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Nat Geo Shooter Ben Horton Reviews the Sony A55

January 6, 2011 by News, Reviews



There’s this idea floating around that the big debate is whether you should shoot with Canon or Nikon. The two big names are duking it out on “This vs. That” forums and racing each other to see who can pack more megapixels into a sensor. All the while, quietly and steadily, Sony is gathering a stable of loyalists.Sony shooters remind me of Volvo drivers. Very loyal to their brand, they will buy Volvo for the rest of their lives. Bigger names come and go, but these drivers know the truth, they may not be driving the sexiest car, but they are driving the most solid and safest one. I drive a Volvo, so I figured it was time to try a Sony.

It all started a few months back when I wrote a comparison article on Carl Zeiss Lenses and Canon lenses. The Zeiss lenses blew Canon away. Within days I’d received numerous e-mails from readers suggesting I take a look at the Sony-Zeiss combination. Zeiss makes manual Canon and Nikon compatible lenses, but Sony and Zeiss have been working together to make a professional grade camera-lens combination with autofocus and a few other tweaks that take full advantage of the partnership.

At the moment Sony’s pro cameras don’t shoot video, and as I firmly believe that every photographer should make the transition to HDDSLR’s, I chose to try out the A55. It shoots full HD, and has a 16 megapixel sensor however it’s not called a “pro camera”. As anybody who has read my previous reviews knows, I’m against the idea that a camera is what makes an image. It’s the lens that makes an image, the camera just records it. Considering this philosophy, any camera can be a pro camera with the right lens. The A55 with the Zeiss lenses is a combination that provides extraordinary images even if the camera itself is marketed and priced at a consumer level.

There’s a couple of features that persuaded me to take a look at Sony’s camera. Most of these features are a result of their Translucent Mirror Technology. Sony has invented a way to get rid of the pup-up mirror that are typically a part of SLRs. This fact alone has resulted in a huge debate because Sony replaced the mirror with an electronic viewfinder – a little LCD inside the eyepiece – that some people love, and others hate. With this feature, the camera can send light to the focus sensor while it’s shooting which results in a constantly focussing camera that isn’t delayed by the mirror going up and down. This combined with one of the best live view autofocus technology in the market, Sony has done a brilliant job with the A55 for shooting video. Another distinct advantage to the electronic viewfinder is that you can shoot video using the eyepiece instead of having to deal with the glare on the rear LCD, or hooding up the rear DVD screen.

All this sounded great so it was time to see for myself. Camera in hand I left on a road trip. The A55 was going to be baptized by fire. Forget the specs, I wanted to see how this thing shot in the field.

My first experience working with this camera was a real joy. For one thing, I love the Zeiss lenses. The scenes I was shooting in the first few days were generally simple, with a well placed person on an area that I could easily focus on. The real point of these images was testing how easy it was to change settings on the camera, and to see how fast I could take it out from my bag and shoot. I found things like white balance, ISO, and the usual AV and TV settings were just as easy as any SLR to work through. I occasionally got lost searching through the menu, but after a few days of a learning curve I could get where I needed to go pretty quickly. The auto white balance worked well, and I could see how my image was going to turn out right away because of the electronic viewfinder. The next shoot would test the camera more when it came to focus and tough lighting.

Part of my work in Santa Cruz was to shoot legendary surf board shaper Randy French. The shaping room is lit with fluorescent lighting, so I took some studio lights with me just in case. The camera performed far better than expected in the tough lighting. And even with the low light I decided that I didn’t need to use the studio lights. I still ended up changing the photos to B&W just because I like the look, but you can see in the gradation of the tones, that the A55 can handle these tough lighting situations really well. It was at this point that I really started to feel like Sony had taken a pro camera and simplified a bit so they could sell it as a consumer level camera. Shooting inside with fluorescent lighting is tough, but my next stop would show me how the camera performed in dramatic lighting, with contrasting colors and bright saturated scenes.

Death Valley National Park on Christmas morning. I got up at 4:30 AM to get out ahead of the crowd of photographers, some of whom are visible in the above photo. I took my 5D Mark II just in case I didn’t get what I was looking for with the Sony. As it turns out, I hardly shot with it at all. The Zeiss lenses have such great contrast and color that I found myself preferring to shoot with the Sony.

I also decided to try out some of the bells and whistles that I assumed were just consumer gimmicks, like the panoramic feature that takes a number of photos as you turn the camera, no tripod necessary. I had my doubts, and I got some funny looks from the other photographers when they heard what sounded like a motor drive while I was shooting a landscape. The results really do speak for themselves.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this stitch perfect, but I challenge you to see any flaws The sun was shining brightly to the left, with the scene getting slowly darker toward the right. The in camera software stitched and color matched the image well enough that I’d confidently blow this image up and hang it on a wall.

Next I headed back toward my home in Colorado, and as I had only a few days left with the camera, I decided I should try out the 10 frames per second feature. The interesting thing about this feature is that you can see what you are shooting the entire time, and you can focus as you shoot. I’d messed around with this a few times before, in better light, and it worked very well. This time would be a little different, the light was bad, the scene was gray, and there was snow falling all around me which may have confused the camera.

Here’s a couple of the key frames from a burst of about 15 images.

Don’t rip on my brother’s style… He’s new to Telemark Skiing.

I returned home after my road trip, downloaded all my cards into Aperture, and there on the screen was a map, the A55 had geotagged all of my images without me even having to even think about it. The locations are accurate, and the photos are arranged automatically by location.

 

I’m still searching for a good way to implement this on my website, so viewers can search my photos by location. I don’t think it exists in any usable sense quite yet, but I give it about a year before someone builds a plugin that fits my needs. For now, I did find a website called Panaramio run by Google where I can upload photos to that allow viewers to browse through locations. It’s also possible to send someone a KLM file from Google Earth and they can see all your photos on their own computer.

It was time for my final test of the camera; the Multi-Frame NR. I don’t know what NR stands for, but I do know what it does. It takes six images and combines them as an alternative to having to use a high ISO. For this I thought a photo of the stars would be a perfect example. High ISO photos taken with long exposures tend to to have so much grain that the stars are lost in a mess of blown out pixels. The Multi-Frame feature stepped up to the challenge, and the results, again, speak for themselves.

Shooting video with the A55 was a dream. The ability to use autofocus while shooting, coupled with being able to use the viewfinder as opposed to the LCD screen on the back of the camera makes this one of my top picks for HDDSLR shooting. The new Zeiss lenses focus silently, so they don’t interrupt your sound capture while filming.

The only complaint with the autofocus – and this isn’t really a compliant it’s more a testament to Sony’s technology – is that it focuses too fast. It simply snaps right into focus when sometimes it would be nice to have a softer transition. Of course anybody versed in shooting with a Zeiss lens can focus manually after just a few hours practice.

There was one significant problem with the Sony A55. Sony requires you to download the footage you shoot through the camera when shooting with the AVCHD format. It would be nice to be able to simply pull out the card and pop it in to a card reader so the camera can be used for shooting. I hope this is one of the changes that Sony makes if they come out with a pro model. AVCHD doesn’t require re-encoding to be played on a DVD or BluRay disk, but if you plan on editing it with Final Cut or Premier, be prepared for a slow machine. AVCHD requires about 2X-4X the processing power of your typical HD file.

UPDATE: Correction – Just got this from the Sony folks.

It is possible to download the AVCHD footage with a card reader using the PMB application delivered with the camera (MS Windows only). You have to connect the camera only once after installing the PMB to show which camera you have to activate appropriate features. I have the A55 and I use a cheap card reader to download video (and to upload it back to the card too).

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