Low Budget Filming – Sony Alpha 77 & Movcam Rig
AF in manual video movie mode workaround Sony SLT A77 (Mikekobal). And contact sheets with A77 and NEX-5n (Mikekobal).
Sony A77 review by SonyAlphaLab (Click here): “I can pick apart a feature here and there and say the Nikon X is better in High ISO and the Canon Y has better AF, but as a whole the A77 is a phenomenal camera for a great price in my humble opinion.”
A77 test at Expertreview (Click here): “Packed with features and impressive strengths including a superb kit lens, but high noise levels and lethargic controls aren’t acceptable at this price“.
The A77 is in Stock at Amazon Germany (Click here), [shoplink 10586 ebay]Heidfoto (crazy name!)[/shoplink], [shoplink 10587 ebay]Foto Neuber (Click here)[/shoplink], in US at [shoplink 10585 ebay]willoughbyscamera (with $400 extra to pay)[/shoplink], almost in Stock at Digitalrev (two weeks). There is a £50 discount at Amazon UK but the camera is not in Stock yet.
18 Responses
wow, that was a hot contact sheet :D, makes me want to go in the darkroom again
I’m really looking forward to the more refined FF A9x later in the spring! Hopefully, the newer CZ prime(s) will arrive much sooner so as to feed my passion in the interim. Wishful thinking but still.
I am really glad this professional showed us what the A77 can do. I am sure other people who has been saying that the A77 is junk at movies might be reconsidering after watching this.
Just a case of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). Sony gives way-too-many revue cameras to CLUELESS amateurs who couldn’t make a good video with a $65,000.00 Sony F65 Digital Cine camera.
I wonder how many lost sales can be blamed on these real world revues???
Amazing video.
I have to say the the supposed expertreview of the A77 is one of the most blatantly biased, insipid, ill conceived, wordy without a thought and useless reviews that I have read in a while. The A77 isn’t perfect, but it’s not a 3 star camera either. But then again, coming from a 1 star website, what do you expect? So one picture illustrating noise at ISO6400? A review that basically says that if you have great image quality up to ISO1600 but if the noise is “high” above that – that the camera all of a sudden is unworthy? Yes, the A77 menu can be sluggish; yes, reviewing pictures can be sluggish. Expertreview decided to accentuate the negative. If I were Sony, I’d take this site from my list of people to give review equipment to. And make sure that they get no ad revenue from Sony related enterprises. Anybody who is that clueless does not deserve a second look.
Most A77 reviews are well balanced, accentuating both good and bad. The bozos at expertreview are neither experts nor free of bias. That makes them pretty much useless.
whoever say something bad high iso performance on a77 sure get bang! 😀 lol… now we have expertreview, last week we do have Dave review. fact is fact, accept it! poor a77 high ISO is beaten by 550D 😀 lol… nothing wrong with expertreview remarks weight “price range vs high iso expectation”. a77 win some lose some
You really sound liked you have been sick burned…
Instead of condemning your blatant trolling attempts, please tell me what has instilled so much hatred in you?
Is it because you don’t have enough money to afford the new A77?
Did Sony announce the A77 days after you bought a Canon or a Nikon?
Most trolls would just say something stupid and then run off the forums, but it seems you are hanging around…
Actually, the high ISO performance of the A77 is not the greatest but for many people (such as myself), it is more than good enough. Besides, the way expertreview weighed their ratings, you would think high ISO ability is much more important than overall great image quality (the raw, that is, the jpeg engine still needs some work). I don’t see how most people will actually use ISO3200 and ISO6400 for the majority of their picture taking, but undoubtedly, some will. And for those people, the A77 may not be the camera for them. That would be a fair assertion. Sluggish menus and other image previews – that’s a fair assertion. The camera itself, though, delivers excellent image quality for many people. I shot a video last night at ISO1600 and the footage was great. So criticize the camera (and what camera can’t be criticized), but do so in a reasonable manner. What expertreview did is a hatchet job and is certainly an outlier in terms of rating the camera as a photographic tool. This reflects badly on their profrssionalism and ability to be a trusted review site. Frankly, there are other review sites out there with that present information in a “fairer”, less prejudiced manner. In fact, until Andrea posted the link to expertreview, I haven’t been to their site in a few years (well, maybe never, but I don’t recall visiting them lately – heck I did not even know that these so called experts existed).
Guys, how about a review of what the new tool a77 now allows us to do better. I’m making a short series with my findings. Hope this will help people decide if they need it. Everyone seems to fail to notice the low ISO performance of the a77, no vibration at shutter release and live histogram in VF. To me it’s a killer advantage for studio, outdoor and portrait work. Has anyone actually used it for work?
Good points, I mentioned them;)
Hello Andrea,
do you know, if another firmware update is planned? Especially related to the lagish reaction of control and pictuer viewer?
For the record, the Nikon V1’s switching from LCD to EVF takes longer. It’s good enough that we know that Sony is putting effort into it by providing solutions via firmware updates. It goes to show that Sony is not leaving us floating in the vast ocean all alone – help will come, however slow it might take for now.
+1
I agree, Sony has shown great customer service by releasing firmware so quickly to address so many issues in such a short amount of time. Yes they did botch up the release and have tried to very hard to amend for their mistakes.
however a 1.05 would be so nice, not to mention a nice number to have on the camera firmware 😛
This might be true (don’t know it), but on my A55 the switching is quite fast. Is the A77 slower? Why?
Besides that I also read that the wheel reactions are very slow, shown on some youtube videos.
So it may be nice that they did something fast, but obviously they did it only half…
Having this properly solved or not is the answer to my question: Buying an A77 or not?
The control lag has been fixed in the most recent firmware update. Check the date on the youtube videos you are watching.
EVF lag has also been shortened. It is likely longer than your a55 because the evf on the a55 is a piece of s**t and not nearly as high-resolution or same technology as the OLED finder in the 77.
Mike Kobal is truly a great professional, and Sony should definitely make him an ambassador for the alpha brand of some sort, if they still do that thing nowadays. Despite the amount of “shortcomings” other “professional” reviews find in the new A77, his work demonstrates to the naysayers that it’s just a matter of having some taste and other abilities (composition, subject matter and overall creativity), to do great stuff, no matter what camera is in your hands. The other reviewers just come in as whiners after seeing what Mike can do… “¡The menu system isn’t like my Canon!, The colors don’t look like my Canon’s!” STF and get to work!!!
And the guys from SwissVideoAcademy should also get the Alpha Ambassador treatment. While not particularly tasteful in their examples (that couple in a bar vid looks like an intro to an XXX movie), they do show that professional level quality equipment can be used with the A77, with no trouble at all. I can’t wait to see what they can do with the future A9x models.