Sony Alpha A77 with 16-50mm lens review

Videos are recorded in AVCHD format at 1920×1080 at 25p, 50i or 50p, with bit rates up to 24Mbit/s (28Mbit/s for 50p) for artefact-free motion. Phase detect autofocus was available while recording, and the kit lens’s so-called Super Sonic Wave Motor made a minimal impact on the high-quality stereo soundtrack.

The same can’t be said for aperture adjustments while recording, though. Fortunately, the camera kept the aperture wide open while recording and adjusted video exposures via the shutter speed. However, this resulted in shutter speeds up to 1/8,000s in bright light, eliminating any chance of motion blur and giving motion a staccato effect that’s not to our taste. Priority and full manual exposure modes are available for video capture, but strangely, not at the same time as autofocus. Those who want manual exposure will probably want to focus manually too, but it seems a little curmudgeonly not to let users pick which features they want to use.

The maximum sensitivity for video capture is a relatively modest ISO 1600, and videos at this setting were a little noisier than from the Sony NEX-5N We couldn’t coax the sensor to overheat while recording, though, with no ominous thermometer icon appearing on screen after an hour’s continuous recording – albeit in 30-minute chunks for models sold in the EU.

There’s not much wrong with picture quality at ISO 100, and the huge resolution allows photos to be heavily cropped while still maintaining plenty of detail – click enlarge

Another downside of the huge resolution is image noise. 24 million pixels is a new high for an APS-C sensor, and while the A77 captured the most detail we’ve ever seen in our studio tests, it also exhibited much more noise than we expect from an SLR. JPEGs at ISO 100 were sharp and smooth, but even by ISO 160 there was some smearing of fine details due to noise reduction. By ISO 800, noise reduction artefacts made photos resemble a high quality compact rather than an upmarket SLR. The ISO speed goes up to 16,000 but we’d recommend limiting it to 1,600, and much lower for critical shots. The A77’s high resolution isn’t the only culprit, though – some of the blame must go to the translucent mirror, which means that not all the light entering the lens reaches the sensor.

Raw output at ISO 6400 reveals the full extent of the A77’s noise problems

The Multi-frame Noise Reduction shooting mode helped in low light, capturing six frames and superimposing them to average out noise, but it’s only effective for static areas of the frame. These shots took eight seconds to process, during which time the camera was inoperable.

Otherwise, the A77’s image quality was hard to fault. Switching the Creative Style preset to Natural gave colours that were exactly that. Automatic exposures were impeccably judged and the 19-point autofocus system rarely put a foot wrong. Detail levels were spectacular with the kit lens, especially when shooting raw and developing in Adobe Lightroom.