Plus and minus points
The on-off switch round the shutter button is cheap and doesn’t copy Nikon, it copies some forgotten entry level Cyber-Shot. It is ironic that when Canon has finally woken up and moved the on-off switch to a sensible location in the EOS 7D (same location, basically, as the Dynax 7D and most Alpha models) Sony should abandon that location for a cluttered second best choice.
The control wheel – a single one only – is so close to the on-off switch that any new user is likely to operate one for the other, or even both together in a hurry.
The new rear LCD screen has a great user calibration function, a brightness adjustment which looks like greyscale and a colour checker. Once set, it auto-senses ambient light to further fine tune illumination. The 920,000 pixel screen is more colour-accurate than either our A700 or A900, and reviewed images or LV look equally vivid.
The new beefed up articulating mechanism is certainly strong, but not easy to use, and not all that useful with no rotation for vertical compositions. The Nikon D5000 screen design though more vulnerable is better. The Sony DSC R-1 design is even more so.
A lack of curved contouring at the left hand end (below the AF/MF slider escutcheon) prevents the older Alpha 200-350 series VG from fitting the 500-550. The two register pins (holes visible under the handgrip, and in the un-curved left hand location) prevent new 500-550 grips from fitting older models. Boo!
The Alpha 550 accepts a vertical grip which is almost identical to the one I have for my Alpha 350. By sculpting the base slightly differently and adding a register pin, Sony makes each version incompatible with the other even though crude tests show they could have been interchangeable. That is just profiteering; remember, they make far more profit on a vertical grip than they do on the complete camera…
You may criticise the slightly illogical program-exposure rather than EV-linked display matched of the two scales, but that’s also how the 330-380 series worked, and it fits with the way the cameras control exposure and lack Program Shift.
Quick Navi (best seen in the A700/900) is not followed through on the A550, nor is what I dubbed Slow Navi from the A350 generation. It’s more like the hybrid button/menu system of the A230-380 generation refined a bit. The graphical displays and context sensitive on screen help can be turned off. In favour, no display ever gets as cluttered and confusing as a Nikon D3000/5000 screen, and you do not need reading glasses to use the 500/550.
The HDMI output is Mini HDMI (some makers are moving to regular HDMI instead), there’s no video out through USB; the twin card slots still don’t have any kind of simultaneous or sequential, let alone split RAW+JPEG, functions. As a bonus over the 230-380, the wired remote control socket returns but with no mirror pre-lift 2s option you are just as well off buying a £6 Hong Kong infrared wireless remote.
The battery in the 500 and 550 is the full sized NP-FM500H and therefore usable with Alpha 100, 200, 300, 350, 700, 900 and 850. The 230, 330 and 380 are the odd ones out with a smaller cell. The DC in mains power adaptor socket (above the SD card slot) is unchanged.
The viewfinder eyepiece stays compatible with previous Minolta and Sony fit accessories, of course; the dioptre adjustment is slightly easier to get at. The viewfinder size and brightness is along Alpha 100-200 lines, not the reduced view of the 300-350 or 330-380.
Overall hand fit is in practice identical to the Alpha 300/350, with slight differences made by the change in the shutter button, on-off switch and control wheel locations. These are retrograde steps but don’t spoil the grippability of the camera.
Body finish is superficially a bit plastic and flashy. I’ve likened the two-tone effect to the plastic interior of my new Honda Jazz – you put up with it in order to get the other features offered!
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