I’m just now getting my hands on the Sony A77. While I’ve got lots planned for my final review, I captured a few images with the A77 last night and wanted to pass along a sampling of the ISO range for it.
Check them out below.
Right-click and choose “Save link as…” in order to download a full-res version for further inspection.
Note that these are all just JPEG images with the standard color profile and noise control settings, as I haven’t had a chance to get into the RAW files yet. As typical with Sony, the noise suppression can get quite ugly as you climb to higher ISOs. However, there’s a lot of resolution in there…
That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll have a lot more in the coming days on the Sony A77, including some direct comparisons to the Nikon D7000 and the Canon 60D.
shammyB says
Hmmm. That colour card looks like its a cheap cardboard print rather than something like an X-Rite (where the swatches are solid sprayed inks)… so I can’t tell the difference between camera noise and print dot noise (esp because we’re talking 24MP)!
Eric Reagan says
It is a cheap cardboard color card. If you compare the high ISO settings with lower ISO samples and/or other parts of the images with what you are looking at, it should be pretty easy to distinguish.
shammyB says
Hi Eric
Thought so… I could probably even name the book it came with as a free tear out insert, how geeky is that :D
Anyway, the issue I was trying to see was how much Sony have fixed noise in the latest firmware. As they have previously fixed one channel at a time (they have tweaked only red so far for the A77), having seperate and ‘true solid’ red, green and blue swatch areas in the test scene is probably useful later for qualitative improvement review when looking forward at future firmware improvements IMO.
However, I’ll probably end up with an A77 in the whatever the results. Neither Sony, Nikon nor Canon make perfect cameras, but each specialises in something as the big selling point. For Sony, that specialisation is certainly not high ISO performance!
Peter K Burian says
I have tested the a77 in real world situations and it produced FABULOUS high ISO image quality … BUT with one of the two special modes, Handheld Twilight (a scene mode) or Multi-Frame NR (accessed via the ISO control.) Here’s what I wrote about it. See a high ISO image at https://picasaweb.google.com/110698711952841559844/SonyA77ISO500FABULOUS#
(Of course I had to downsize/compress it a lot to make it small enough to upload).
* Multi-Frame NR, selected in ISO Auto mode with JPEG capture, snaps six photos very quickly and composites them into one. The Bionz processor micro-aligns them to minimize the effect of any camera shake, allowing for sharp shots at surprisingly long exposures. It then composites the six shots into one, discarding most of the noise data for cleaner photos even at ISO 4000. (ISO levels up to 25,600 are available.) The fully-automatic Handheld Twilight Scene mode is identical but overrides are not available; the camera controls all aspects of the image.
ABETTERDJANDPHOTOGRAPHER says
We’ve taken over 6,000 excellent shots with our 2 SONY SLT-A77s including 4 weddings and 3 engagement sessions. We shoot with the SONY 16-50MM 2.8 on one camera and a MINOLTA 28-135 1:4-4.5 on the other.
We are not camera techies or pixel peepers but we do shoot over 200,000 real world photos a year. This camera is absolutely amazing! We were surprised at how much of an upgrade here was from the SONY SLT-A55s, especially the new SONY colors.
We have posted hands on reviews and photo samples under the SONY|MINOLTA tab on our site. http://www.abetterdj.net
Chris Wendt says
I went over to the SONY Store in Manhattan to try out a SONY A77. I put my own card in the camera to save the images, and shot a dozen scenes inside the store at ISO 800, which is the most likely highest ISO I would use in actual low-light situations. In the camera these shots looked spectacular and I couldn’t wait to open them in Photoshop!
Upon opening them in Photoshop, I was amazed: they were the crappiest images I had ever seen. The shadow details were all plugged-up and infested with noise. The mid-tone details were all softened, presumably by the camera’s noise reduction algorithm. High contrast edges were all very obviously over-sharpened. Out-of focus background elements appeared as though they were under water! Disaster.
I made a decision to take the money and go to Italy and shoot Florence with my D300!