Anyone else getting the A99? Just got a shipping notification, mine should be here Friday, 11/2.

Thinking about it -- mostly for video. Going to rent first.

I had ordered it. Then Amazon kindly cancelled my order so that they could implement their new sales tax. I have looked at the a99 in a couple of the stores and I'm still not sure. I like all the gadgets (the flip out screen etc.) but I see nothing but underwhelmed reviews. Might get its cousin, the vg900 if the mirrorless thing makes it a little better in low light.

Let us know when you get it and what you think!

I've been tinkering with the A99 over the weekend, its loaded so I'm trying to get the hang of all the features, get used to the controls and work through the settings to find a shooting work flow I like - and I only have one Alpha lens, the 70-400, which is a little unwieldy and a long FL for casual/experimental shooting. I have a 24-70 on the way so I'll do more comprehensive tests this weekend.

FYI, I ordered from the Sony store and got the 10% education discount, I am working on my masters, but it didn't ask for any real verification beyond the school, so anyone could get the discount which essentially negates the tax charge.

@Betsy Interesting you say the A99 reviews are underwhelming as pretty much everything I read before ordering raved about the DR and IQ, the big issue is the EVF/OVF and videos like "The Calling" really demonstrated the quality of the A99's video. There's a new review posted on Sony Alpha Rumors that claims the A99 has the highest DR of any FF camera. If you look at the raw files and compare to other FF cameras, the difference is minor between Canon/Nikon and Sony - it really comes down to features and the EVF for most if you're not already heavily invested in one brand. The D800 shows more detail in the stills, but the video is no better and no 60p or IBIS. The 5d3 is cleaner above ISO5000 or so, but IMHO at lower ISO's the A99's tonality is superior and its $700 cheaper until Canon's MAP pricing kicks in later this month, then it'll be $1000 less. YMMV...

The A99 is still the only FF to offer IBIS (all lenses can be stabilized on the A99, legacy glass just needs a chipped adapter), 1080/60p, tilt/swivel LCD, peaking, Zeiss AF lenses and the silent control knob is going to be copied by CaNikon in their next big cameras - its F-ing brilliant - you can bounce between ISO or aperture and adjust exposure while shooting with no control noise. Others have features the A99 lacks, but no 1080/60p is a no-go for me. So my move back to FF meant A99 or nothing. I took a chance and so far absolutely no regrets, IQ is stunning.

I'm replacing my FS100 with the A99 and getting an external recorder at the end of the year to shoot 220mb/s Prores courtesy of the clean HDMI out.

all lenses can be stabilized on the A99, legacy glass just needs a chipped adapter

Chris where would someone get such an adapter?

Leitax sells Leica R and Zeiss C/Y adapters and here's a link to Richard Harris' blog, he makes Rokkor and Zuiko adapters allowing you to use them without resorting to the goofy adapter with an optical element.

Lens Adapters Shropshire Wedding Photographer | Richard Harris Photography (http://www.rharris-images.com/lens-adapters/)

Don't get me wrong, the a99 looks like an incredible camera in many ways. Actually, the 50p (if I ordered from Europe) or the 60p were the things I was most excited by but a friend spoke with Philip Bloom about the higher frame rate options briefly and he was of the opinion that the 50p option was really problematic because of the low bit rate--and because Ninja can't handle 50p/60p raw. Now if someone is going to manipulate the video at all (and especially if the video is mainly intended for the internet) this won't be too much of a problem. But for those of us who like to tinker in post the 60p option might be a tantalizing tease.

I do like the image a lot with ample light but then so many cameras look pretty terrific in heavy light settings. But Johnni Behiri's video (and those like it) and review scared me (plus all those low light iso tests everyone's been doing). We've been wanting for aesthetic reasons to take advantage of the FF sensors low light capabilities and that's one of the areas where the a99's reviews have been mediocre at best. There's a video pitting the Nikon d600 (which has the same sensor but better low light capability than the a99) against the mkiii and the noise on the Sony sensor breaks my heart. I wouldn't be comfortable going above 1600 iso from the look of the videos.

And a lot of people have been complaining abou the auto-focus on the Sony too. They've obviously put so much effort into it and have sacrificed light performance for it and yet I keep reading and hearing "sluggish". There's a beautiful video on SonyAlpha R today that has stunning images and shockingly bad AF even with the Zeiss 24-70. https://vimeo.com/52834229#

That's why I'm torn between the D600 (same sensor, also hdmi out, better low light processing, easier to get a whole range of great lenses), the a99 (for all the reasons you cited), and the vg900. With the vg900 it kills me that it's so expensive and that it cripples Sony's own af functions on its own a mount--but if I could find a review that said it was 10 % better in low light... ugh...

I don't know Chris... I'm so glad you love yours--maybe I'll join you. Do you know of any reasonable recording options for 50p raw? Since my little movie is 90% interiors and I'm going to have to buy a monstrously fast new computer to handle raw grading and editing, could that computer handle direct input of 50p via hdmi?

Betsy, there plenty of videos showing poor AF on every camera, there are always situations that will challenge the AF in any camera. My only experience is with the 70-400 and its really, really fast at the wide and tele ends, much faster than the 5d2 and in many situations it locks as quickly as my EM5. Like I said, I'm waiting for my 24-70 to arrive, should be here by Friday, but most report that the A99 is very fast/accurate with that lens too. I tested the A77 before buying the A99 and its AF was fast and reliable in bright and dimly lit situations for me, YMMV.

AF-d is something to behold, yes there only 6 lenses now and 6 more coming that are supported, but the tracking abilities of the A99 are nothing short of phenomenal. I locked onto my dog yesterday and followed her around the yard as my wife threw her ball around and most of the shots could have been keepers, focus was spot on in my tests. AF-range is another cool feature that will certainly be copied by CaNikon.

I haven't seen any raw video from the D600, but the A99 is only slightly behind the FS100 IMHO, and the FS100 is a low light beast. Noise is more tolerable - for me - than banding in the shadows (something I see in Nikon footage) and posteriation of the highlights (something I see in 5d3 footage) because it can be reduced in post. I take all tests with a grain of salt because the differences in lenses and in-camera settings can have such a huge impact on footage and stills. I've seen many tests that pit two cameras with one having a massively inferior lens, or settings that make one look worse than the other just to skew results in one direction.

Owners are reporting other issues with the D600, Lens Rentals is showing an obnoxious amount of dust getting sucked into the camera by a gap in the shutter and some are complaining of the same thing on the Nikon boards. I just haven't been impressed with Nikon's video output, I shot side-by-side with my FS100 and a D800 and when I looked at the footage the D800 just didn't cut it, despite the "low" bitrate of AVCHD. Hopefully I'll get the chance to shoot next to some friends with CaNikon cameras to see how the A99 compares.

Unfortunately no external recorder AFAIK will record 1080/50/60p yet, but they do support 720/60p so I guess it depends on your final output. I want to see the quality of Prores 720/60p vs 1080/60p SOOC, but I won't be buying a recorder for at least another month or so.

The D600/A99 difference is 1/3 stop, but the feature set of the A99 for me made it a far better buy. Every camera has its strengths/weaknesses, buy the one that suits you best and good luck with your search.

Well I ordered it! Thanks Chris:) Will get the a99 in a few days with the 24-70 lens and the ninja 2 recorder.

Does the focus range limit adjustment work in video mode too? That could fix quite a lot of autofocus problems shown in that video Betsy posted.

As an A77 user it appears that with the A99 Sony has fixed every single complaint I had about my camera. If they chucked in a 1080P30 mode it would be pretty much perfect.

As soon as I can afford one I will buy one.

Does the focus range limit adjustment work in video mode too?

I have a similar question: does the AF-d work in video too?

There's a very helpful site I don't think we're not allowed to mention where you can get info on this. I think focus limiting doesn't work in video mode but they do have something close instead. According to one owner, "the af limiter is for stills, for video The A99 has the delay option which works in a very similar way. You set the delay time in your menu and when shooting a video and something runs between you and your subject the af will not change."

One problem some have with the new sensor is it disables autofocus below somewhere around f3 but apparently u can work around that if you are brave enough to tape over the limiter located on the mount.

Ps. I've heard different things about the Sony SAL af 50mm lens. Does anyone of y'all use it? I'd love to pick up a couple of reasonably priced fast (1.4-2) af a mount primes for low light situations.

AFIAK the AF-range does not work in video and as Betsy stated the Alpha cameras video AF doesn't work below f3.5. I really don't use AF when shooting video, peaking works fine for me. But I have been tinkering with it and it can lock on to moving subjects pretty well and track them with the AF. I use center point spot focus and once it locks it does keep things in focus. I don't really ever see myself using it, but some might find it useful.

Not sure about AF-d, will require further investigating. I've shot noting but a few test shots since getting the 24-70z as I've been moving. Will try to tinker with the A99 more this weekend.

Got the camera. Love some things, not so sure about some other things. Somehow I missed/or forgot that the 30p function had been disabled in America which screws me up. And don't get me started on the menu.

Do you think anyone will come up with a firmware jailbreak for this camera to give it 30/50p options?

Chris, what ISO rating would you give it? 800? Before noise sets in?

All the cameras I have seen in Japan only had 60P, 60i and 24P.

Unfortunately the only way to get 30P is in the mp4 mode AFAIK

............Do you think anyone will come up with a firmware jailbreak for this camera to give it 30/50p options?

Why don't you shoot in 60p and convert (or discard every other frame) in post? This will be very easy to do. It's not that you'll waste away half the 28Mbps in IQ after the conversion! I shoot most of my footage in 28Mbps 50p and convert virtually all of it to either 25p or 50i for delivery. I've also shot some in Sony 24Mbps 25p FX mode and the difference when compared to the NLE frame-skipping 25p (from 50p) is unnoticeable most of the time.

I believe the reason Sony have omitted 30p in all of its NTSC DSLRs is they think too few people who buy their hybrid devices want to sacrifice temporal resolution for some minuscule gain in per frame IQ.

The motion of 50/60p when played back is so smooth and fluid. Once you've watched it, going back to half the frame rates or 24p becomes unbearable. On the acquisition side, shooting in 50/60p is very forgiving. I can set shutter speed up to 1/200 or 1/250 sec. with no trace of stuttering in panning shots. Also, on newer Sony cams that do 50/60p, rolling shutter is very minimal. Shoot normally and you'll hardly see any skews or wobbles in your footage. Try that with 24/25/30p.

I miss Thailand!

Unfortunately I'm going to be manipulating the footage a lot in post so I'll need to be shooting raw--28 would turn into mud pretty fast. I'd also take a pretty large low light hit if I recorded the majority of the movie in 60p (wish I had the option for 50p but alas in America Sony cripples everything for sport).

Got the camera. Love some things, not so sure about some other things. Somehow I missed/or forgot that the 30p function had been disabled in America which screws me up. And don't get me started on the menu.

Do you think anyone will come up with a firmware jailbreak for this camera to give it 30/50p options?

Chris, what ISO rating would you give it? 800? Before noise sets in?

Depends on your needs, for events and run-and-gun 3200 looks pretty good and 6400 can be cleaned up enough for me. I'm still testing picture profiles and settings to see what gives me the most DR and the least noise. Between a move and the holiday I haven't had the time to do much yet. It's still a work in progress.

I know these wouldn't be of much use for run-and-gun stuff (too shallow depth of field) but the images in low light with f1.4 lenses and iso 800 are pretty magical looking.

Oh, I'm embarrassed since I should know this but if I'm shooting at 24fps, since there's no mirror can I record with a shutter speed of 25? Or does that start to affect the frame rate at that point?

I don't have any F1.4 lenses right now, but I'm looking at getting a 35, 50 and 85. Even at 2.8 the DOF is pretty thin. I just sold a Rokkor 50/1.4 that I used on the Nex, it could practically see in the dark wide open so I know what it can do.

You're right:) F1.4 is a pain but can be a beautiful thing.

After shooting some tests, I feel like I was having an issue with my camera, it was soft at times - wide shots with lots of DOF like landscapes and cityscapes didn't look very good, worse than my Nex5n in fact. I've seen better results with the A99 than what I'm getting so after going around with Sony tech support they asked me to send back the camera so they can check it out. They're shipping me a replacement immediately since I'm within my 30-day return window.

This is very disappointing because when the camera nails it, the video is just amazing. There's so much depth with the FF sensor's DR. Stills are in another world, its better than my previous FF camera the 5d2, both in terms of IQ and responsiveness. The AF features are second to none with the Zeiss lenses. I really want to make this my workhorse - but the video has to be at a minimum better than the Nex5n. I will update when the new camera arrives, hopefully I can have it by the weekend to start testing.

It seems as though, in movie mode, shutter speed is linked to exposure compensation adjustment. Is there a way to turn off auto exposure compensation?
I don't want the exposure to be adjusted at all and to remain at 0 at all times. When I try to adjust it using the +/- button on the top of the camera, it says I'm not allowed to change it manually unless I'm in Auto ISO mode, which I also don't want to be in. Advice?

Are you in full manual mode when you turn the top dial to movie? That's all I shoot and it never happened to me. Check the menu settings under the movie tabs, I can't remember if you can turn on/off exposure comp there or not, but it wasn't on when I shot video. There are settings to make auto adjustments and I had all of them turned off, same goes for DRO and such as I didn't want anything to interfere with getting the cleanest video possible. I did a custom setting for video with all the image aids turned off so there wasn't any interference. I had the silent control knob set to audio level, though you can select exp. comp. there as well. My camera is on its way back to Sony and a replacement is on the way so I can't check it at the moment.

I think I'm in full manual mode. I'm in M Movie mode, Manual focus, turned DRO Auto off... If I switch over to non manual exposure modes it ironically lets me Found this troubling quote in the a99 manual:

"Exposure compensation (106)
You can compensate the exposure to adjust the brightness of the entire
screen.
Even when the exposure mode is set to M, the exposure can be
compensated if the ISO sensitivity is set to [AUTO]."

There must be something else that can be toggled because I never had any exposure compensation going on when rolling, but I was always in full manual and I never use auto ISO.

Dang. I'll keep fiddling and report back to save the next poor filmmaker who touches the wrong button:)

I'll have my new camera in hand tomorrow, so I'll look at setup and see if I can find where to toggle the exposure compensation. Have you tried deactivating it through the front silent control knob? Its one of the functions available on the knob. Good luck.

I think I'm in full manual mode. I'm in M Movie mode, Manual focus, turned DRO Auto off... If I switch over to non manual exposure modes it ironically lets me Found this troubling quote in the a99 manual:

"Exposure compensation (106)
You can compensate the exposure to adjust the brightness of the entire
screen.
Even when the exposure mode is set to M, the exposure can be
compensated if the ISO sensitivity is set to [AUTO]."

Does this mean that the "camera" will compensate the exposure automatically if the ISO is set to Auto?

If so, does it do this by adjusting the Shutter Speed or Aperture or both?

..... My camera is on its way back to Sony and a replacement is on the way so I can't check it at the moment.

Hi Chris -

Did you get your replacement camera yet?

Curious to know more about your findings about the video quality as I am considering purchasing this camera too. I've heard a lot of pros and cons regarding this; some users stating it's superb while others are stating it's not.

Does this mean that the "camera" will compensate the exposure automatically if the ISO is set to Auto?

If so, does it do this by adjusting the Shutter Speed or Aperture or both?

Well, if the ISO is set to auto the camera will try to adjust that way but because I want the creamiest image I can get I don't feel comfortable going above 800 ISO and even at 800 there's a small but measurable amount of noise in the shadows--maybe because of that damn exposure compensation (mm) that won't turn off.

I find if I'm testing with auto focus, I can choose to keep the ISO at one setting and then the the shutter speed is the first to fluctuate in changing light, followed by the f stop.

Not sure if the above is very clear--did that help?

Thanks for the reply Betsy.

Have you tried setting everything in Manual Mode (in the Menu's as well) and setting the "Silent Wheel" to a setting other than an exposure related function?

Maybe just try setting the ISO to 400 ... or something below your 800 limit .... and see if either the Aperture and / or Shutter speed settings fluctuate. Theoretically, all settings should stay put.

Betsy, my second camera just arrived and when I put it into movie mode, move ISO to a manual setting from AUTO and then switch it to "M" - I get no exposure compensation. I adjusted exposure for medium lighting, then turned the camera toward a bright window and a dark room and nothing changed other than the image getting completely overexposed and then underexposed. Nothing in terms of exposure settings moved. Might be drastic, but have you tried to reset the camera so it reverts back to all factory settings?

I think I might have to do that Chris:( I just hope I remember all the little refinements I was supposed to make.

How's the new camera doing? Better?

Chris -

How does the footage look from your second camera? Any improvement .... hopefully?!

$3-4K seems like a lot of money for a camera that produces a "soft" video image. Of course I realize that these types of cams are first and foremost geared for stills.

The new camera is just as bad as the old one, not sure what's happening, but I just can't get it to resolve any detail. Hopefully the attachments work. The image labeled "a99 outside 1 photo" is a still from the scene, everything else is just a series of exported frames with detail crops from the middle.

More images. Again "A99 outside 3 photo" is a still to demonstrate focus, the rest are frames from the actual video. This one and the previous post were shot at f8, about 30mm and base iso of 100 for the a99 and 200 for the em5.

Lastly an indoor shot at a moderate high iso - 1600, again at f8, just to see what happens with the iso bumps up a bit. FYI, on all the sequences steadyshot and the EM5's IBIS is turned off, exposure was full manual outside of WB (forgot, doh!) and I used focus magnify in stills mode to get critical focus. The A99 footage sharpens up a bit and the better DR compared to the EM5 is visible, but compared to one another the A99 is just mush. Shallow DOF shots look great, but wide shots just lack detail. It looks o-k on a computer monitor, but who doesn;t want to show off a fancy HD camera on their 42" HDTV. I know I do and when I watch the video, the A99 looks real bad on a moderately "big" screen.

Unfortunately, because the A99 and the VG900 share the same sensor, this isn't surprising at all, the VG900 footage is complete junk. The A99 video quality has been panned by every review I've read, even non-pro ones. I understand your disappointment, because on paper the A99 is really impressive and has a lot of nice features for video. But until Sony can sort out the (video) IQ, it's going to be a pass for most pro video people - couple that with the limited alpha glass and difficult to adapt mount and it's not probably going to end up in any quality video productions.

The NEX stuff is far more interesting because of the mount and arguably better sensor for video applications.

Here's the actual video, took a while to get it uploaded. The results aren't pretty. Bland subjects, but I jsut want a wide shot or a deep DOF shot that's not soft.

Sony A99 vs Olympus OMD EM5 video comparison - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Y6RScV1Vw&feature=youtu.be)

Ok, I rebooted the entire camera, including rebooting the custom settings--even had to re-enter date region and time, turned the top switch to movie mode, took it off auto focus, went to manual exposure movie, adjusted the iso, the shutter, the f stop, adjusted the iso to the silent front switch of the camera and...

... the exposure compensation mode is still on!