Christmas Present

[Crysis]

My camera up until Christmas was a Sony a390. It done a great job and I have been using it for around the 3 year mark.
Over the last year and a bit I began to wonder if there was anything out there that I could update to.
There was 3 camera's I was looking at and they were all Sony. The a65,a77 and the a99.
I dropped the a65 as we get a lot of hot weather here and I just never wanted to take the chance that a plastic case might go out of shape a little.
The a99 now this was pure and simple way out of my wallet range, leaving the a77.

I got a shop demo one which had only 169 photo's taken with it.
With it came the Battery Grip and 3 batteries plus the 18/55 lens all for under $900
I have now got to learn just how this one works as it is different from the old but still with a few things in the same place.
Great present.

[bitsnpieces]

Great gift indeed - you'll definitely like it as it has great low light performance - nowhere near the Canon 5Diii, but still good enough.

Also, just to throw something out there, coming up from the a390 to the a77 will definitely feel different as it doesn't use the traditional optical viewfinder.
So of course, everything is live.
However, depending on the photography you want to do, maybe you don't want the live view, because you're doing some studio work, or doing some things at night. You can get an emulation of an optical viewfinder by turning off Live Display, or something like that - can't remember the name of the option off the top of my head. View Setting OFF or something like that.

It's not perfect, so if you're in pitch black night, an optical is still better, but at least you know you can get something close, just incase you weren't aware of it yet :)

[Crysis]

Thanks bitsnpieces, I am slowly working my way through the new one.
I want to working my through the camera and finding so much of a difference to it compared to the old one.
Yet there are still some thing the same which does help.

[Ian Brewster]

What a find! I have the A57, which, while it works well, has some really stupid quirks that frustrate if you dont want gimmicks. An A77 is on my wish list. Good luck.

[Crysis]

The camera is good so far it is the operator that isn't too good at the moment.
I have had so much fun with it so far. But much more to learn.
Really it is quite easy to use with the menu button and the little joy stick to use.
You just push it and you move to where you want to be quite quickly.
I think its a great camera and will only get better once I learn more.

Thanks for your comments Ian Brewster.