Initial reaction, running firmware v. 1.02....
First, I gotta paraphrase something I read from Bjorn Rorslett's site: a piece of equipment is "good" only if it's good at what an individual user uses it for. With that in mind, I shoot about 98% of the time in broad daylight, close-ups of critters and flowers, some wildlife, and some cityscapes/street shots. I'll nuke a critter with light before dialing up ISO, and would go over ISO 800 even on my D700 only if it meant the difference between getting the shot or not. What I'm saying is that what the a77 will do or won't do at high ISO is not big on my list of concerns.
After playing around with the camera indoors--numerous shots, powered up and down numerous times, several lens changes, going through almost all the menu options, and several SD card removals and reinsertions--I have not encountered any glitches of any kind. One thing I did notice is that the Fotodiox Nikon-to-alpha adapter that works on my a35 cannot even be mounted on the a77 (goodbye, ZF.2 2/100;p).
Someone asked for a comparison with the D700, which I owned for a couple of years. To my eyes, nothing compares to the texture of the D700's images. If the D700 can be likened to a Hummer, then the a77 would be a Jeep TJ. The a77 is not as heavy, nor its controls as firm to the touch; but the articulating LCD and brilliant layout of controls makes it handle more nimbly while probably being just as durable as the D700. Still, if I had to depend on a camera for my livelihood, I'd continue to shoot the D700 until the a77 is on the market a while longer.
For a bug, bird, and flower shooter like me, the EVF has a few useful features I've only seen mentioned in passing in the reviews I've read. For one thing, there's a dedicated button that changes focus area to center spot *at the same time* that it magnifies the image in the EVF or LCD. Unlike the NEX C3 or the a35, both of which lose the magnification if the shutter button is partially depressed, the magnification is maintained until the shutter is activated. Unlike an OVF, the EVF shows the image as it will be recorded to the card, meaning that when you tweak exposure comp or white balance on the fly, you can see the effect *before* you push the shutter button. This is helpful, for instance, if you're pointing upward to shoot a bird that's extremely backlit by the sky--no guesswork needed. The icing on the cake, for my purposes, is focus peaking. The a77 has another button for toggling back and forth between AF and MF, and peaking comes on automatically when MF is selected (assuming the user already has it enabled).
The first real test of my copy will come tomorrow when I do a few hours of real-world shooting in the field. But from what I see already, it wouldn't surprise me if Sony has to scramble to update some of its lenses to match the detail this camera seems capable of recording.
