Sony DSLT - A fair compromise?

[Hamrat]

What's everyone's view on these DSLTs from Sony? I've heard good things and bad things about them, just want an opinion on them. I'm *possibly* considering an A77 (Or maybe an A78 when released) to replace my A700 which will then become my backup body.

I'm in 2 minds about the EVF of the A77 because having worked with pentaprisms for so long I'm not 100% I'd adapt. The burst is what worries me because I often require the use of burst, and I've been told that the viewfinder switches off live view at a burst rate of over 3fps

Thoughts?

 

[fvdbergh]

I'm in 2 minds about the EVF of the A77 because having worked with pentaprisms for so long I'm not 100% I'd adapt. The burst is what worries me because I often require the use of burst, and I've been told that the viewfinder switches off live view at a burst rate of over 3fps

Thoughts?

The SLT concept is, imo, rather ironic. A technology that allows your phase detection AF sensors to remain active all the time to improve AF tracking of moving subjects, but then prevents you from seeing what you are tracking during burst mode.

Nikon's AF technology they used in the Nikon 1 (putting PDAF sensors on the imaging sensor), now also implemented in the EOS-M (badly), seems to offer all of the advantages of SLT technology, but without robbing you of 1/3 of a stop's worth of light in the process.

It appears (from reading ChipWorks articles) that some sensors (D800, or was that the 5DMIII?) now include an analogue circuit to combine the outputs of three consecutive rows of photosites, i.e., you can significantly reduce the bandwidth required to read data off your main image sensor but still use all of the light sensitive surface (unlike using only every 3rd row). While this is actually used to provide less aliasing (and noise) on HD video captured with a high-MP SLR sensor, I see no reason why this cannot be adapted to provide an "analogue downsampled" feed for an EVF.

In short, I expect that EVFs will be able to overcome the frame-rate limitations in the future. For now, I prefer to have a real-time viewfinder.

 

[Hamrat]

The SLT concept is, imo, rather ironic. A technology that allows your phase detection AF sensors to remain active all the time to improve AF tracking of moving subjects, but then prevents you from seeing what you are tracking during burst mode.

That's my thought. At the moment 12 megapixels is enough, and as much as I want a burst of 12fps if I can't see what I'm tracking its really a waste of my money. I don't need video geotagged images, I just want a (decently sized) file with the image that I've seen what I captured.

I'll probably go for a mirror box replacement when the time comes, because until the burst issue has been fixed, I like what I see