Sony Redefines Camera Speed With Its Translucent-Mirror dSLRs
Sony clearly is one of the big names in the camera manufacturer’s world, and keeping up to its reputation the company recently proclaimed its two new dSLRs; Alpha SLT-A55V and SLT-A33. The all new Sony Alpha SLT-A55V and Sony SLT-A33 promises to deliver immensely fast speeds both for still photography and for video recording, as they makes use of the highly ground-breaking translucent mirror technology.
Though, the video recording from the camera is a commonplace among the SLRs since when the feature was introduced for the very first time in the Nikon D90 in 2008. Though, Sony is the late entrant in this forte and the company introduced its video-free dSLRs as recently as June this year. But, just like typical Sony, the electronics giant has broke open onto the scene and has introduced three all new dSLRs, which are capable of shooting video. Overshadowing the proclaiming of Sony’s Alpha SLR-A560 is the introduction of Sony’s Alpha SLT-A33 and SLT-A55V. The Alpha SLT-A33 and SLT-A55V are two highly inventive cameras, which not only just play catch up with video features, but also promise to transform the SLR category with their pioneering translucent mirror design.
The SLT in the names of both the cameras stands for “Single Lens Translucent”, and both the cameras makes use of a particular semi-transparent stationary mirror (also known as a pellicle mirror) instead of the flip-up mirrors in conservative SLRs. Although, most of the light for the image sensor goes through the lens to the image sensor, but the translucent mirrors of the camera actually diverts some of the light to cameras phase-detection autofocus sensor. Now, as the camera doesn’t have lowering and rising of mirror in between the shots, the AF works while the images are captured (before having to focus between shots). This lets the camera to autofocus quickly and continuously while shooting video and stills, this enables the burst-mode shooting of about 10fps on the SLT-A55V and 7fps on the ALT-A33, though, the maximum can only be attained by locking the aperture open (or else the max for both cameras is 6fps).
The translucent mirror technology used in these cameras gives you full-time Live View and both the cameras offers complete articulating 3-inch, 921,600-dot LCDs in addition to electronic viewfinders having 1.1x magnification and 100 percent coverage, which is sufficient to give you immense amount of shooting flexibility in several shooting angles and lighting situations.
