A55 Sony Views
On leaving, I was given a review camera to bring you the good news. As it was early days, I had to be satisfied with the lesser of the two models — A33 (pictured above) — because there was only one A55 (pictured below) to hand, and this was in the Sony techo’s hands. Ne’r mind, you’ll still get the full whiff of excitement this pair generates as, aside from a few specs, the cameras are near-identical.
Then late last year, Sony dropped a bombshell with the A55. This camera is designed around a translucent, stationary pellicle mirror rather than the typical a transparent, reflexive one. Light simultaneously reflects off the mirror into the autofocus mechanism and passes through the mirror to the sensor. That means it can focus and shoot at the same time, so it’s the fastest camera ever seen at this price. Sony calls this a single-lens translucent (SLT) design.
The A55 looks like a standard consumer-class dSLR built around an APS-C sensor (16.2 megapixels in this case), just a bit smaller. Its translucent pellicle mirror is fixed in place, so Sony engineers didn’t need to leave room for the mirror to flip in and out of the way of the sensor during exposures. It’s not so much smaller as to make a fundamental difference in the user experience, but it is compact by dSLR standards.
The 3-inch, 921,000-pixel articulating LCD is arguably the most dominant feature here. This is a live-view camera -- light goes right to the sensor, not to an optical viewfinder -- so it makes sense that Sony would put such a versatile screen on the back. It’s certainly not the first affordable dSLR with an articulating LCD. The Nikon D5000 had one, and now the Canon 60D and T3i do too. But it’s an especially useful feature on the A55, since this camera can focus and shoot at its top speed while using the LCD. With the hinge, it’s possible to view scenes from about any angle imaginable. Self-portraits, overhead shots, low-to-the-ground shots, around-the-corner shots -- all are easy to frame and easy to shoot.
A55 Sony Images
