A77 features not found in A65
1) Magnesium alloy body
2) Weather sealing
3) Rear control wheel
4) Joystick control
5) Microfocus adjust
6) LED AF assist lamp
7) Customizable upper and lower Auto ISO limits
8) 19 point AF w/ 11 cross type vs. 15 point AF w/ 3 cross type
9) 1/8000 vs. 1/4000 max shutter speed
10) 1/250 vs. 1/160 Flash Sync
11) Flash sync socket
12) Sony vertical grip available
13) Top LCD
14) 3 way tilt rear LCD
15) 12 fps vs. 10fps
16) Extended exposure bracketing
17) Extended AE compensation
18) ISO settings start from 50 vs. 100 and offer 1/3 stop increments
19) External focusing mode switch
20) AF/MF switching button
21) Direct Manual Focus
22) Manual control for pop-up flash
23) JPEG Extra Fine option
24) 3 user memory locations
25) Release priority option
26) AF drive speed option
27) AEL button vs. Function menu for slow sync
28) Pop-up flash GN12/16mm vs. GN10/18mm
29) Additional Creative Styles
30) 'M' shift capability
FINDING BUTTONS, DIALS, AND CONTROLS ON YOUR SONY ALPHA A65/A77
http://www.dummies.com/photography/cameras/sony-alpha-slt-a65a77-for-dummies-cheat-sheet/
a very good intro (in french)
http://alpha-numerique.fr/index.php/materiel/boitiers-sony/128-alpha-65/791-sony-alpha-65-le-reflex-semi-expert-translucent-accessible
Books about Sony alpha 77 and 65
The Complete Guide to Sony's Alpha 65 and 77 SLT Cameras B&W Edition
Volume I
https://books.google.fr/books?id=afiWAwAAQBAJ
Volume II
https://books.google.fr/books?id=R_mWAwAAQBAJ
Version 1.2
ISBN 978-1-105-52519-3 B&W Vol. I
978-1-105-52578-0 B&W Vol. ll
Sony Alpha SLT-A65 / A77 For Dummies
https://books.google.fr/books?id=bFa3sUiL0xIC
From Vol I
only the beginning on google books
Geez, where do I start? The specs for these cameras looked so perfect that
the entire world waited anxiously for them to be released: World’s
highest megapixel (for an APS-C sized sensor, that is), world’s best
Electronic Viewfinder, a design that allows fast AF (or full manual
control) when shooting HD video, Olympic-paced shooting speeds, and
probably the best “kit” lens ever produced.
the translucent mirror
Traditional SLRs (which stands for
Single Lens Reflex) had a mirror
behind the lens that swung out of
the way the moment you took the
picture (Figure 1-2). The mirror
was there to ensure that the
composition you saw in the
viewfinder was identical to what
ended up on the film. (Yes, FILM.
It’s an old design!) And moving
that mirror up and down five
frames per second (or faster with
some high-end sports cameras) is a
mechanical engineering challenge
which can also induce a lot of in-
camera vibration.
But what if the mirror remained
fixed in place‘? Or, more
specifically, what if the mirror was
a semi-transparent variety, which
let most of the light through but
reflected about one third of that
light up to some autofocus
sensors? That would solve two of
the biggest problems with most
other DSLRs that try to shoot video: 1) you would now be able to add fast autofocus while you’re shooting video, and 2) you would be able to shoot many more frames-per-second (10 in the ease of the A65; 12 in the case of the A77) than what a consumer-grade moving mirror would normally be
able to allow. AND you wouldn’t have to give up autofocus in this mode!
The SLT was conceived to give you a full-time Live View function with HO compromises.
Sony’s marketing department says that it took a collaboration of five different technology companies to produce this 2nd-generation thin polymer mirror laminate. (They also incorrectly label this semi-
transparent mirror as being “translucent”. Semantics. I’ve gotten over it.)
The new mirror is so good that dprevicwcom tried andfailed to produce a “ghost” (unwanted internal reflection of a specular highlight) in their review of the camera.
Worlds Best Electronic Viewfinder
It’s not just hyperbole - l’m serious. Everyone who has ever picked up these cameras looks at the EVF and says, “Wow!”. (This is especially true of those who have used this camera’s predecessors, the A33, 35, and 55.) What makes it different‘? It’s an Organic L.E.D. (OLED) display — the same kind used on high-end smart phones. They are brighter, have a wider color gamut, and have a faster refresh rate than the camera’s rear LCD. And unlike the A55’s liquid crystal-based EVF, this one doesn’t employ a polarizer, which means you can use this camera while wearing polarized sunglasses without fear of screen blackout.
The EVF is the other essential ingredient (the first being the translucent mirror) that bring all of the benefits of SLT design to you: in addition to the fact that you can have fast autofocus during video mode, you can also see how your image will look before you shoot (exposure and white balance), plus it gives you tools for focusing manually (Focus Magnifier and Peaking Level functions) that just weren’t available using the old design.
The EVF isn’t perfect, though. When shooting under any kind of fluorescent light (whether it be the older tubular bulbs or the newer compact fluorescent variety), the white balance you see in Live View
fluctuates and doesn’t always match the final image. Eyeglass wearers shooting outdoors on a bright day say they have to shield the sun which comes in between their face and the eyeglasses. David Kilpatriek at photoclubalpha.eom mentions that the EVF doesn’t show you enough detail in the blacks (he says that to save energy the camera turns off any LED pixels if the value is below a certain threshold, something I never would have noticed. And some extreme sports shooters have complained that they have trouble panning in the fastest shooting modes (although I personally haven’t experienced any problem during any experiments).
Furthermore, unlike other cameras which shoot this quickly, the Sony can actually autofocus between shots, helping to kccp that sprinter in focus from shot-to-shot. Sony calls this feature "Continuous Advance Prioritv AE”.
3-D Panorama mode
Sony’s programmers have pulled off (what is in my mind) a software miracle by also including a 3-D Panorama mode. Using no special hardware or lenses, the software actually compares the geometry
and perspective of adjacent 2D shots and infers the relative distance from the camera in software. (This was clearly the result of several Ph.D. dissertations.) It then generates a 3-D image in an industry-standard .mpo file which can be viewed on the new breed of 3-D TVs. There are also
free programs available for viewing these files on your computer. (You’ll
have to provide your own red/green eyeglasses, though.)
In camera Lens Corrections
If you’re a lens perfectionist, then you’ll probably appreciate this feature:
Your camera has the ability to correct for the three most common types of optical deficiencies in consumer-grade lenses: vignetting, distortion, and chromatic aberrations. And it does this the same way that high-end and expensive desktop workflow software does: inside the camera is a database of a small but growing number of lenses and their optical characteristics (and the corrections needed) at different focal lengths. As of this writing, the cameras know about 6 popular lenses; with more to be
added via future firmware updates.
Handheld Twilight and Multi-Frame Noise Reduction
There are other features that use Sony’s ability to
do multiple-image alignment in-camera. The first actually has two names and appears in the menus in different places: “Handheld Twilight” (HHT) and “Multi-Frame Noise Reduction” (MFNR).
Shooting in low light and don’t have a tripod handy‘? Hate noisy pictures, whether in good light or bad? For years professional photographers (astrophotographers in particular) had a trick up their sleeves when it came to reducing noise in static images — they would take several different
shots in succession, and then merge them all in Photoshop. The underlying principle here was that each frame had the same subject but completely random noise (sensor's noise & atmosphere/transmission), and by combining the images the noise would just get “averaged” away, while the subject, which appeared consistently in each shot, would be reinforced.
Using the same intelligence found in the panorama stitching algorithms mentioned above, your A65 or A77 camera can use this very same technique, except you don’t need a tripod and you certainly don’t need a computer. Using either Handheld Twilight mode or the Multi-Frame Noise-Reduction function, the camera will take
six handheld shots in rapid succession, line them all up (in case your hand wasn’t perfectly steady), merge them all together, and produce one high- resolution, low-noise, low-light image — all in-camera!
Three Low-Light Modes Compared So it tuns out that these cameras offer you not one but THREE different features designed to tackle low-light shots:
- Handheld Twilight,
- Multi- frame Noise Reduction,
- a 3“ one called "Night Scene" mode which as far as I can see doesn’t do anything different than AUTO mode with the flash disabled.
This seems like as good a place as any to compare all three.
Conclusion: While Handheld Twilight is a great feature for point-and- shoots that gives amateurs a fighting chance of getting a sharp shot without using tripods (AND it reduces noise about three stops’ worth), the results arc not nearly as good as using an old-fashioned tripod with a lower ISO. And using MFNR actually makes the low ISO tripod shots look even less noisy!
Handheld High Dynamic Range (HDR)
The
last multiple-image, in-camera alignment feature is another great timesaver: High Dynamic Range (often abbreviated HDR). I’ll also talk about the limited dynamic range of the digital sensor, and how our eyes can see a greater range of light (bright to dark) than what the camera can see. Over the past century there have been lots of attempts to correct this intentional artifact of photographic representation of real light, trying to render the image so it looks more like how we saw it. The latest technique for trying to achieve this wider dynamic range comes in what’s become known as High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. The time-honored way to create an HDR image is to put the camera on a tripod and take 3 (sometimes more) pictures of the same scene, each at different exposures — some darker, some lighter. Then, you merge them all in your computer so it sort of looks like the way you saw it in real life.
Up until now, HDR photography was labor-intensive and unintuitive — in fact, I once wrote a whole article on the subject and gave real-life examples of how to create these images in my Advanced Topics 2 e-booklet (available from
www.FriedmanArchives.com/ebooks). That was HDR the old way. With the A65/77 cameras, Sony has made this useful feature easier to use. For starters, there’s no need for a tripod anymore. With the feature enabled (page 162), you just point the camera at your subject, and press the shutter release button once. The camera will take 3 sequential pictures at different exposures (one lighter, one darker, one “normal”) and merge them in the camera for you. No computer needed. What’s more, this feature can shoot up to a six-stop range. “But what if you had a shaky hand and the camera moved slightly between the first and third exposure?”, I hear you ask. Just as with the Handheld Twilight function mentioned earlier, the answer is the camera will automatically try to align the three images for you before merging them into a single .jpg image. Again, pretty impressive stuff.
Peaking Color
Peaking Color As mentioned earlier, these cameras also provide two great manual focusing aids. The first is the Focus magnifier (which shows you a magnified area of the image so you can fine- tune your manual focusing), and the other is a pretty innovative feature called “Peaking Color” (and its counterpart, “Peaking Level”). As you tum the manual focusing ring of your lens, areas that have high contrast (which equates to sharp focus) will be highlighted in the color of your choice. Faster than using the superior ground-glass focusing screens of l960’s era film-based SLRs!
Built-in GPS
I predicted this back in 1994. In my NASA days I invented the “Trustworthy Digital Camera” (
http://tinyurl.c0m/6bhlw9g); if you took a picture with this camera you’d be able to prove in court that the image had not been manipulated by computer. (I was on a mission to restore the credibility of the photographic image!)
From Vol II
Forum
HDMI live
Is the HDMI output from A57 and or A65 live during recording mode? I would like to use an external HDMI monitor with larger screen size while composing.
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3193603
A65 - Taking time lapse
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3893577
use triggertrap ("intervalometer")
https://medium.com/triggertrap-playbook/triggertrap-for-ios-and-android-is-now-open-source-a194350e9cfc
http://stephane-mottin.blogspot.fr/2017/07/hdr-high-dynamic-range-problem.html
