What does the future hold at Photokina 2012?

Sony

With Sony's flagship full-frame A900 and A850 DSLRs no longer available and the arrival of the A77, speculation has been rife for a number of months on if and when we'll see a new full-frame camera from Sony.

With the amount of chatter coming out from various rumour sites, we should see a full-frame model at Photokina or - at the very least - by the end of the year.

Whereas the old A900 and A850 models were traditional DSLRs, it looks like the A99 (which we're guessing it'll be called) will be based around Sony's DSLT Translucent Mirror technology. While there's nothing concrete on the resolution of the electronic viewfinder, a 3MP OLED viewfinder has been mooted.

One of the key benefits of Sony's translucent mirror technology is the fast frame rate, and the A99 is expected to be able to shoot between 10-12fps (frames per second), easily putting it in touch with the Nikon D4 and Canon EOS-1D X.

Many people initially expected the A99 to feature a similar 36MP resolution to the Nikon D800, but the latest potentially leaked specs hint at a 24MP chip instead, with an ISO range from 50-25,600 that can be expanded to 102,400.

The AF system will be all-new as well - expect a staggering 102 phase-detect AF points on offer, all cross-type variants for even greater accuracy.

At the rear of the camera you should see a 3in, 921k TruBlack three-way tilt LCD display, though we wouldn't be surprised to see the same WhiteMagic technology that was incorporated into Sony's high-end RX100 compact camera launched a couple of months back.

There will also be full HD video capture at both 60 and 24p, and don't rule out being able to capture still and movie footage simultaneously.