one more Sony (Sony DSLR α350)
from AntBlog701

one more Sony (Sony DSLR α350)

Here is the box.

(as usual, more photos follow...)

Last year during the trip to Queensland with Laurent, my Canon PowerShot S50 S50 camera stopped working, and I bought a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H9 camera to replace the Canon one. The DSC-H9 camera was a great camera in the point and shoot range. It was pretty much the only model that as full manual control mode as well as high optical zoom (15x, 30x digital zoom) and 8MP. I would consider it as a DSLR-like camera (or a bridge camera). The Sony DSC-H9 camera is still in its great working condition. But I think it is about the time to move on.

In DSLR camera world, Sony is not a big brand, Canon and Nikon are the two big players. In fact, Sony only entered the DSLR recently after acquiring Konica Minolta in 2006. With my experience of Sony DSC-H9 camera, and some unique features Sony provides, I decided to go against popular trend (of getting either a Canon or a Nikon camera), and stick with Sony.

Here are more photos:

Some quick spec of Sony DSLR-A350:

• 14.2 mega pixel (14.9MP APS-C sized CCD)
  
• live view mode with fast auto focus
  
• 3:2 and 16:9 aspect ratios
  
• supports all Sony lenses, Konica Minolta Maxxum/Dynax Alpha Lenses
  
• JPEG, RAW, RAW+JPEG (DCF 2.0 compliant, Exif 2.21 supported) file formats
  
• RAW file supported by Apple Aperture

One minor issue of this camera is that it does not support Sony's Memory Stick PRO Duo natively (can be used with an adaptor). It supports CompactFlash Type I and II. CompactFlash is a preferred in DSLR world for its larger capacity and reliability. So I also bagged an 8GB CompactFlash memory card home.

The DSLR camera is quite heavy I have to say. I will need to spend some time to learn how to use this new toy.

Well, I got it with $200 below the RRP and the promotion of an additional Sony battery.
(to Don: Antony is poor.)

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related blog entries:
Samsung L730 (14 June, 2008)
goodbye Canon, hello Sony (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H9) (4 October, 2007)