(Continually updated) Sony A57 officially announced!

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Preorders

A57 Body Only: Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), SonyStoreUSA (Click here), BHphoto (Click here).
A57+18-55mm lens: Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), SonyStoreUSA (Click here), BHphoto (Click here).

Main Features in short:

16.1MP, Translucent Mirror Technology™, up to 12 fps, Clear Image Zoom, Auto Portrait Framing, 1080/60p/24p Full AVCHD™ or 1080/30p MP4 movies, 3.0″ LCD TruBlack™ tilt/swivel screen, 18-55mm lens

Previews and Image samples

Dpreview
Imaging Resource
Main differences with A55 at ThePhoBlographer.

Press release

ePhotozine, Photographyblog, Dpreview, Whatdigitalcamera (with video), TheVerge, Focus Numerique (French), Photoscala (German), PCWorld, Engadget, Imaging Resource, Slashgear,

Video


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(SR5) More A57 pics…

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The A57 pictures and specs keeps being leaked left and right. Here is the next set of images (Click on it to enlarge). Again, the camera is going to be announced in a few hours (5am London time).

Reminder (SR = Sonyrumor):
SR1=probably fake rumor
SR2=rumor from unknown sources
SR3=50% chance it is correct
SR4=rumor from known sources
SR5=almost certainly correct!

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(SR5) What’s new with the A57: Clear zoom and auto portrait framing.

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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) … :)

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50mm and 30mm for NEX tested at Photozone!

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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]

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(SR5) First picture of the Sony A57

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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!

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Sony A57 already listed at Redcoon Europe!

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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!

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