Review on Sony Alpha DSLR-A550 14.2MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only): Professional-grade Imaging Power at Your Fingertips by Jhalak Jhalak ᠌

Name: Sony Alpha DSLR-A550 14.2MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only): Professional-grade Imaging Power at Your Fingertips
Item: Sony Alpha DSLR-A550 14.2MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only): Professional-grade Imaging Power at Your Fingertips
Rating: 5

December 20, 2022

A really necessary purchase, Im glad I found this product.

I aimed at the Canon 50d, looked at the Pentax K7 and Nikon d300, but when the a550 appeared, I decided to take it, since Sony in this case made it seem like a rating model, and not a marketing chip for making money - for a camera that just came out with a bunch of nice features, good build quality and excellent performance for its class, it is more than inexpensive. And by the way, we don’t have such extra charges for it as for canons and nikons - compare the prices in our market and on ebay for interest.
Well, one more point related to the price - the total amount that I am going to spend on photos in the next year (including the camera) is no more than 50 thousand. Sony with a whale lens, an ExtremeIII 4Gb card and a protective UV filter cost me 30200r. It remains to take another lens for 14 and about 6 thousand remains for a flash, for example. With a canon, such a lens (especially since the analogue is more expensive), I might not have taken it, especially a flash. So in the end the end result would be worse.

Pros

Moderately large, most (although not all, like on pro models) functions are available with one touch, a unique Life-View mode, while maintaining focus on standard sensors, excellent colors even at 1600 ISO and quite tolerable noise level even when shooting in jpege. The flip screen is bright and allows you to shoot even with manual focus from any position, finding faces and smiles, zooming for precise manual focusing, 5 frames / s with focus on each frame and 7 with fixed focus - a real machine gun. Choosing a focus point is more convenient than a canon or nikon, an adequate price - with functionality and shooting quality higher than the Canon 50d, it costs 20% cheaper, I'm not talking about the small-pixel 550d By the way, the focusing speed is very pleasing, especially with normal lighting - literally a fraction of a second passes between pressing the shutter and the shutter. It also turns on very quickly - in fact, faster than I manage to move my finger from the power lever to the shutter button, and if the camera is in burst mode with focusing on each frame, then in order to miss some important frame, you have to be a complete brake.

Cons

There is no dust and moisture protection, but this is not a semi-pro. There is no autofocus backlight, but an external flash will solve this, besides, the light from a 40-watt light bulb under the cover is enough to focus confidently enough and even make out a smile for a self-timer. The viewfinder is a little dark, but for me personally, even with a whale lens, it’s enough for now, and with a fifty-fifty 1.4 it will be much brighter, and the live view compensates for this - in some cases, a folding screen is much better than even the coolest viewfinder.