As we announced already, we tested the new Sony Alpha 500 Digital Reflex on the latest Frankfurt show, and the photos you see on the report of the show and the interviews with Dr.Paefgen and Dirk van Braekel and last but not least the VW Group Night on the future of the automobile show the extraordinary virtues of this camera, also in difficult low light conditions… Here you can read more on our findings…

Hans Knol ten Bensel

Practical

Right from the start we felt very much at home with the camera, the controls being quite familiar and self-explaining.

The two buttons one uses most when making digital photos, the AEL (Automatic Exposure Lock) and exposure compensation are conveniently at hand, and can be used by your thumb without taking the eye from the viewfinder. The round menu knob at the left side of the camera indicates the usual auto, P(rogram), A(perture priority) and S(hutter speed priority) and M(anual) programmes as well as the usual landscape, portrait and night/sunset functions.

To use the buttons on the right-hand top of the camera body, you will have to take the eye away from the viewfinder. As these buttons control less frequently changed settings like ISO speed, D-Range and drive mode, this is not a serious drawback.  What we found a bit awkward however is that the rotating control ring on top of the the grip which you use to change the settings of the chosen function, exposure compensation for example, is too close to the on/off switch, and we found ourselves in those decisive , frantic moments when we were quickly setting the exposure compensation value, inadvertedly turning  the camera completely off…    

When rotating the control wheel at the top of the grip to change the exposure compensation, we all to often accidently turned the camera off... in the middle of action!  

What we liked very much was the ability to take the eye from the viewfinder and look at the view through the large LCD screen, which then could articulated nicely so you could get an excellent view of the scene when holding the camera above your head. We used the camera quite often this way on the VW concern night, with the snapshot results seen clearly on the reports elsewhere on the site…

As the photos clearly show, the 12.3 effective megapixel Exmor ™ CMOS sensor with BIONZ processor for images with high resolution and minimum noise really deliver. The snapshot photo of the smiling young woman at the VW group night with the striped blazer was taken at an ASA setting of 1600, and the Advanced Quick AF Live View with face-detection AF clearly warranted a sharp picture.

The same can be said of the photo taken of Mr. Martin Winterkorn, taken in the hustle and bustle when he was stepping out of the E-up! Volkswagen electric car.

The Alpha 500 holds very much its own in artificial light conditions...

Colour balance is also excellent in artificial light conditions, with good colour rendering, as the photo of the steering wheel of the magnificent Bugatti Aveyron “Sang Bleu” shows.

This photo of the BMW Mille Miglia streamliner – a report of the magnificent BMW stand at the IAA show is still to follow – shows that the Sony handles well light sources with different color temperatures.

I was also very impressed by the overall sharpness and optical qualities of the standard 18-55 lens. The built-in flash is quite adequate for normal portrait photos, as shown in the interviews we took, and is shown in the photo taken with the flash as a “fill in” of Dr. Winterkorn.  

Last but not least we mention the new HDR-automatic mode: one can take photos with a particularly high dynamic range automatically by two exposures together for extra exposure on the darker parts to capture detail also in the shadows. The results are indeed quite stunning.

The familiar menu dial is on the left side of the camera...

When not in life view mode, the LCD screen shows the chosen settings very clearly, with an interesting shutter speed/aperture grid.

 

The Alpha 500 impressed us very much indeed… and we only can look forward to testing the higher-end models of this Sony Alpha range!

 

Hans Knol ten Bensel

Note: the desktop photos of the Alpha 500 camera were shot with our Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-H3 at 400 ASA setting, EV set at 1 full stop overexposure...