Having had the Sony Alpha A65 in our hands for a couple of days now, we are slowly getting to grips with what this 24-megapixel APS-C Exmor sensor SLT shooter is capable of. One of the first things we noticed, during our initial hands-on with the A65, was the level of noise in the images at ISO 800 and higher, but also the high level of in-camera noise reduction applied to JPEGs. I have to confess that using the Fujifilm X100 for the past few months has certainly spoiled me in terms of low-light high ISO performance and out of the camera JPEGs; but that’s another story.

A higher level of noise is expected at the camera’s full 6,000×4,000 output resolution, as is usually the case with packing more pixels in the same sensor area. A lot of this noise will become non-visible as you scale down images for print or screen uses. Starting with a higher level of noise at a higher resolution is not all that bad. However, because of this — the larger images and noise levels — we’ve found that the images from the camera benefit from some serious post processing. Note, our findings with the A65, will also apply to the A77.
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