The Sony a580 was my first dslr upgrade after my D100. The a580 was a major upgrade indeed. The most important thing to me was the self-cleaning image sensor. Second, was in-camera image stabilization, which allowed me to have that function, even with inexpensive lenses. The third was the ability to take HD video, but a major drawback was the lack of autofocus during video recording. A fourth reason was automatic HDR. Then there were a few neat features that I seldom used with the Sony A580 DSLR or any camera since, like automatic panoramic photo creation (see photo at bottom of post).
Since I have large hands I did get an aftermarket grip for the Sony a580. It was cheap but useful. I used many different lenses on this camera, and those are listed below. By far my most frequently used lens was the Sigma 17-70mm. Such a useful zoom range and the fast 2.8 at 17mm was great for low light.
Lenses used with my Sony a580
- Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM
- Sony 100mm f/2.8 Macro
- Sony 75-300mm f/3.5-5.6
- Sony 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
- Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC
Over a few years, I was able to convince myself that I need to upgrade my camera and I chose the Sony SLT a65 In hindsight, this camera wasn’t as much of an upgrade as I thought it would be. Maybe it was 10% better than the a580. If I remember correctly, one of the main drivers was the autofocus function in video mode, but I rarely use autofocus anyway. In the video of the otters below, you can see me struggling with the Sony a850’s manual focus on a lens never meant to be used for video.
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