During the past two weeks I had the opportunity to use a pre-production Sony A500 for shootings in Firenze and Rome. While for my work I relied maily the A900, I had a lot of fun using the A500 and its built-in HRD mode. Eqally impressive - at least for Sony users - was its high-ISO performance. While the colours are slightly reduced at 3200, 6400 and 12800 ISO, the high-ISO JPGs are much better than those known from the A700 firmware 4.

Let me summarize the five things that impressed my most:

1) The A500/A550 ist the first Sony DSLR with low noise at ISO 3200 and 6400. The ISO 6400 JPGs out of the camera are fully usable, and the A500 ISO 12800 JPGs are better than A900 ISO 6400 JPGs

2) The A550 shoots impressive 7 frames per second, the A500 "only" 5 fps

3) Both the A500 and the A550 have (in addition to the "Dynamic Range Optimizer" known from A700/A900) also the ability to combine two images into one HDR image. The two images are shot within about 150ms. The effects largely depend on the exposure difference between the two images (manually adjustable from 1 EV to 3 EV). I was very surprised about the cameras ability to shoot HDRs even from moving objects (eg crowds of tourists in Rome).

4) Both A500 and A550 have not only the "normal" live-view known from the A3xx series, but in addition also a 100% live view from the main sensor. Previously known from cameras such as the Canon EOS 1D series, this feature here is implemented very user-friendly: just press a button, and you are in sensor live view. Press the same button a second time, and you are in 100% live view.  Manual focus (MF) using the main sensor at 100% magnification is easy and very accurate.

5) AF accuracy seems to be better than with the A700. I have used several lenses prone to back/frontfocus (e. g. the Minolta 2/100mm); none of them had any AF problems. AF was accurate even under worst conditions and with f1.4 lenses used wide open.

Images:

A500 ISO 1600, 3200, 6400 Firenze Battistero

A500 ISO 12800 Vaticano