While the A550 and A500 have very similar noise profiles, the A500's photos have much better color accuracy, and in fact, its JPEG color accuracy is a lot better than that of most of Sony's other consumer dSLRs. Its image colors are nicely saturated and pleasing, though it has a bit of trouble with the deep pinks. It still doesn't offer a natural/accurate color mode or a way to strip out all the color "enhancement" for JPEGs. You can start seeing a little bit of detail degradation at ISO 800, but it's not bad through ISO 1,600. After that ISO, color noise in its images gets bad and detail starts to smear.
You can probably eke a stop out of the A500 by shooting raw and not relying on the in-camera noise reduction; as is true of its generation of Sony dSLRs, the in-camera noise reduction isn't very good. By ISO 6,400 there's not much you can do about the inherent noise in the photos except change your trade-offs. But if you're going to use the images scaled down, they still look pretty good.The A500's kit lens can be quite sharp, though it's prone to a little bit of fringing on the highlights. The lens' sharpness from a distance (as opposed to close up, like the previous shot) is OK, but it's not quite as good as I'd like.
The A500 is heavier and bulkier than its lower-end siblings as well as its competitors. While it feels solidly built, the plastic housing leaves a cheaper impression than similarly priced models do. Even for a midrange dSLR, Sony doesn't make good use of the extra space, with too many buttons and labels unnecessarily crowding the body. For instance, the Smart Teleconverter--digital zoom--doesn't belong on a camera like this, and the D-Range Optimizer doesn't really require a dedicated button. They just get in the way while you're trying to distinguish among the drive mode, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, and exposure lock button, which all feel identical.
On one hand, the viewfinder displays image stabilization status--bars show how close to steady it is--and will indicate if the lens is in manual focus mode. However, it fits those in by trading off for more traditional information, such as ISO sensitivity. That means you have to look at the back display to change it. The viewfinder prompts mixed reactions as well. It displays the focus indicators as large, persistent boxes, which is a nice switch from the tiny dots favored by competitors' viewfinders.
On the A500, they're set closer to the camera back where you can't comfortably reach them with either your thumb or forefinger unless you lower the camera. On the cheaper models, Sony puts controls for the ISO sensitivity and drive modes on the navigation switch on the back of the camera. I think that placement works better than the three hard-to-reach buttons on the top of this one. The Fn button on the back pulls up drive mode, flash settings, autofocus mode, autofocus area, ISO sensitivity, metering, flash compensation, white balance, DRO/Auto HDR, and Creative Styles. But the switch you use to navigate them feels a bit too flat, without enough tactile feedback.
On the whole it is a good enough camera to take pictures of your family or others.
My Rating: 3.2/5
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