Image courtesy: Photozone

There is a new Sony lens review at Photozone. They had the good idea to review the Sony 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 SAM DT lens which is probably one of the most used lenses. SO how does it perform? Photozone: “Optically there’s really little to complain about – the lens is very sharp throughout the zoom range and the subjective sharpness perception benefits from quite low lateral CAs (color shadows). There’s a bit of a focus shift issue at the wide end so it’s a good idea to double check your images in shallow depth-of-field situations here.” Click here to read the full test.

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So here we are back at SAR! Christmas party is over and I hope you had a nice time with your family!
Ther first after-xmas news is coming via Cameralabs which tested the Sony A580. As you know the [shoplink 4617]Sony A580[/shoplink] shares the same Sony 16 Megapixel sensor featured inside the Nikon D7000 (although Nikon says they designed the sensor). Camerlabs made a very accurate comparison: “The Nikon D7000 metered a slightly longer exposure by default, so we applied -0.3EV of compensation to match the exposure of the Sony. So the D7000 sequence below also starts at 100 ISO with a exposure of 1 second at f8“. The Nikon has a slightly advantage at 12.800 ISO but “despite a minor advantage to the Nikon at the very highest sensitivities, we’d rank the Sony A580 and Nikon D7000 pretty much neck-in-neck here”

Now let’s compare the price:
$1,199.95 for the D7000 and $799.99 for the A580.
Although there are some differences between the two cameras (ergonomics, handling and so on) to me the Sony A580 looks like a real winner. The future A77 (and A750?) will play in the same Nikon D7000 price league and probably easily bit the High-ISO performance of the Nikon. So please Sony, release the A77 as soon as possible ;)

Those are direct shop links to the Sony A580:
Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, [shoplink 4617]eBay[/shoplink], Amazon DE, Amazon FR, Pixmania DE, Pixmania BE, Pixmania AT, Pixmania UK, Pixmania NL, Pixmania PL, Pixmania IT.

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David Kilpatrick from Photoclubalpha posted a nine page long and very accurate Sony A580 review: “there is no better APS-C DSLR available from Sony.”

P.S: On page eight he writes about the flash delay issue: “Whatever the reason, the new generation suffers from flash exposure delays all round, and this one is set to cause Sony a problem. No matter what the explanation, if other makers can provide near real-time flash and all the other required features, Sony should be able to do so too.” Hope Sony is listening…