Our quick take
Sony Alpha A99 - 3.5 / 5
Mirror, mirror in the camera
Pushing forward, yet sliding back
D’ya wanna flake in that luv?
Punchy pictures
Movie mode magic
To recap
The first full-frame SLT has plenty of strengths such as a fast burst mode, great movie mode and quality pictures, but comes up a little short elsewhere. The battery life isn’t good enough, the burst mode is hindered by the buffer’s limitations, picture quality is outperformed by more-budget competitors and the dual-AF system hypes itself up but, again, comes up behind competitors’ systems in terms of speed, accuracy and AF point arrangement. Add a chunky price and, despite plenty of shiny extras on the spec sheet, we feel the A99 isn’t all it could and should have been.
