The first photo with the new camera

The first photo with the new camera, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

The faithful Sony R1, which has received very intensive use the last four years has almost had its day, time to buy a new camera. I chose the closest I could find, namely the Sony Alpha DSLR 550, with a Carl Zeiss 16-80 mm lens. Apart from being a true DSLR, the main selling points for me were the live view mode and the moveable viewfinder (enabling shots to be taken at waist level or close to the ground). The camera should be quicker thgan the R1, perform better in poor light, has an automatic HDR function (not that I have ever been much of a fan of HDR) and can also shoot 7 frames a second. The main drawback is that it is noisier than the R1, when taking a photo, not so good for candid photos.
Some annoying things about the 550 are that, the memory sticks used, the battery used and the adaptor are all different from the previous three Sony cameras I have had, for what I can see to be no good reason at all, apart from making Sony richer.