Sony Alpha SLT-A77 Translucent Mirror Digital SLR Camera - Body only (OLD MODEL)

I bought this camera as an upgrade for my Sony A700 (badly dated) and this camera is a very good, but too long delayed, replacement for the A700.I do wildlife photography and sports photography as hobbies, so this review will only touch on those uses. I absolutely love the improvement I have gotten in my wildlife pictures. The focusing is faster and sharper, the colors seem more true, and the transition from 12MP to 24MP makes a tremendous difference in my ability to crop images (most animals still refuse to walk up to me) and still have a quality photo. There is a night/day difference between the quality of pictures I take with this camera and pictures I took with the A700.I am disappointed with this camera's usefulness for sports. The quality of pictures I obtain is either excellent or worthless. Some reviewers love the electronic viewfinder and it does give you a better idea of how the camera sensor is "seeing" the scene. However it is slow when following rapid sports action, and the viewfinder stutters (i.e. it shows still shots of previous pictures or just shows a black screen for a fraction of a second) when taking a continuous series of pictures. This is very frustrating when I am trying to follow an athlete who is chasing a ball. It is very difficult to keep a player in focus if I cannot see them and do not know exactly where they are. The manufacturer is justifiably proud of offering a camera that can shoot 12 frames per second (only in aperture priority mode) and I really wanted that level of capture speed to allow me to get better pictures of bats meeting balls etc.. The only time you need 12 fps is when you are photographing a rapidly moving object, which is the time you will not be able to consistently see that object in the viewfinder:(The "Sports Mode" is unusable in my opinion. You cannot employ spot focus in Sports Mode, and consequently the camera tries to average the focus between the athlete you are trying to photograph and all the players, officials, coaches, birds, stands, water coolers, etc., that you do not want to focus on. It is not that difficult to employ manual settings, but why would you make a camera with a Sports Mode that assumes everything you can see is equally interesting to you?I love that I am getting great images and am able to get some shots I could not get before. I hate that I am missing some shots that used to be much easier to obtain. This camera has many great qualities and I will continue to use it, but is does make sports photography more difficult.

Ok, let's start with the "con": you cannot tether this camera. The a700 could be tethered. The a77 cannot. It's not a huge drawback, but it is a drawback. What do you use tethering for? Controlling the camera from your computer. Transferring the pictures directly and immediately to a computer (for a client or someone else to look at). For easily seeing the pictures on a large screen, rather than the screens on the camera. And...using this in a photobooth! This camera just cannot be used in a photobooth. It's frustrating. Not being able to tether the camera is frustrating, but not a deal-breaker -- not even close. How many times have you needed to tether your camera? But it would be nice.I've been using the a77 for a year and three months. I resisted it and continued using my a700 because I hated the idea of an EVF. However, after about 30 seconds of trying out the a77, I was hooked, and I cannot go back to an OVF. Occasionally I use a Nikon, and it's just awful. An EVF has REAL advantages -- big advantages.I am a professional photographer, and I'm shooting 4-6 days a week, most weeks. About 70% of my assignments are sports, and about 20% are club event photography. The other 10% are group pictures, studio work, on-location "people at work" photos, etc.For sports especially, the EVF is incredibly useful. I shoot in manual mode. With an optical viewfinder, if you change from f/2.8 to f/11, the view doesn't change. If you change from 1/50 to 1/2000, the view doesn't change. The picture will be drastically different, but you won't see it until you actually take a picture. With outdoor sports, the lighting is constantly changing -- sun going behind a cloud, light diminishing during sunset, front-lit, side-lit, or back-lit faces. With an electronic viewfinder, you see exactly how the picture will look. If you change the shutter speed, film speed, or aperture, the image in the viewfinder will change. This is a huge help while shooting.Also, after you take a picture, the picture usually shows up on the back of the camera for a few seconds, right? Well, since the viewfinder is a tiny computer screen, you can have the picture show up there, instead. That is also great. You don't have to take the camera away from you eye and look at the back of the camera -- you can be shooting pictures and reviewing them, all without moving the camera. It's kind of like the difference between using keyboard shortcuts and clicking with the mouse. Yes, you can type, then use the mouse to click on the next field, then type some more, then use the mouse to click on the next field. But it's much faster to just hit "tab" to go to the next field. You never take your hands off the keys,and it just goes faster, your train of thought isn't interrupted, you can just "go" faster.For example, when I take group photos, I need to check to see if anyone was blinking, and take another picture if they were. With an EVF, I take the picture, then the image immediately appears on the screen in the viewfinder, and I can very quickly see whether I need to take another picture or not. I know -- it doesn't sound like a big deal. None of these things would have made much impression on me, before I bought an a77 and got hooked. I would have said they were all small things, and really not very important.Just try it. Borrow or rent one for a week, and then try to go back to an optical viewfinder. You won't be able to do it.One more benefit of an EVF: you know how, when it's sunny outside, it can be hard to see the screen on the back of the camera? Too much glare, too bright outside? Well, the EVF is inside the camera, in a deep dark cave. There are no reflections, no glare to fight. You can see how the picture actually looks.Ok, so obviously I think the EVF is the big selling point with this camera. But there are other good things.The 12 fps is kind of a lie. The real burst rate is 7 fps. 12 fps only works in "P" mode. If you are a serious photographer, you don't use P. But 7 is plenty. If you're the person who has to cull all the photos after an event (and I am), then...7 fps is more than enough to wade through... I do use the 12 fps setting when shooting golf, just because the club and ball move SO FAST. And I also use it in baseball, to get the "ball on the bat" picture. But otherwise, 7 fps is plenty.The camera is rugged. I shoot sports. Most sports don't stop because of rain, sleet, snow, heat, or cold. So I can't, either. I've used this camera in all types of weather, and it survives admirably. It's built tough.People say the Sony alpha cameras have bad high-ISO noise, and I agree. HOWEVER, I work for a large photography company. I am (obviously) the only Sony shooter. Most of the other photogs shoot Nikons, and a few shoot Canon. The head of sports photography sees ALL pictures, from everyone, before the pictures go onto the website. And he raves about my camera's noise performance. He's comparing my a77's noise to pictures from Nikons and Canons, and he thinks the a77 is excellent. He's a die-hard Nikon fan (a member of their professional photographer group), but my pictures have almost won him over to Sony. I honestly don't understand how my pictures are so much better than pictures from Nikon and Canon, but he swears they are. So much so that I have become my company's top photographer for low-light assignments.The GPS feature is GREAT, and I'm very disappointed that they've eliminated it on the a77 mark 2. It's another feature (like EVF) that you don't realize how useful it is until you actually have it. I will be very sad to lose it. Very.The Minolta/Sony hotshoe is a non-issue. Were you planning to use a Canon flash on your a77? No, of course not. So what does it matter? Sony, Sigma, etc make flashes with our mount. It's true, pocketwizard does not. But I use cowboy studio triggers, and guess what? They work equally reliably as pocketwizards, and they cost a small faction of what pocketwizards do. Perhaps a cowboystudio trigger wouldn't work from 100 meters away, and perhaps a pocketwizard would. But I don't work that far from my lights. In normal studio conditions, my cowboystudio triggers work as reliably as my company's pocketwizards. And the cowboystudio triggers allow my camera to fire my Canon 430 EXII flash remotely. (Ok, so I WAS planning on using a canon flash with my a77...)My Sony a77 is rugged, dependable, full-featured, takes great pictures, has good continuous AF, and has an excellent electronic viewfinder. I use the camera 4-6 days a week, and I'm glad I chose Sony, not Canon or Nikon. It's an excellent camera.

Well kept camera with low shutter count. Works like new. Can’t give 5 stars due to impregnated cigarette odor.