Thank you, for getting me to read reviews on the A57. Seems like the ideal camera for me.

According to wikipedia there are 2 disadvantages to the SLT camera

"1. Less light reaching sensor, due to portion of the light being reflected to phase-detection autofocus array (approximately 1/3 EV or 21% in current designs)."

2. Refresh rate limited by the time it takes the sensor to form an image; in low light this causes severe stuttering of the viewfinder image when panning (e.g. if it takes 1/4 sec for the sensor to gather enough light to form an image then the EVF updates at 4FPS).[citation needed]


Do you find these issuses a problem with your A57 ?

My 2 cents worth: I used the a77 for a couple of days extensively. It is an older model than the a57 but I had no problems in low, low light. I did not notice any great lag either. Another thing; I was really eyeballing the electronic view finder and I really liked it because for one thing, the field of view was much larger than my a580, which is optical. But what I was really intent on was how well my subject was represented through the ELV in those low light conditions. I was very impressed! I just figure that those doing the reviews must be biased to their cameras which I am sure are not Sony's. Lol.

I got mine with an 18-55 and 55-200, the 18-55 is a pretty good lens, pretty good not great. The Minolta lenses are very good to great. The 70-210 what they call the beercan is an older lens, under 200.00, 16oz, FABULOUS!! The 50mm 1.4 is the same. Favorite right now, subject to change, is the 35-105 that is also a true macro lens. It will do 1x1 at 105 focus manually only. I'm using as it as a walk around lens and if I see something to shoot, like a bug, the 35-105 is capable of that at macro. Cool lens. The best thing about the Minolta lenses is the color, vivid, rich, just more pleasing overall than the canon I was used to. I have taken some of my best photos ever, in the last month. The Sony lenses are different, more like the Canon I am used to.

Doing research is one of my strong points, for months I read reviews on many different cameras and was really interested in the Sony Alpha series camera with the translucent mirror. Beach Camera was running a promotion for the Sony a57 on a 45 day trial, no questions asked money back. So, what the he** I got one. After using the Sony for 2 weeks I was convinced I needed to switch to Sony. BTW, I got 2 Minolta lenses locally for 200.00, 70-210 f/4 and 50mm 1.7 to try on the new camera. The combo is fantastic, wonderful color, sharpness, and contrast. The 70-210 I swear is sharper than my Canon 70-200 L f/2.8 Is.

I sold all my Canon gear, 50D, & 7d, and T2i, all my lenses, had 2 L lenses, and bought Sony Alpha and Minolta. I put a few thousand back in the bank as well.

The A57 has features I never even dreamed of and are really nice to use. In camera HDR that really works. HDR painting that has a very interesting effect with some subjects. Zoom feature that adds a 1.4x or 2x extender electronically that does not degrade the image, I am a techie and I can not figure out how they do this. Night feature that takes up to 6 frames and stitches them together, hand held, the results are very good.

The ISO of up to 3200 is usable in a single shot, up 2 ISO 6400 in 6 burst shot HDR. I do a lot of low light photos, so this is important to me to get such good results from such a high ISO.

The focus with the Minolta lenses are very fast, not much different than what I was used to with Canon, and they are very light weight.

One of the best things about the switch to me is the weight. Selling 35 pounds of gear, and replacing it with the same range of gear weighing 10 pounds. I can carry the a57 camera with the 70-210 all day with no problem. The flash I bought weighs more than the camera and the lens.

Can you tell I really like my switch?

Sony uses the Konica Minolta mount for the lenses. The transition was as follows. Minolta merged (or was bought) by Konica to become Konica Minolta. Ultimately, Sony, in looking for a body/lens mount purchased Konica/Minolta to acquire a body/lens mount system. That transaction made the Sony cameras backward compatible to the old Minolta lenses. Since Minolta was one of the very first film SLR cameras to offer AutoFocus lens system, most old film SLR lenses from Minolta fit the Sony digital camera bodies, and make use of AF or MF.