Sony Alpha 550 Review: highs and lows
Random noise issue
But even before we knew the trip abroad was cancelled, I realised I could not take the Alpha 550 alone. The ISO range is 200 to 12,800. You might assume that this means 200 on the 550 would be as good as 100 on any other Alpha. You would be wrong.
Before even discussing the design, controls, features and functions of the Alpha 550 this single aspect of image quality disables the camera for my personal requirements. I’m looking for the best possible sharpness for picture library and editorial publication uses. That’s mainly travel with landscapes, architecture, environment, culture, cities, street scenes, customs, dress, flora and fauna, lifestyles, transport, commerce, industry, geology and topography, landmarks, tourist attractions, hotels, bars, beaches, pools, shops, crafts, heritage and history.
The Alpha 550 at ISO 200 can appear worse on a pixel-for-pixel basis than the Alpha 100 at 100, when both are processed using similar raw processors. But not all shots look softer or have more noise, and some at higher ratings than 200 (especially using Auto ISO) are as good as anything I’ve had from any comparable current DSLR. The above clip is not the worst case, or the best. It’s fairly typical of an Alpha 550 ISO 200 sky blue.
After puzzling for days about the occasionally soft and noisy results from the 550 at low ISOs, and checking many images, I realised that they are not consistent. One normally exposed ISO 200 shot with a blue sky will show unacceptable noise in the sky; another taken half an hour later, with apparently similar exposure and identical processing conditions, will show a nearly perfect low-noise sky tone.
This inconsistency shows in camera JPEGs too. It does not have anything to do with motordrive or Manual Focus Check Live View, which might warm the sensor up and change its noise characteristics. Pictures taken as the first frame, with no use of the camera for a period, are just as likely to show variations in noise. It’s mainly noticeable in the sky, as red channel noise (not blue channel noise – what makes sky tones look noisy is red channel noise).
Here I’m faced with an impossible situation as a reviewer. If the noise from one camera’s sensor can be so variable from shot to shot, the noise from different cameras is only likely to be equally variable. Therefore, one buyer may perhaps get a 550 which performs flawlessly, or may be lucky enough to avoid the problem when looking for it. Another buyer may immediately spot excess noise and assume the 550 will do this for every shot.
In my magazine reviews, I have gone for the opinion that the A550 is not especially low noise at low ISO settings, and this is a fair judgment when comparing it to cameras like the EOS 500D, Nikon D5000 and even the EOS 7D with its higher pixel density. However, I have also criticised the 7D for noisy skies and for reference, I should include a clip from the 7D now that Adobe Camera Raw 5.6r1 has been released (otherwise, it would be claimed that any clip processed by a similar means to my example above is invalid):
I have added this example one day after posting this report along with this addition in italics. I am not especially happy with either camera at ISO 200. But at least you now know that the worst example I could find from the 550 looks pretty like a standard result from the 7D with its higher pixel density. The 7D noisiness seems tighter and stronger, the A500 softer and coarser.
Only time and much more use will tell me whether the 550 can be trusted at ISO 200 the same way I can trust my 350 at 100.
Added Nov 18 22:25: I should add that many other DSLRs display sky noise of a similar type. Since receiving some contact over this I’ve taken a closer look at the files, and conclude that the combination of sky colour, brightness and overall exposure matters a lot. A similar sky tone can be produced from different zones of the sky at ISO 200 with a two-stop range of actual exposures. Winter skies are not as consistent as summer, I’ve been unable to take the A550 to a more favourable latitude (e.g. somewhere nice and warm and sunny!) and this is the latest in the year I’ve done my initial testing on a Sony Alpha (100: June/August. 700: Sept/Oct. 200: February but abroad. 350: April in the Canaries (really very different skies); 900 Sept/Oct but mainly Mediterranean; 380 July in Scotland).
Here is an example exposed to the right, and corrected using Brightness to 0 (not EV adjustment, and therefore leaving the highlights as positioned) in ACR from a DNG conversion:
The full size image can be seen at http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/119511343 and the technical details include that this was 1/100th at f/11 at ISO 250 using Auto ISO – about a stop overexposed, or similar to using ISO 100 on the A550 has it been equipped with that setting. I have noticed that ISO 250 on Auto often looks better than ISO 200 manually set, but since there is no way of restricting auto range, or manually setting 250, it’s a wildcard.
Additional note: since writing this review Adobe has released ACR 5.6 r1 – http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_5.6 – with Alpha 500/550 compatibility. This should in theory be similar to LR3 Beta or conversion using ACR 5.5 after DNG conversion by LR3 Beta. But, as always, it may produce better or worse results and I suggest it should be downloaded and tested by anyone owning a 500/550 and with access to Photoshop CS4 or the latest versions of Photoshop Elements.
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I have Konica Minolta 5D with Minolta 24/105, Tokina 70/300,and Minolta Flash 5600 HSD. Now I’m planning to buy the new DSLR. I’m not sure whether I should buy Alpha 550 or another brand. Overall I loved my Minolta 5D. Only one weakness of Minolta 5D I found is the focus problem. I have to zoom in to get the sharp focus and then zoom out before taking one shot. I’m not sure Alpha 550 did solve this problem. I prefer DSLR with sharp focus.
The 550 is pretty good with focus – faster focus motor than the KM 5D, very accurate AF, and if in doubt, just use Manual Focus check and you can focus with absolute precision with any lens. Zooming in, by the way, is not a good idea as the 24-105mm is not perfectly parfocal. It actually does need small adjustments to the focus setting depending on the focal length set. However, at 24mm it will rarely focus accurately on the 7D/5D/A100. From the A700 onwards Sony improved this aspect but many A700 bodies needed manual adjustment. I am not aware of any A550 bodies needing adjustment. With the set up you have, especially with those lenses and the flash, I would definitely say the A550 was a perfect upgrade choice especially if you buy it with the 18-55mm SAM. It would cost you far more to change systems, and there’s nothing which is actually any better than the A550 for the money, unless you want HD video.
As usual your articles are a joy to read!
But yet I was wondering (and did not see you metioning this in your article)…I have a Minolta 5D and a Sony A700, I normally use “wide AF” and make quick changes in focus by pressing the “centre AF button”. This overrides the wide AF intantaneously, irrespective of the AF mode I’m using.
Yesterday I tried this with a friend’s A550 and I was puzzled not to override wide AF by just pressing the centre AF button?
Am I missing something?
I like my A 500, it has the features I need, more megapixles than I’ll ever need, reasonable weight and size. Not that hard to use the various features. My one thing that makes me a little uncomfortable is that when I turn it off it vibrates a little and I don’t think it’s related to the sensor cleaning mechanism. I’m just not used to it. It takes great pictures and it’s easy to stop down and bracket.
I should have mentioned that the process of taking high resolution images involves lots and lots of pictures. On a tripod this can be over 100 frames (multiplied by three brackets) and handheld can be over 400 frames.
I have tried everthing from auto through to manual, including manual focus. Whilst not a scientific approach I have a large enough “data” set to give some certainty to the results.
Putting a camera on a tripod and stopping it down to get the “sweet” spot on the lens with good depth-of-field is mainstream photography. A camera which cannot do this consistantly and reliably can only be considered faulty, expecially in this price range.
My personal opinion is that the Sony Alpha 550 has a bug in the operating software, probably relating to “Steady Shot” and is moving the sensor creating blur rather than removing it.
It’s not a bug. You must disable Steady Shot in the menu before using a tripod. Otherwise, you’ll never get anything worthwhile. For stitch-pan work you should disable all auto functions – no auto focus, no auto exposure. A polariser should not be used as the image covers an overall angle which will create dark zones and light zones – for the same reason, exactly, that a polariser must not be used on wide-angles over 24mm except in special circumstances. The zoom must be taped to focal lenth if you can’t find any other way to lock it, and the focus should also be taped to ensure it doesn’t shift. You should shoot RAW, and shoot as quickly as possible while moving between the positions on the Nodal Ninja head to build the pan. The raw images should be processed using one single consistent setting, saved after optimising the most typical frame. Do not bother to bracket and shoot JPEGs.
Handheld you should have no problems. My A550 has produced pretty much perfect shots, as expected, from every shoot including hand-held sequences up to 14 frames for super-resolution stitching using PhotoAcute.
David
David, a great review of the camera – I just wish I had read it before buying one! I specifically bought the Alpha 550 with the Sony 18-250mm lens to use as a travel camera. This was to take multi-shot panoramic images of building facades using a tripod and nodal-ninja pano head.
I can truly say that after numerous attempts to use this camera its results are consistently inconsistent to the point where it is unusable/unreliable.
If only I could identify what the source of the problem is then my comments might be more useful to your readers.
The camera just appears to be unable to produce consistently sharp pictures in anything but bright sunlight. If I take 40 pictures of a facade at least several of them will be out of focus and others will have inconsistent exposure. With the zoom at about 180mm anything above f9 will produce unusable out-of-focus pictures. The main culprit appears to be camera shake but over-exposed images are often the worst and seem to imply that the sensor cannot handle too much light….. If you close up the aperture to increase lens sharpness/depth of field the results are unusable. On a bracket set one or all three images can be blurred. It really feels as if you are fighting the camera to get a out a good picture.
I have shot the same project three times over the last few days to try and produce a consistent picture set. Only on the last set, with the weather overcast, was I able to get control of the camera and this was only after removing the polarising filter. Although not perfect they are in focus and sharp.
I have tried SS on/off, in-built HDR, bracket sets but all of this makes no difference….
Time for e-bay I think.
In Octobre 2005 I bought a Konica Minolta 5D with the following :
Sigma 18/50 F2.8 DC EX Minolta D
Konica Minolta Flash 5600 HSD
( I had still from my Minolta 7000i a Sigma 100/300 Apo Macro )
My 5D is now broken ( Stabiliser is dead )
Now I’ve got 2 solutions :
buy a Sony Alpha
buy another brand and sell all my equipment
What would you do ?
I had a look at the Sony Alpha 550 … can you recommend it ?
thanks for your help …….
Yes, I can recommend the A550. You’ll see a big jump in high ISO quality, which will be very useful with the 100-300mm.
David
Hi David, thanks for all additional details, I assumed your usual scientific approach applied, I just mentioned it as I found that auto-iso and DRO had some strange noise for me (when I first got my A900) but as you note it could also be auto-ISO related. I find auto-ISO to behave strangely at times myself, just reading your new article on sky noise now…
Thanks for this great review! I sold my 300 and bought the 550 a couple of days ago and I’m still trying to find out what the best camerasetting are. What settings do you advise for daily use (landscape, family etc.). The factory settings or perhaps a bit more sharpness or Vivid saturation?
Paul
You wrote: “Manual Focus Check LV was of course dead accurate, but almost useless without a tripod.”
But after checking the focus with Manual Focus Check LV, couldn’t you switch back to Quick AF before pressing the shutter button? That way you would get the stabilization back. Using Manual Focus Check LV that way won’t need the tripod! Just switch back to Quick AF before pressing the shutter!
I hope you get the A500 soon. There is a minor debate whether IQ on A500 is better than A550. Even if the IQ is better on A500, is the difference significant enough that it’s worth getting A500 instead despite inferior LCD and smaller buffer (on the positive side, cheaper price and better battery life).
Hopefully you will answer that question in unbiased rational way 🙂
By the way, I am having trouble joining your forum.
WOW!!!!
I have ZERO interest in purchasing this camera, but what an absolutely GREAT read.
As usual, your reviews (here and in the BJP) are not only an education in the technical aspects of photography but also something of a broader historical look (whether recent or distant past)at photography/products too.
You seem to suggest that this review was something of a rush job. Well, if this is a rush job, I would dearly love to see your output when you have as much time as you would like with a product.
Great stuff, keep up the good work.
Regards,
plevyadophy
I don’t think that what I have observed with ISO 200 quality perhaps deserved to be made the first point in the review, but in a way it was deserved because it would have put me off taking the 550 as a sole camera. Also, I have not really identified a cause. Just to throw in another variable, I realise that some of my ISO 200 samples have been manually set ISO 200 while others have been ISO 200 generated by the Auto ISO function. This could make a difference.
David
David – another great real life review. I am rather perturbed over the veriability in the noise outputs… it would be better to be able to have a predictable result, but the high ISO results are very promising.
You have highlighted the good and the bad points for everyone to consider – thanks for putting this review together!
I’ll also make a point about some irrelevant comments appearing on dPreview about macro shots and mirror lockup, mainly as a vehicle for someone to post some nice macro insect pix. I just happen to have tested macro; long tele, photomicrography or astrophotography have exactly the same problem. Anything where a shutter speed of around 1/30th (give or take a bit) is likely at the optimum working aperture in typical ambient light conditions. This has nothing whatsoever to do with macro field shots of insects taken hand-held, where MLU is irrelevant and optimum shutter speeds are in the region of 1/125 minimum to an ideal 1/500th-1/1000th, or with flash.
What I have found is that within the ‘danger zone’ of shutter speeds (well enough known to anyone who has had to photograph resolution test charts, which I did for a couple of decades) MLU makes a critical difference. In fact it’s almost impossible to conduct a lens test without it no matter how good you think your tripod is. For that reason many lens tests are shot using flash; it eliminates the camera vibration variable.
As commented in the report, for hand-held work SS does such a good job that I would have been better off shooting some macro tests at 1/30th hand-held with SS, rather than on a tripod without SS (and tripod+SS=disaster – that was clear).
David
OK, I’ve found something. It’s not DRO of any kind because that has not been used, and it’s not WB (reporting 5300 +3 or +2 on nearly all sunny day shots). You can get a similar shade of blue sky, or grey, from a wide range of exposure values at ISO 200 depending on the sky brightness. Where the sky should have been a deep blue but the exposure for the scene is generous (like 1/80th at f/11) noise is less than when the sky was a pale blue which has been deepened by a minimal exposure (like 1/400th at f/11). I’m quoting these settings because they are two cases I have found.
The answer may be that it’s nearly winter, the sun is low, and the skies here in Scotland have a great range in blueness and brightness through 360 degrees of possible views. Combined with different foregrounds, a wide range of exposures ends up being used to take very similar looking pictures.
Here I’m referring to images which don’t get any raw processing adjustment. If I look at other examples of known under or over exposure, which do get raw adjustment, the difference is even greater – as it is with all DSLRs. By picking a seriously overexposed A550 image and setting -1EV in the raw conversion, I can get an ‘ISO 100’ result with the expected finer noise and smoother tones.
The underlying issue, that ISO 200 is fairly noisy, does not go away – but ISO 200 is also noisy with the Canon 50D, 500D and 7D. As dPreview comment, sky blue noise can be an issue even with the D300S. I’m maybe being too harsh on the camera, but you can be fairly sure others like dPreview will be even harsher.
David
I should comment that sky noise can be affected by Auto White Balance, or by WB adjustments generally. Again this is not the issue. I’ll see if I can add an image showing optimum performance.
David
DRO was not used in any of the samples shown except where DRO is mentioned. Please be assured, I have revisited this several times and been extremely careful to check settings, check in-camera JPEGs and use four different raw conversion methods (LR3 direct, LR3 to DNG then ACR, RawDeveloper and Sony IDC). I see some comments on dPreview which doubt the mirror lock/macro issue; let me say that I was going to write that it was not an issue, that the mirror action had solved the problem. That was based on hand-held SS enabled macro pix like the toadstools (I did some at speeds which were marginal). Then I decided to test with a tripod, initially leaving SS on to see what happened. Those shots were all ‘jerked’- clear visible movement with two outlines. So I followed up without SS – less blur, actually, but still exactly the same type and direction of blur. Finally, I made tests at longer exposures where mirror jar could not account for a significant component of the image, in order to ensure no other problem was caused the blur.
When making these tests I may not use test charts and stuff like that, but I work to as high a degree of consistency and elimination of variables as I can with genuine shooting situations. For the record, I also checked the noise issue with different colour profiles/picture styles. sRGB Standard showed least and therefore was used for all tests subsequently.
David
Interesting review, regarding the random noise covered on page 2, did you have DR set to Auto by any chance?
I find I have to leave DR off to avoid some noise issues on occasion on my A900, my experience was as yours that it was random until I moved to DR off at all times unless explicitly needed.