Sony will “update” the current A77 by releasing a new A77II A-mount camera next week (announcement around May 1-2). As I told you before this is an “upgraded” A77 which means it’s rumored to have an updated 24MP sensor, 11fps (new rumor), WiFi, improved EVF and I have been told very fast autofocusing. Also Body layout will remain similar to the A77.
A trusted source also added that there are some minor updates on the 16-50mm lens too which will marginally improve the image quality of the lens. The lens is going to be announced along the A77II.
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IMO ,the update for the 1650 could be a SSM2 motor.
My thought too. New SSM2 motor and improved lens coating. Same as 70-400G2.
You nailed it!
I just wonder what price Sony has in mind for the A77m2 and for this also updated lens ?? will this combo be overpriced or will it compeed with the other brands with a competitive price policy like the A6000 price is ?
If it has a better sensor, hybrid AF and the EVF is truly improved, then I’d be tempted at current A77 street prices. I’d sell my A77 and pay the difference. It sounds like the VG might still fit. Use the F58 with an adapter would be a pain though.
I doubt an a77II will start at the current discount at Sony’s store for the a77. The $1,100 body is reduced to $800. What I’ve seen Sony do is announce a high retail price (in the case of the a5000 they over-shot and were forced to cut it). Sell at that level for a while. If sales stall, they don’t offer a price cut but start bundling deals which look like be big discounts to customers but really don’t cost the company so much (especially, dumping surpluses of buggy flashes). After the model runs its course and is slipping against Canikon refreshes, they cut the prices to what they probably should have been to start with.
Which is why I said current A77 street prices. I will not be buying it at launch prices and it’ll have a load of firmware bugs anyway. 😉
The A77II, if it lives up to your rumours, could well at last be the replacement for my dear old A55. Especially for low light work …
Nikon is rumored to be announcing a d7200 later this summer that coincidentally is starting to smell a lot like the a77II. Yeah, the specs on both are vague and mostly super-squirrel secret but they both look like the sort of boring, logical product evolutions including updates like refreshes in 24MP sensors and spec tweaks it’s easy for manufacturers to pump out when they want to keep current, not move the needle one iota. I suspect Sony’s May a77II announcement date is picked as a pre-emptive strike. Memo to Sony marketing: You’ll need more that your typical half-a$$ a-mount efforts. When you’re #3, just keeping up with the Joneses for rough parity isn’t good enough.
Nice to see the a77II which is expected to be priced north of $1,000 (unless they cut features/build quality for a a65-a77 consolidation like they did with the a6000) is expected to match the much cheaper a6000 in FPS. I guess the good news is with a week to go ever-incompetent Sony marketing will start leaking every day or 2 some specs to get the fanboys excited. Sorry, Sony, it ain’t working for me. ;^)
Yep, I’m still whining about – based upon Admin’s dribbling of rumors scaling back the a77’s replacement’s specs – the a77II is looking terribly boring. ;^)
Since stacked CMOS sensors are over a year away, an evolutionary update that refines the a77 features and fixes some issues (noise) is necessary since the camera is coming up on three years but most of all because it is the last remaining alpha body without the multi interface shoe.
Sony should no longer be selling a camera with a shoe it stopped supporting over a year ago. It gives a bad impression, makes it difficult for sales people and probably costs more for them to produce it. They should have updated the a77 with the new shoe last year.
I’m okay with that except it shouldn’t take so long to make such minor tweaks as shoe swap-outs. Canikon does this minor refreshing (ironically, many SAR fans complain about this) on their consumer-range DSLRs more quickly.
If stacked CMOS sensors are a year or so away, given Sony’s typical release schedule, it’ll appear in the a7x FE bodies first. axxxx’s next. And probably 3 years down the road for DSLRs meaning my a65 I bought in 2011 won’t see reasonable upgrade until probably late 2017. :^(
I have the a65 as well and the a77II will be a reasonable upgrade, no doubt.
An update to the lens is great news, I love that lens, and had a lot of fun shooting with it.
As long as the price tag stays roughly the same the a77 did, I’ll be happy.
My first thought is it’s another excuse for Sony to jack up the price like they did with the 70-400mm.
AFAIK the price will be close or a little less than the A77 launch price.
So we can expect $1200 or thereabouts a launch price.
Yep, sounds about right. My price hike refers to the lens refresh.
Sony should be updating the lens electronics along with the AF Motor to be compatible with E Mount Cameras using LAEA1 Adapters. If they add OSS, even better. If they do this, I would buy it with the A6000. I am really kind of hoping for this, but have my doubts.
There is absolutly no reason to put OSS on a A-mount lense just to adapt it to an E-mount.
Or to improve cdaf support. Of course if they do then the writing will very much be in the wall…
It will never work. If the lens is tuned for contrast detect, then phase detect performance will suffer and it won’t work well on the A77 II.
If you need a similar lens on E mount get the 16-70mm f4 OSS lens.
Nano AR coating and a price hike for that. The lens is just perfect, i own and use it all the time. Sony should instead bring in same type of quality to other lenses like
11-18 – been there for long, please bring a replacement
70-300 SSM – Add weather sealing to it for the price u ask
16-80 Ziess – Add faster autofocus motor to it
New macro lenses with internal focusing
A ultra fast f1.2 lens
You are absolutely right. Unless this newer 16-50 is adjusted for use with on sensor PDAF I see no reason to swap the current one for the new version. If not so, it is really sad Sony is updating one of their newest, most modern lenses, instead of revising much older lenses. I expect this to be similar to the 70-200 and 70-400 updates: just Nano-AR and maybe faster AF; It is already weathersealed.
16-70 f.2,8 FF. And i will buy it
Can u imagine the sheer size of such a lens.
With todays technology it will be big. But with a new technology it could be relativetly small
Have you developed this technology? Perhaps you should sell it to the big manufacturers, as apparently their developers are dummies and are missing some proper forum knowledge.
Wow. I actually called this exact rumour TODAY! Great news really – if it’s not much better, at least the existing versions will get cheaper. And how much better do people think the A77 needs to be? As long as it has two card slots, I’m in…
Better base iso noise and improved af should be on the cards. As long as they don’t downgrade anything else (evf, lcd or afma) I’m also in.
Any improvement over the A77 AF is going to be very welcome and worth the money.
oh yeah … what about sony FF a-mount lenses as 28mm/2, 35mm/2, 200mm/2.8 APO, 28-100mm 2.8 … for e-mount it would be also nice to have these lenses, right? No overpriced ZEISS please!
So it’s worth picking up the kit then? The 16-50 is good, but I’d definitely take an improved version and flog my existing one. Also explains why wex have stopped listing the 16-50 and a77 body only (they’ve still got the kit in stock)
I can’t see IQ being improved, the 70-400G2 just got another coating I think. SSM2 won’t be significantly faster on a 16-50 compared to the 70-400 update. It is likely that I would keep the lens and swap the body.
The a77 is a good camera.
If you dont have one the a77 and this lens are both good choices.
If you already havethe a77 or a65 and have been waiting years for siny to offer a real improvenent …sony will once again offer nothing for you.
How can we do our part to improve sony sales when sony will not make anything worthwile for us to buy.
Yep, Barry, that’s where I’m sit’n. Sadly.
I keep hoping now that we’re close to an actual a77II announcement, per Sony’s typical marketing habit, we’ll get the dribbling of real specs and Sony engineering will show us some inspiration (e.g., flip-up mirror per recent patent release). Sony desperately needs to move the needle with DSLRs like they have been doing with ILCEs.
Everyone here has their feature preferences. I’m mostly about an IQ and ISO bump – and I mean one worth upgrading to and not some marginal tweak barely noticeable with extreme crops. Ever since rumors scaled back from a higher resolution sensor, my interest nose-dived. The a6000’s 24MP ‘upgrade’ isn’t any better than my aging a65 up to 3200 ISO (where I stopped my comparison because I can’t recall needing more).
I will wait for 2015 56mp stacked sensor mirrorless A mount.
In the meantime Nikon is expected to anounce in may coolpix p700.
1″ sensor, 24 -2000mm equivelent f 3.5-8.5
This wold be good to carry on the road and satisfy my need to buy something for this years photography season.
The camera hasn’t been announced yet, Walter.
You do not know how worthwhile the improvements are and how relevant they are to individual users.
My comment is based on the most recent rumors.
When I have different information I will make new comments that reflect the new facts.
Based on todays facts this is todays comment.
To be fair, recent rumours have told us 127% of f**k all.
There is very little information available to make any kind of judgement on the A77.
The A6000 was derided here before anyone knew anything about it – now, after launch, it is receiving lots of positive attention.
“Lens gets small update. Will marginally improve the image quality of the lens.” I used Google Translate from SONY to ENGLISH and the results was:
“Large price increase on old lens.”
Bingo!
A65-A77 no firmware? 🙁
Ok, so here is why we keep getting more and more negative about the A-mount. While Sony is capable of producing excellent, inovative and powerfull models on the E-mount, they completely fail on the A-mount.
The A7 series is great and offers an R model with no AA filter and now an S model with a fantastic ISO performance. The FE mount lenses from Zeiss are amazing performers. Even the Canon and NIkon guys are interested and are buying into Sony.
The NEX series lives further in the A6000 and offers a signifficant boost to AF performance while pushing the IQ a bit higher than the previous NEX models.
At the same time, no alpha series for ages, the A77 will get a minor refresh only and the only lens we get is a minor upgrade of an already existing kit lens. Well, I spend several thousand Euro on foto equipment in the last 12 months and Sony got an amazing 0 off it. All my new lenses are either from Sigma or Tamron and I still have the 150-600 preordered. Sony just has not produced anything for the A-mount worth buying. I stick with my A77 for now and keep buying Sigma lenses…. Wake up Sony!
You are right, but this rumour has nothing to do with what you’re concerned with. The a77 is an excellent camera. It will be updated and further improved, which is a great thing. How “minor” or “major” that update will be is something we’ll have to wait for and see, so let’s not judge prematurely.
The 16-50f/2.8 is one of the best lenses out there, in fact I think there is nothing else that matches it. Improving further on that lens is great news and I don’t see why it should cause any complains.
Yes, I would also like sony to release completely new lenses for the a-mount, but that’s a different issue altogether. There is nothing wrong with updating current equipment, especially when we’re talking about one of the best fast aps-c zooms ever.
I won’t be buying the A77 Mk 2 or any other traditional APS-C DSLR for some time as its a dead market generally, and not anything specific to Sony.
The A77 is a good camera (I own it), but the whole ethos of interchangeable APS-C full size DSLRs is out of date and that’s the real issue. Its a problem for Canon and Nikon as well, and they are all slowing down on this segment as its no longer exciting for them.
Why? Because you can go smaller format for not much loss in features, you can go pro (full frame) for a little more in price if you go second hand, and you can now go ‘same-size but fixed lens’ for similar quality but less total outlay in the long run as the optics are now much better. The only people complaining are those with lots of interchangeable crop lenses (myself included), but that’s life 🙁
Speaking for myself, I find myself leaving my larger cameras on the shelf more and more, because the smaller ones are less expensive (so I can upgrade more often), more portable, and the reduced resolution (12MP vs +20MP) is rarely an issue for the typical APS-C user (i.e, its not paid work), and when it is, my thinking is that I might as well go full frame via an A7 or 5D while I am at it!
I think Sony, Nikon and Canon are well aware of all this, and that’s what is driving this incremental release policy for the traditional APS-C segment, whilst the segments at either end are getting all the love.
Improve sharpness a bit, less barrel distortion at 16mm and get rid of those rubber focusing rings that are to stiff and get dirty.
“Sony will “update” the current A77 by releasing a new A77II A-mount camera” – You a77 wanted a firmware update, well, here it is!
I only own two DT lenses, the 18~70mm f/3.5~5.6 that came with my A100, and a DT 4.5-5.6/11-18 that I bought for the same camera. If that ain’t good enough I’ll switch to one of my many FF lenses for when I get serious. I just hope that DxO supports all the serious lenses I have when they are mounted on the A77MII just like they do on my A100 and A900. I trust they will (as they have done so in the past).
I suspect the new bundled lens will be SSM not be screw drive like my DT lenses mentioned above. Hopefully I’ll get by with the screw drive. Again, when I get serious and need very fast auto-focus, I’ll switch to one of my three FF SSM lenses.
Edit________
I just checked DxO modules that support the A77. They do support the two old lenses I mentioned above. I suspect that will also be supported with the A77II.
Not interested in it at all. What I really want – sensor from A7S in A99 body. For price of A99 – it will be the real reporters camera – with working Live view and tiltable screen – CaNikon tops will be really shocked.
Is this SR4 verified? Is the 16-50/2.8 with the A77II a new model or same as old?