hi guys, I'm thinking of gettting a 550 as an upgrade to my 350, one of the main reason I was thinking of getting it was for it's high ISO performance, but as I was reading through the threads, High ISO performance is only good when shooting RAWs? JPG situation still the same as previous?

Yeah I'm looking at some reviews now, did a quick hans on test in the shop just now and felt good. At the very least, unlike the 330 and 380, the Local AF selection is back on the D-Pad now.

Albnok : It looked ok to me in the shop as well. The A550 uses a new sensor so generally it should perform a better than the A350 in general right?

Oh I'm definetly a Live View guy. Ok, if everything goes well I'll be picking up the A550 tomorrow then.

Ok, thanks for the reply. Well I ain't gonna get no CZ lens, that range doesn't suit me. I'll stick with my 18250.

If you just want to learn how to operate your camera. Get a Flash. F58 will grow with you as you learn how to use bounce and angle properly. F20 is small compact and it quickly allows to understand the basics of using an external flash.

Why did I recommend an F20?

- It's cheap.
- It has only 2 function, DIRECT or BOUNCE. and has a toggle for TELE or WIDE. For a beginner it's very quick and direct to let them experiment when to use which setting.
- It's small and compact, when I was decided between a F58 and F20, I went for the F20 because I only have a 18250. My camera is just for family shots and my F36 was preventing me from taking my camera around because I needed to take a bag that can contain both the A350 AND the F36 so it's very inconvinient. After buying the F20 I've taken my camera out much more because I just drop it beside my camera in the Think Tank Digital Holster.

Of course the one thing is to ask yourself what do you shoot usually? For me it's mostly indoors, or during dinners. All I need is something that can bounce off the ceiling. For people who think the Flash is not that strong, remember you can tell the Flash to fire at a higher power through the camera setting.

I appreciate the portability of the F20.

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Added on December 12, 2009, 1:01 amForget about the Prime lens first, if the only reason you want to get a 50MM is because you've been poisoned by all the Bokeh shots you'll regret it. The first piece of equipment you should get, is a flash. Learn how light can affect your shots before getting a lens that's my advice.

This post has been edited by marauderz: Dec 12 2009, 01:01 AM

ok, you're right. f20 for beginners might not be very appropriate.

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Added on December 13, 2009, 11:11 amand I got the 550 already, very happy with the high iso performance so far but I'm not picky.

This post has been edited by marauderz: Dec 13 2009, 11:11 AM

albnok If it's fake, then someone would have went through a LOT of trouble to make it right?

Anyway, black or grey the pictures would still be the same (if it's an A550 lar )

It's not like it's pink of something

I didn't even notice it was silver grey till I got home.

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Added on December 22, 2009, 3:36 pmHold the camera at waist level and shot.

Oh... you mean on a camera that DOESN'T have LiveView? Like other's mentioned..

MOVE THOSE LEGS!

SPREAD! Hope you got good balance!

KNEEL! A little dirt on your pants is NOTHING for a good shot!

This post has been edited by marauderz: Dec 22 2009, 03:36 PM

Sony Malaysia pisses me off.

The online product registration page is so useless, if you don't expect the user to be able to figure out the RIGHT MODEL NUMBER for your product, why don't you just give the user some way to search for the product name and give the right model number?

You might be surprised that it's not very convinient for some people to spennd 30 minutes on the phone to walk through all the serial numbers and model numbers before being able to register the product!

I still haven't been able to register my HVL-F20AM I bought about 6 months ago because they CANNOT find my serial number in the system. I tried to register the F20 with my A550 through the phone yesterday and still same problem. Then the guy asked me to email a picture of the serial number cause I couldn't find the receipt so I did so, but today another guy call me around 7:30PM asking for the receipt, his argument was that maybe the shipment of the F20 was *faulty* and therefore the serial number is invalid?

So, with him on the line I FINALLY managed to dig out my faded receipt but the call got disconnected... and he DIDN'T CALL BACK! And I can't call the CIC cause they're technically closed already.

Why ask people to do all this self registration when their system doesn't work?

Damn pissed off right now, since my gear is unprotected