides my thumb is already adeptly trained for the A55 if need be and no need to go cross-eyed trying to get the right number.

Ed

[bfitzgerald]

Disagree most folks are not capable of taking a good portrait shot. It does not have to always be posed you can do candid ones too. You have a lot of options here as you should know being into photography. Technology is doing nothing to make p&s users take well composed portrait shots.


The thing is you've missed the point completely. It's not manual and time consuming you simply set the Auto ISO to what you want and it's going up and down the scale as needed (depending on lighting and focal length etc) It's also telling you what ISO level it's set at. You can't set the ISO upper limit on most Sony models you're stuck with what they give you.

My A200 tops out at an embarrassingly low ISO 400 for auto (my finepix Fuji can be user set! up to ISO 1600). Effectively that means you're manually changing ISO levels above that up and down. What's not to like about my suggestion?

[edrice]

The thing is you've missed the point completely. It's not manual and time consuming you simply set the Auto ISO to what you want and it's going up and down the scale as needed (depending on lighting and focal length etc) It's also telling you what ISO level it's set at. You can't set the ISO upper limit on most Sony models you're stuck with what they give you.

My A200 tops out at an embarrassingly low ISO 400 for auto (my finepix Fuji can be user set! up to ISO 1600). Effectively that means you're manually changing ISO levels above that up and down. What's not to like about my suggestion?

Because you could wind up with hypertropia. But I can't for the life of me figure out why a portraiturist needs to be changing the ISO with his eye, much less at all.

Ed

[peterottaway]

There is nothing wrong with your suggestion Barry. But some of us are becoming tired of this Son Of MLU crusade as it is becoming.

Not showing the EI in the viewfinder is a nuisance, even a minor distraction at times. But in comparison to the Canon and Nikon UI and menu complaints I have, it isn't much of a concern.

[bfitzgerald]

So you never move position and the light changes? I can actually changed the ISO with my eye to the VF on the A200 and 5d dated as they are. You can't with the A5xx models..ISO does not show up even pressing the button.

Taking the camera away from your eye to change ISO kills the concentration. It's one of my biggest peeves with Sony of late, and that alone wiped the A580 off my potential buy list. Of course if you want to manually select ISO you are free to do so even if you have an Auto ISO option. It's actually quite a serious oversight in design from Sony. The exposure triangle shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Yet one is missing from full time display, not logical.

As for the poster above you can get as tired as you wish..one day the issue might get looked at

[edrice]

Taking the camera away from your eye to change ISO kills the concentration.

Why would you do that? That's the beauty of the A55. You don't have to take your eye away from the VF to change ISO. You have ISO, level, histogram, everything you need right in the VF and, as I've said in previous posts, the LCD is folded into the body and I rarely see it anymore. I shoot like I did in 35mm film days never having to move the camera away from my eye and ruin concentration. Why you would want me to bat my eyes at the VF is beyond me.

Ed

[edrice]

BTW, on that note, I just discovered the other day that when changing EV in the VF, that in addition to the 4-way control button, the control wheel does the same thing only it's much handier using the index finger since you don't have to move your thumb away from the EV button. I've been so used to changing it with the left and right arrows on other cameras that it never occured to me to try it. This is even better. Maybe some of you already knew this.

Ed

[bakubo]

In the long term it's just so much hand-wringing and the true old-timers see that. Ansel Adams used a Polaroid and I'm betting he'd have loved the A55 if he'd been around.

Do you mean WWAD (What Would Adams Do)? Boy, it seems these days every time I turn around I see someone saying what AA would be doing. Maybe I am in the minority, but I just don't care much what he might do if he was still alive. If AA was still alive and for some reason hated digital would that make you suddenly get rid of your digital gear and immediately go out and buy a big view camera and shoot B&W film (or maybe color sometimes too) so you can be just like him? (By the way, the you I am writing is not directed at only you Ed, but all of us in general.) I love his B&W landscape photography and have since I first started being interested in photography in the early 1970s, but his type of photography (landscape) is not the only type of photography and he is not the only photographer. I guess if we thought what AA did is the only thing worth doing then we would be doing, or trying to do, what he did rather than whatever each of us does.

[bakubo]

Okay, I'm now with you on ISO in the VF. The other night it was warm enough for our 'pet' raccoon to come out of the tree and beg for food, and I set the camera to 3200 for my last shots. The next night I went to a cousins Christmas party didn't realize until the end that I still had it set there!

That is not the only nice thing about having the ISO displayed full-time in the vf. I always wanted it on my A700 for when I was using auto ISO. I wanted it to display the actual ISO the camera chooses just as it shows the shutter speed it chooses when I am in aperture priority mode. The reason I like to see it is because I have a brain (contrary to the belief of some ) so I know when I can get by with a slower shutter speed/lower ISO combination than the camera chose. So, if I see the ISO is, for example, 1600 and I know there is no subject movement and with SSS I can get by with a slower shutter speed I can manually change the ISO to 800 or 400. Fortunately, my Canon 60D does display the ISO full-time in the vf and shows the actual ISO that was chosen when using auto ISO.

[edrice]

Do you mean WWAD (What Would Adams Do)? Boy, it seems these days every time I turn around I see someone saying what AA would be doing. Maybe I am in the minority, but I just don't care much what he might do if he was still alive. If AA was still alive and for some reason hated digital would that make you suddenly get rid of your digital gear and immediately go out and buy a big view camera and shoot B&W film (or maybe color sometimes too) so you can be just like him? (By the way, the you I am writing is not directed at only you Ed, but all of us in general.) I love his B&W landscape photography and have since I first started being interested in photography in the early 1970s, but his type of photography (landscape) is not the only type of photography and he is not the only photographer. I guess if we thought what AA did is the only thing worth doing then we would be doing, or trying to do, what he did rather than whatever each of us does.

My point was actually a little different from that. Ansel Adams started out with large format but as technology, lenses and film improved he moved towards smaller formats, even published a book of Polaroid shots, and 35mm. The point I was making was not so much WWAD, and I'm sorry I didn't make this clearer, but that many old timers who have the wider perspective of experience know that the technology keeps changing and tend to go with the flow. That does not mean that there are not laggards who will howl at every turn, as we're currently witnessing. So my reference to AA was how in his time he changed with the changing technology and would in all likelihood follow in that natural progression were he still alive. He was the only universal example I could come up with in the heat of the moment.

Ed

[Greg Beetham]

In my particular case, my laggardness is comprised of assessing whether an 'advance' also imposes retro effects on other areas needlessly, if it does I'm inclined too howl....a little. The SLT design is better than I first suspected it was, I'll admit that, but there are penalties for having such a totally electonic camera good as it is. I've got a sneaking suspicion that people leave the rear screen turned off too save power more than anything else, why not turn off SSS and AF as well then a whole lot more power could be saved, and with SSS off you wouldn't have to worry about the overheating thingy...hmmm pretty soon you'd have retrogressed almost back to the dawn of digital photography if you shot at lower res to save memory card space as well ha ha!
(Just kidding around basically)
Greg