For the first time the NEX-7 with Black 18-55mm kit lens in Stock via Ritz at Amazon (Click here!!!). Hurry! Don’t miss the chance! And at the moment of writing also five NEX-7 bodies(!) are in Stock again via Ritz at Amazon (Click here!!!).
Took seven months to see the NEX-7 in Stock at Amazon (I am not counting some third party cheater reseller which sold few largely overpriced cameras).
While the A57 will not bring any kind of new revolutionary feature there are still some minor new tidbits coming along the camera:
1) Clear Image Zoom
That is the biggest new innovation. It’s a new proprietary “By Pixel Super Resolution Technology“. It is a 2x digital zoom that can almost match the quality of a normal optical zoom! That means you can instantly 2x zoom with any lens you have without having any major loss of quality. I have to see this to believe it! ;)
2) Auto Portrait framing
With the help of the face detection feature the A57 can create well balanced horizontal or vertical portrait cuts.
The camera will be announced on Tuesday March 13th at 4am London time and as usual I will follow the announcement live here on SonyAlphaRumors. This means I will keep updating you with links to news, reviews, videos image samples and more.
While the on paper the A57 doesn’t sound like a spectacular camera it certainly can do a lot for the price ($699). And many SAR readers complained about the too high Megapixel count on the [shoplink 8461]A65/A77[/shoplink]. So this might be the right camera for you!
P.S.: If you are not from London than your announcement time is:
9pm San Francisco time (Monday March 12th)
12pm New York time (Monday-Tuesday night)
5am in Berlin (Tuesday)
1pm in Tokyo (Tuesday)
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For US readers: The A77 kit is back in Stock at BHphoto (Click here). And first $2 price drop at Amazon (Click here) … :)
Image courtesy: Photozone.
Klaus from Photozone just posted two new NEX lens reviews. This is actually the first time he is posting tests made on his new [shoplink 8454]Sony NEX-7[/shoplink]. This is going to be interesting to read because he is struggling with the corner issues of the 24 Megapixel sensor. Let’s start:
1) Sony 30mm f/3.5 macro lens (Click here to read the review)
The performance of that lens on the NEX-7 is disappointing: “The Sony E 30mm f/3.5 macro lens delivered a rather disappointing performance on the Sony NEX 7. The center image quality is absolutely great but the border- and especially corner-quality is sub-standard. The rather high amount of lateral CAs isn’t helpful either.” I hope Klaus can soon do the same test on the [shoplink 8452]Sony NEX-5n[/shoplink] to see if the poor corner quality depends from the 24 Megapixel sensor of the NEX-7 or not!
2) Sony 50mm f/1.8 lens (Click here to read the review)
In that case Klaus is much more satisfied with the lens performance. A part of the not so good corner performance (which doesn’t matter a lot for a portrait lens) he says: “The image quality is very impressive if you stop down to f/4-f/8 where the lens is almost capable of exploiting the potential of the 24 megapixel Sony sensor.” But this is a protrait lens and the real point that matters is the bokeh quality. And hee is were the lens shines: “A real highlight of the Sony lens is the quality of the bokeh which is among the very best that we’ve seen in this class so far.”
Again Thanks Klaus for making these detailed reviews!
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The real “issue” of the 50mm lens is his non-availability. You can find some of them on [shoplink 8448 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] but not in “normal” Sony or other known stores. You can only preorder them at:
[shoplist 8448]
Gdgt (Click here) already leaked the first picture of the upcoming new Sony A57! As you see it’s pretty much the same camera like the [shoplink 8459]Sony A65[/shoplink]. And as I told you before Redcoon Germany is also listing the new product. The camera will be announced on Tuesday 4am London time.
In short the specs are:
16 megapixel Exmor HD sensor
10 fps (12fps in tele zoom mode)
100 up to 16.000 ISO
1,44 million dots EVF
15 point AF with 3 cross sensors
AVCHD 2.0 60p/60i/24p recording
All that for a body only price of $699. Sony’s goal with that camera is to compete against the Canon 600D/T3i ($620 at Amazon) and Nikon D5100 ($650 at Amazon). If you are waiting for the new Sony A99 FF model than you will have to wait until September!
Next Tuesday Sony will announce the new A57 SLT camera with 16 Megapixels. And stores are already preparing the new preorder pages. So it comes that you can now find the void A57 listed at Redcoon Belgium, Redcoon Germany and Redcoon France.
A part of the new 16 megapixel sensor and the 1,44m dot viewfinder the A57 is pretty much the same camera like the A65. I will cover the A57 presentation here on SAR on Tuesday morning (6-7-8am London time). Stay tuned!
Our reader Haija sent us the screenshot you see here on top to confirm that after 154 days delay Amazon US is now shipping the first NEX-7 with 18-55mm kit lens. Right now only third party resellers at Amazon (Click here) are offering that kit (overpriced!).
I missed that: While I was comfortably sleeping in my European bed plenty of Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 lenses for NEX (Click here) were available at Amazon. It run out of Stock quickly but it managed in that short time to become the most sold mirrorless item of the store (Click here to see the current rankings).
[shoplink 3032]
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And here we are again with the SLT versus DSLR discussion ;)
Techradar (Click here) had a talk with MR. Paul Genge from Sony UK. Paul once again confirmed that. “We made a clear statement during IFA, our president made a statement that we were going to be looking at full-frame as the next introduction for SLT“.
As you know Sony discontinued the production of the A580, A850 and A900 cameras and doesn’t list those cameras in their Sonystores anymore. Asked about this Paul said: “We have no SLRs in our line-up today, and our intention is to develop the SLT technology and make that a real stand-out in the market.”
I guess this puts an end on all DSLR hopes. SLT is the future! But if you ask me , the only real long term future is NEX and other future FF mirrorless systems. I think that will be the future of Sony!
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Here are the search links to the last three DSLR cameras with optical viewfinder (you may will not find them anymore):
Sony A900 [shopcountry 3032].
Sony A850 [shopcountry 3028].
Sony A580 [shopcountry 5509].
