Feature: Sony is determined to show its SLR capabilities
Idea:The Sony A350 is its 3rd generation after the Sony A1 and then A700
Open Doors: Toronto, an event in which the public is invited to visit some of the major buildings in downtown Toronto, take pictures and find out about the history and architecture of the various buildings in the Queen City. Unfortunately, this was all coming to a close on a bright cheerful Sunday afternoon.

Too soon for many of us who missed out on the Church of the Holy Trinity, tucked into a niche adjacent to Eaton Center. But this misfortune had a silver lining, because just inside Eaton Center Sony had a display of its latest video and SLR cameras with plenty of experts around to show off their wares.

As a Canon XT 350D owner, I have been on the prowl for a replacement for my camera that will be able to offer high resolution images for printing across both the ISO spectrum from 100 to 1600 and also in a broader exposure range as well - not shying from contrasty images with highlights nor adding too much noise in the shadows or lowlight images.

Since I was loaded with gear including an extra 1GB Compact Flash card, this was the perfect opportunity to tryout the Sony A350, the new upper mid-range SLR from Sony and see how well it could take pictures. And better yet the Sony people were happy to let me try. All of the images on this review page are unretouched slices of images taken during a 20 minute session with the Sony A350 using their zoom lens.

Now to give you an idea, the camera takes 4592 x 3056 images in Sony RAW or JPEG. Since I was not sure if I had the RAW processing capability in my version of Photoshop, I played it cautious and took JPEG images. But before I talk about the images, lets consider the Sony A350 feature set which has some pretty compelling capabilities.

The Sony A350 Feature Set

Sony has packed a number of top of the line features in the A350 starting with $900 price including a 18-70mm Sony telephoto lens:
- RAW, JPG with sRGB and Adobe RGB colorspace
- 4592x3056 = 14.5MPixels from 23.6x15.8 sensor
- Sensor shake system for auto-dust removal, static-free anti-dust coating
- 9 Point Autofocus with 3 focus engines
- 3 AutoFocus modes: Spot, Local, Wide
- eye start auto-focus, 9 point center cross quicken focusing time
- ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200
- Noise reduction processing for ISO 800 to 3200
- Auto white balance with daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, preset correction settings
- Exposure metering: 40 segment, spot, centered
- AE Lock, AE Bracketing up to 3ev,
- Shutter: 30-1/4000 sec, Lens Mount: Sony
- Super Steady shot image stabilization (2.5 to 3.0 ev improvement)
- shooting: single, continuous 2fps, bracketing of 3frames for exposure or white balance
- continuous shooting to memory capacity at 2fps
- Flash to guide 12 at ISO 100
- 2x digital zoom
- Auto Flash for Auto and other exposure modes
- Viewfinder: pentaprism thru the lens, diopter aids
- Tiltable, Live Screen LCD for picture composing, display + menu command control
- Live Screen is 2.7" diagonal with 270,000 pixels
- 7 Selection modes: Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, Sunset and Nighttime situations
- 7 Scene stylings: Vivid, Portrait, Landscape, Night View, Sunset, B&W and Adobe RGB modes
- Battery: Li ion allows 740 shots using the viewfinder, 430 using the Live Screen
- Viewer slideshow or 4, 9, 25 image contact sheet
I have highlighted in green what I consider to be the most important new features of the A350.

First, in-camera image stabilization is one of the most important for me. Getting two or three extras stops for action or lowlight shooting is invaluable. Being able to switch it off (or override it it with a neutral density filter) is a useful creative option.

Second I found the tiltable LiveView using the back LCD screen to compose pictures a lot more viable than I had expected. Just in the 20 minutes of test shooting I found two natural occasions for using the tilt screen. In both cases I wanted to shoot down over a crowd. The first time I tried it it took a little time to get the tilt right and it seemed a bit awkward. But the second time an opportunity arose I shot arms upward and tilted the screen right away. The resulting shots were much better than the usual Canon, Casio and Nikon shots-with-outstretched arms.

I currently have a Panasonic Lumix which has no viewfinder so I always must use the live screen for photo composition. Bright sunlight and reflections makes the screen almost impossible to see at times. The A350 LiveScreen had a diminished version of the problem as the TFT is very bright but still no match for bright sunlight. Bottom line - composition will be right, but colors are washed in bright sunlight.

I am constantly changing my lenses - and therefore pay the price. Over a half year or less I start to see dust particles on my Canon XT images. This model is before the special anti-dust costings for sensors. But now Sony has not just anti-dust coating, but a sensor shake system help keep the sensor clean. I welcome any and all efforts in this regard.

5 Other Features

The A350 comes at $900US with a Sony 18-70mm which shoots approximately at 25 to 100 in 35mm equivalent (the sensor is not full frame at 1.4x). I found zooming in and out notably tight but the autofocus did indeed deliver fast clear-to-shoot signals.

I also found the viewfinder, which I used most of the time, relatively uncluttered and no need to adjust the diopter for my less than 20-20 vision. However,

the control functions on the A350 are like a TV remote, rather obscure to say the least. Now I have used Canon, Nikon, Casio and Lumix cameras. Each one has its own unique control layout and command sequence and Sony certainly did not break the mold. In general, as with most SLRs, make sure that you
        350 x 2576 slice
    ISO 100 1/60 sec f8.0 85mm
allocate enough time to master the controls. I relied on the Sony experts to keep my picture taking on course. But I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was top operate

However, I did change the ISO settings, image size(back to full 14.5Mpixel JPEG) and switched between the selection modes of standard, landscape, and macro as I tried over 100 shots including use of the bracketing feature which was setup by the Sony rep.

The following shots are strips taken out of the JPGs without any post processing finishing whatsoever. Now I was inside Eaton's Centre on a busy Saturday afternoon, so I had an opportunity to take some Portrait, Macro and Landscape shots. In fact the shot above was taken using the Landscape setting.

The shots below, again strips cut out of a larger photo image, were taken in Standard mode.

350 x 2576 slice ISO 100 1/60 sec f8.0 85mm

350 x 2576 slice ISO 100 1/125sec f6.3 70mm

750 x 600 slice
ISO 250 1/160sec f5.6 85mm

All of the images were taken handheld (no tripod), auto-exposure, and autofocus enabled. Various telephoto settings and ISO ratings were used. I found the colors to be true if a bit muted. The exposures were backlighting dependent but again reasonably attuned to the scene. However, I found the focus to be a bit soft especially along the edges so in the next round of testing I would try tripod as well as handheld shots with the three different major autofocus settings as well as manual focus to test that out in detail

Here is the last image photofinished in Photoshop.

Not quite what I expected in final quality, especially at 14.5MPixels, but clearly a step ahead of my Canon Rebel XT(6MPixels) in image quality. However, clearly more tests are required.