Is the Sony a65 a good camera choice?

I have a Fujifilm finepix s2950 and was looking to upgrade to better camera. Both Sony a65 or Nikon D5100 were my choice, is the Sony a65 a good camera? Or is the Nikon D5100 a better choice? Whant to use for photography(pro pics) editing and stuff… Post them on Flickr and tumblr.

For your level of photography both are good choices.

Since you seem to be more of a retoucher than a photographer ("editing and stuff") as long as you have a good image to start with, your choice will depend more upon availability of Nikon and Sony gear in your area.

If you are going to be building a camera system, Nikon has over twice the available lenses than Sony.

The A65 is an expensive camera, and not as good as the A77…

but the SLT technology is interesting…

most people will tell you to do Nikon, but personally i like Sony… And use an A200…

When comparing cameras its always best to look at what each one offers. Its quite common for someone to mention the large selection of Nikon lenses as though that should be the determining factor.

Lets look at the two cameras in question.

Sony's Translucent Mirror Technology allows for full-time continuous phase-detect auto focus whether you're shooting still pictures or 1080 HD video. Phase-detect auto focus is faster and more accurate than the contrast-detect auto focus of the D5100. With a moving mirror the D5100 can't offer you full-time continuous auto focus.

Since the mirror in the A65 never moves you can view the scene even as the shutter is released. As the mirror in the D5100 moves up out of the way the viewfinder goes dark.

The Sony A65 uses the legacy Minolta Maxxum "A" lens mount introduced back in 1985. Since the A65 has a focusing motor in the camera body a Minolta Maxxum AF lens made in 1985 can be used and will auto focus as it should. While its true that Nikon's lens mount dates back to 1959 or so, the lack on a focusing motor in the body of the D5100 means that only the more expensive Nikon AF-S lenses will auto focus on it. You can use the less expensive Nikon AF lenses but you'll have to manually focus them.

Here is an in-depth real world review of the A65:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA65/AA65A.HTM

My vote goes to the A65.

The Sony A55 is an EVIL camera, an unfortunate acronym which stands for Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens, all camera will be in this format in 10 years time there are lots of advantages to it.

Note to Edwin it doesn't have the dreaded semi silvered mirror which robs you of 2 f stops of the earlier models.

The Achilles heel of all Sony cameras is the none standard hot-shoe and their use of the Minolta lens mount which severely limits lens choice. This one also suffers from a plastic rather than magnesium chassis.

Here they are side by side

http://www.dpreview.com/...=ascending

I've added the two best APS sized cameras available at the moment, best for low light - low noise performance and dynamic range, in short currently the best for image quality.

The Pentax has the advantage of a huge range of cheap (sub $100), but optically superb lenses available, any K mount lens will work as designed over 230 of them and that's just the ones made by Pentax, note most are manual focus, but all are image stabilised as it's built into the camera, no extra to pay every time you buy a lens. Don't buy a Pentax K5 if you want video, it's good quality, but you can't alter anything except Manual focus and zoom during recording.

Read the DP reviews (links on the above page) and make your own mind up, if you can get one in your hand and see how it feels, how easy or not to control basic settings, build quality etc. So much the better.

I would never buy Sony.few reasons:

it has a electronic vierfinder, which means that the picture you see in the viewfinder is processed. Nikon used a mirror system, meanign that you see the "real" world, the light is being reflected using a piece of mirror.

altough most of its cameras have 7fps, i WOULD NEVER BUY SONYT!