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Impressions of the new Sony A350

This is a discussion on Impressions of the new Sony A350 within the General photography forums, part of the Photography & Fine art photography category; When Minolta got rid of its camera department, Sony acquired the whole staff and combined Sony electronics and chip technology ...

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    tegan is offline Senior Member
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    Default Impressions of the new Sony A350

    When Minolta got rid of its camera department, Sony acquired the whole staff and combined Sony electronics and chip technology with the skill of Minolta technicians in camera design to create the Sony Alpha.

    The Sony A100: their first camera was considered a revamp of one of the middle Minolta digital cameras and an upgrade to 10 megapixels. It was innovative and secured Camera of the Year in Popular Photography in 2006(I believe) but with some weaknesses: particularly picture noise at high ISOs.

    Sony recently replaced the A100 with the Alpha 200 as their base camera with several improvements and at the same time brought out at a show in January the Sony Alpha 300 and Alpha 350. They also brought out the A700 at $1300 approximately with 12 megapixels, 5 frames per second possibility, super bright and sharp LCD at 900,000 pixels and good weather protection.

    The Sony A350 first came on the Canadian market on March 15.

    First looking at this camera, it is a bit thicker, and wider than the A200 but it has 14.2 megapixels vs. 10 megapixels of the A200 and 12 megapixels of the A700.

    The LCD screen is as good as the A200 but not as bright as the A700, but it does twist down and up for shooting with the camera above your head or close to the ground which is not the case with the A700.

    Unlike Canon or Nikon cameras, fstop, shutterspeed and ISO etc. are displayed NOT on a small LCD at top right, but rather the 2.7 inch regular LCD on the back of the camera.

    A real plus on this camera is a new live view implementation. On other cameras with live view, the negative aspects are black out and shutter lag when live view is chosen. On this camera that not only does not happen, but you can also have a histogram on screen at the same time as the live view preview for fine tuning adjustments.

    The built-in flash is very good, but unfortunately it has a problem shooting at close distances over long lenses with macro capability which is somewhat understandable.

    The kit lenses: 18 to 70mm approx. 4.5 to 5.6 and the 70 to 300mm 4.5 to 5.6 are rather on the slow side. The Sigma 18mm to 50mm 2.8 macro is much better and with a 35mm equivalent of 27mm to 75 mm it makes both a very good portrait lens and a very good macro as well as for regular shooting.
    My other preference is the new Sigma 70 to 200mm 2.8 which is quite good and not as pricey as the Sony version.

    The autofocus is quite fast, faster than the Canon in this price range. If you hold down without completely pressing the button the viewfinder or live view will show you exactly what focus point is being used for the auto function. If you re-press you can change the focus point without changing the framing or with a different switch, move to manual focus. Although there is focus lock, the focus does not slip, so that function is really unnecessary.

    I was impressed by the fact that even at ISO 3200, I could still see the texture pattern of the material in an artificial flower in the highlight/brightest area of the image. I also found that unlike some other cameras, the colours remained vibrant even at higher ISOs. Some noise was present but it did not show up in prints and could be reduced by basic noise reduction in photo editors.

    The 14.2 megapixels was partially responsible for a larger picture file at 4 to 6 megabytes for a jpeg. This however resulted in greater freedom to edit without degrading the image quality than for example the older 8 megapixel cameras with a file of about 2 megabytes.

    There is also a dynamic range optimizer which allows the photographer to set the camera for increased tonal range and to selectively raise the exposure for dark shadow areas.

    Price tag by the way $800 for body only. It is not a Nikon D3 or Canon Mark III, but then considering the low price it has a lot of appealing features and can produce some excellent quality shots.

    I consider it a worthwhile addition to my other cameras and lenses.

    Tegan
    Last edited by tegan; 03-30-2008 at 09:16 AM.

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