Oh no! My Sony a57 is a 'lemon'!

Houston, we have a problem.

In my last post I gave a fairly positive review of the Sony a57 as a landscape photography camera. And I stick by that assessment 100%. On the whole it's well designed, has the right buttons in mostly the right places, and is packed with everything you need. But... there is a problem....

Rapahoe Beach, West Coast. Sony a57 with SAL18250. f/11 @ 4 secs, ISO 100

If you go back over my last few blogposts where I use the a57 as a landscape camera, the above image will be typical. A wide vista, shot at infinity, with a decently small aperture. Can't go wrong really. And the images, as you can see, look great.

But I haven't always loved the images I've been getting out of the a57. Case-in-point, my very first outing when I used the SAL75300 lens to photograph birds (read about that here). I shot about 100 photos that evening, and only came away with two that I thought were even approaching sharp. Not a great hit rate. And in the article, I put it down to the lens not being a stellar performer. 

I've tried a few more times since, photographing birds with the 75-300mm - I even shot using a tripod. And I still couldn't manage a sharp image. So I sold the Sony 75-300mm, thinking that it just wasn't a very sharp lens.

I decided last weekend that I needed to go out and have fun with the a57 - and play 'tourist' for the afternoon. Take a couple of decent lenses (Minolta 17-35mm f/3.5 G and Minolta 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5) and go out shooting hand-held. Surely with this glass, in decent light, the images would look fantastic?!

Lake Brunner, Moana. Sony a57 with Minolta 17-35mm G lens. f/8 @ 1/250th, ISO 200

I decided to go to one of my favourite places to test out new cameras - Lake Brunner at Moana. It's a beautiful location, at any time of the year, and it's hard to not come away with some 'nice' images. As can be seen from the photo above. I'm a sucker for a jetty, leading out to a lake, with a mountain in the distance (Mt. Te Kinga). Lovely image. Especially when viewed, as it is here, on a website.

But look a little closer - at 100% - at the area where the camera was focused, and the picture tells a different story. Because it's not sharp. At all.

The mountain, at infinity, is in focus - as you would expect it to be. But the jetty, in the place where I actually focused the camera (and received a green confirmation focus light in the viewfinder), isn't sharp. Not even close. And this is with a 'G' lens, at f/8. It should be tack - and I do mean 'tack' sharp! Damn! After studying this in Lightroom, and going over the other images I took that afternoon, the story was depressingly similar with all the shots. At infinity, not a problem. But where I actually focused the camera - not so sharp. Looks to me like my a57 has a sensor alignment issue!

Rapahoe Jetty Stumps. Sony a57 with SAL18250. f/8 @ 1/10th, ISO 100

Then, of course, I started going back over some of the other images I had taken with the a57, at other locations. And unfortunately, time and again, the same problem with missing-focus occurs.

Once more, in the example above, the camera's autofocus point was placed directly over the largest stump in the foreground. And again, the stump just isn't in focus. And this is with the camera locked down, on a windless evening, on a sturdy tripod. The 1/10th of a second exposure was simply not a factor. This isn't camera shake. It's just plain missed-focus.

I've got loads of other examples (unfortunately), and I won't bore you with them all. Because they all tell the same story. And it's a pretty depressing story, truth be told. 

Basically, I'm left with a camera that can only really work at infinity focus, since the sensor is out of alignment. I've done all this lens testing with it, especially with the SAL75300 and SAL18250 (see previous posts), concluding that these lenses weren't very good performers (i.e. not very sharp), when all along it was the camera body itself! This bums me out a little, considering I went and sold the 75-300mm because I thought it was a crap lens! Although having said that, I'm also glad that it perhaps isn't as bad as I thought it was, and the new owner might be getting some decent images out of it 😄

Be that as it may, it stills leaves me with a camera that isn't focusing properly 😞

I thought about my next course of action for a few days (I'm obviously not happy that I've got a 'lemon'), considering I've only had the camera for a couple of months. I thought about just selling it on-line, but I couldn't do that in good faith, knowing that it doesn't focus properly. So in the end, I did the only thing I could under the circumstances - I contacted the owner of the store I got the camera from and let him know what was going on.

It took him a couple of days to reply (he's a busy guy, in a busy store), but when he did he was totally understanding - didn't question my conclusions at all - and basically agreed that 'yes, I've got a lemon'. So now he is looking out for another Sony a-mount camera for me, in the a57 vein.

Trouble is, Sony didn't make a lot of SLT models, and it might not be as simple as just 'finding' another a57? Greg (the store manager) has come up with a couple of options already, but unfortunately they weren't SLT models. I've said I really want the SLT technology - for its DSLR handling and its EVF functionality. But I don't want to go backwards (with the 3 series of cameras), and I also don't want the a58 'upgrade', since Sony (in their infinite wisdom - or should that be stupidity!?) gave the a58 a plastic lens mount! Plastic! So that really only leaves another a57, or the a67 and a77 - both upgrades from what I've already got (the a77 is a considerable upgrade, the a65 not so much).

Maybe he will have some luck getting me another a57? Maybe he won't? I've already sowed another seed though - mentioning that my original contact was over the Fujifilm X-T200, and suggesting that I maybe should have gone with that in the first place? Don't know whether that will prompt a look in the Fuji direction as well or not? We'll see.