Sony Alpha SLT-A99 DSLR.
DSLR VS Camcorder
The web video production world has changed. Again. That is to say, it changed about 4 years ago, then it changed a little more, now it’s changed agin. WTF does that even mean? So first there was YouTube, then YouTube got HD video playback allowing pros to put up 1080 video then there was the HD flip camera and camera phones that allowed anyone with an arm to shoot HD video, then came HD Point of view cameras like the POV.1 and later the GoPro (which wasn’t HD at first), then came High Definition Digital Single Lens Reflex Cameras which let people with some skill and creativity make really awesome videos. This really upped the DIY video ante while dropping the cost of web and marketing video production (though not as far as you probably want…) Now we have the Sony Alpha SLT-A99 HDDSLR. This has the best features of the old Sony Camcorder like audio monitoring and focus peaking, but added something that the EX1 didn’t have and no other high end HD DSLR has yet. In-camera Image stabilization, what Sony calls SteadyShot, is a departure from traditional in-lens image stabilization in that the computing to make sure the image stays stable as the camera moves happens inside the camera so that you can use any lens that will snap onto it. The result, for me at least, is that with the Sony SLT-A99 I have three awesome features that have already helped me capture some great shots. The combination of the A99’s SteadyShot Image Stabilization, flip up LCD screen with focus peaking that lets me accurately pull focus without an separate monitor and its 1080 recording at 60 frames per second lets me shoot more freely in a lot of places and slow the resulting footage down so that I can get a lot of good moving shots before I have to set up a slider, dolly or steady cam type hand held camera stabilizer. Here is some recent footage I got on a project I’m working on with the University of Nevada Reno. The clips are played back at full speed with no post processing other than exposure. Sony Alpha SLT-A99 SteadyShot Image Stabilization from Arborglyph on Vimeo. Music for this video: Music: “Machine Gun” by Zeigenbock Kopf (http://www.myspace.com/zeigenbockkopf)Sony Alpha SLT-A99 Notes
I’ll try to post a full review of this camera as soon as I can, but for now here are some key points:- The Sony Alpha SLT-A99 records AVCHD video files. Those viles can be imported directly into Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) either straight off the camera via USB connection or by mounting the SD card into a card reader. You can’t get the files themselves directly into FCPX. They have to be on the card or you have to have a disk image of the card so that FCPX thinks you have connected a camera.
- The AVCHD files look pretty good to me with great dynamic range.
- The camera has clean full res HDMI out so you can record to an external recorder or use an external monitor.
- It will record 30 minute clips.