Sony A65 Performance

Excellent autofocus and burst speeds, but sluggish power-on, power-off, mode switching and buffer clearing.

Startup and shutdown times were much slower than typical SLRs, and buffer clearing times were slow especially with RAW files.

Mode switching performance was sluggish, though displaying a previously captured image was reasonably fast.

Looking at the Sony A65's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times, its autofocus speed is very good. The SLT-A65 required only 0.138 second for full AF using the center focus point. This decreased slightly to 0.130 second in wide-area AF mode. With the flash enabled, the A65's full AF shutter lag increased to 0.285s, to account for the preflash metering, which is still pretty fast.

Continuous autofocus mode lag time was 0.132 second, and manual focus was fast at about 0.081 second. When prefocused, shutter lag was 0.054 second which is very good for an enthusiast model. These timing results were obtained with the Sony A65's electronic first curtain shutter active, which is the default setting.

Shot-to-shot cycle times were good for an SLR-class camera, ranging from 0.41 to 0.47 second depending on the file type. Continuous mode speeds were excellent, especially for the extreme resolution, at about 8 frames-per-second in standard continuous mode. Continuous Advance Priority AE mode is rated by Sony at 10 frames per second, however we did not test that mode yet.

Buffer depths were good for the size of files, ranging from 13 to 18 frames per burst before slowing down in our tests. You should be able to do better with typical subjects when shooting JPEGs (our target for this test is designed to be difficult to compress).

Buffer clearing was sluggish with our fast 45MB/s SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I compliant SDHC card, at 12 seconds after a maximum-length large/fine JPEG burst, 20 seconds after a RAW burst, and 26 seconds after RAW + large/fine JPEG burst. We have been told that unlike the A77, the A65 does not take advantage of faster UHS-compliant cards. Also, the Sony A65 does not support the Extra Fine JPEG setting found on the A77, offering just Fine and Normal compression settings.

The flash was able to recycle from a full discharge in 2.0 seconds, which is very fast.

Download speeds were very fast, quick enough that you won't feel the need for a separate card reader, even with large memory cards. (Note that this test was performed with a SanDisk Extreme Pro 45 MB/sec UHS-I SDHC card: Slower cards would likely show slower transfer times.)

Bottom line, the Sony Alpha SLT-A65's autofocus, shutter lag, and burst performance were excellent, though not quite as fast as the A77. Buffer depths were good for its class given the large files, though buffer clearing was slow. Startup, shutdown, and mode switching times were sluggish.

Battery Life
Good battery life for an interchangeable lens camera with EVF, but below average compared to a traditional SLR with optical viewfinder.

The Sony A65 uses a custom rechargeable NP-FM500H lithium-ion battery for power, and ships with a charger. Battery life is a below average compared to an SLR using an optical viewfinder, but pretty good for one equipped with an electronic viewfinder. We recommend you pick up a spare battery and keep it freshly charged and on-hand for extended outings or shooting video.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on either a fresh set of disposable batteries or a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))