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Sony Launch
By Bob Martin and Phil Hall in Las Vegas
Event news
31 January 2008 19:16
The big news from Sony this year isn’t the two new entry-level D-SLRs or 7 and 9in photo frames. Surprisingly the thing that’s got us most excited is the announcement of the development of a full frame 24.8MP CMOS sensor. That’s almost 3MP more than the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III! No firm dates on the arrival of Sony's top-flight D-SLR, but expect it to arrive by the end of the year. We also suspect the sensor will also show up in a ultra high resolution version of the Nikon D3. But of course that’s guesswork on our part.
Sony has fallen into the trap of releasing two products with similar spec and similar names. We always think that this just serves to confuse the buying public (and us) rather than make things easier for them. The new Alpha 300 has a 10.2MP resolution whereas the Alpha 350 has a virtually identical body and spec but boasts a 14.2MP sensor. Bizarrely enough, this is now higher resolution than the Alpha 700, the current flagship of the Alpha range.
When the Alpha 700 was released last year, we asked Sony why Live View was not feature on the camera. Back then Sony told us that Live View wasn’t a feature that photographers really wanted so we are surprised to see that the new Alpha 300/350 not only feature Live View but have a pull out LCD screen too.
We've had a quick hands-on preview with the Alpha 350, and the Live View is amazing - one of the best we've seen on any D-SLR. The autofocus is quick and accurate. Sony had set up a tiny model railway track for us to test the system on and the contrast AF locked on quickly enough for us to forget that it's not traditional AF.
It looks like Sony are really taking the D-SLR market seriously, with a raft of new products lined-up for this year, all with state-of-the-art technology we've come to expect from Sony in other areas.