Ohio Hiker Photography Blog: Sony A77

After photographing with my Sony A100 for almost 4 years and over 100,000 shutter clicks, it was finally starting to show it age. The day I decided to retire it to a back up camera I was a little dismayed. I know the button locations by memory and can make changes without thinking about. I knew when I needed to add a little exposure compensation or a little white balance adjustment. Though it was only 11 megapixels I frequently printed large prints up to 16x32 that looked amazing. Though I knew this day was coming I hated to retire it to the bottom of the camera bag.

I had been waiting for Sony to release the A77 body for about 2 years. I knew with development taking so long and Sony's reputation I knew it would be an amazing camera. So about 2 weeks ago I finally ordered my A77.

The A77 is not a true DSLR, it is an DSLT. A DSLR has a mirror that is used for the optical view finder that has to flip up and out of the way to take a picture. The A77 has a semi translucent mirror that stays in place. Instead of an optical view finder it has an electronic view finder. I was skeptical of this at first but have come to really love the features of an electronic viewfinder. The A77's SLT technology allows it to take an amazing 12 frames per second and use phase detection autofocus for HD video. I was thoroughly surprised to find that my Sony HVL-F58AM flash would keep up with the 12 frames per second also. In addition to these features the Sony A77 is a 24 megapixel camera compared to my 11 megapixels. Also the low light ability with ISO up to 16,000. I am still testing the ISO range but it seems usable up to ISO 4000.

Trevor doing a flip at 12 frames per second.