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Sony SLT-A77 and Sony 500 F8 Mirror Lens (AF Reflex)



Sony SLT A77; Sony 500 F8 AF Reflex.
I think I am in love again !  It is like a centrifugal force , which is making me continuously fall for my wonder lens Sony 500mm Reflex. The more I see it on Sony SLT A77 , I feel the match was made in heaven.

SLT A77 is a perfect enthusiast camera . It offers good enough ISO range along with In body Stabilisation that  I am able to overcome the limitation of fixed F8 on the Reflex lens in most cases. 500 mm Reflex is so compact and lightweight. The SLT A77 and 500mm Reflex combination is thus a solid and compact system for bird, wildlife and action  photography when you can't be up close !


SLT A 77 has many pros that help .. it has very fast AF system coupled with 12 FPS.To top it  autofocus Reflex lens ( one of its kind) certainly helps you use the system in the action photography.




Minolta and the SONY certainly did some innovative work on SLT  but moved quickly  to Mirror less systems which in turn offer amazing FPS and very fast Autofocus . But 500 mm Reflex is only available in A mount and has not transitioned to the new mount . May be some  technical limitation that sony is aware of  , but IMHO they could have given the Sony lovers a cheap alternative to heavy lenses , a gain of many wildlife enthusiasts as their customers albeit with slight loss of optics and a typical Doughnut Bokeh that is formed due to the use of mirror in reflex lenses.




Though one can use the same lens on FF E mount Sony cameras with the adaptors  , but Sony must consider  bringing 500mm Reflex with  E mount and some additional improvement of optics. They can make good profits and help enthusiasts take up bird photography without breaking the bank !

Conclusion: I can live with correcting the ring/donut  shaped Bokeh in PP and use the system in good light but this system is  bang for the buck and helps me click birds in flight when some of my friends are still trying to hand hold the heavy third party lenses on the Canon and Nikon bodies. 






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