Features

There are several cameras across the Nikon, Pentax and Sony brands that use a variation of the 16-million-pixel, APS-C CMOS sensor that is found in the Alpha 57. Like its Alpha 55 predecessor, the Alpha 57 uses a 1.44-million-dot LCD electronic viewfinder (EVF), but in this case it has been refined to offer an additional ‘maximum’ magnification setting that further enlarges the view.

A defining difference between the Alpha 57 and the more expensive Alpha 65 is that the Alpha 65 uses Sony’s 2.359-million-dot OLED EVF, which is brighter, crisper and gives greater contrast.

Key shooting modes carried across from the older Alpha 55 include high dynamic range (HDR), 3D sweep panorama, sweep panorama, intelligent auto (iA) and iA+. iA+ includes the continuous shooting and HDR mode options.

The Alpha 57 has 10fps high-speed shooting that can be used with continuous AF and exposure control for approximately 25-frame bursts. A new 12fps burst is available in the tele-zoom continuous advance priority AE mode. To achieve this faster frame rate, a 1.4x magnification is applied, resulting in a 25-frame burst of 8.4-million-pixel, medium-quality JPEGs.

Clear Image Zoom and Auto Portrait Framing are two new shooting modes that make use of Sony’s Pixel Super Resolution Technology. Clear Image Zoom offers up to a 2x zoom from the selected focal length. When used, a full-size 16.1-million-pixel image is saved, unlike with the 2x teleconverter modes found in the Alpha 65 and Alpha 77 that simply crop into the full-size image. Clear Image Zoom works by cropping into the full-resolution image, then interpolating neighbouring pixels, effectively upscaling the image.

Auto Portrait Framing works with face recognition. Once a face has been detected in a scene and the image recorded, a second file is processed that crops the image according to the rule of thirds and in relation to the captured face.

One feature that is lacking in the Alpha 57, but which can be found in the Alpha 65, is GPS. Otherwise, the Alpha 57’s specification is impressive for a camera of its price, and the features on offer should satisfy those who are new to photography.

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