If you’re using a point-and-shoot digital camera for anything other than taking photos of your drunken escapades in the outer boroughs of New York City (I’ve since retired playing that game!) then you might as well pack it up right now. That is to say you should be using a DSLR, whether it’s from Canon, Nikon, Olympus or, as we see here today, Sony. Yup, the not-having-a-great-year company just announced three (3!) new DSLRs that, of course, promise to make taking halfway decent photos even easier.
There’s the DSLR-A380 ($850), A330 ($650) and A230 ($550); they look like every other entry level DSLR out there. What makes them special, so Sony says, is that they “are designed to overcome challenges faced by many customers taking their first steps in DSLR photography.” (Such photography is already pretty easy if all you’re doing is taking photos at the little league game or at the graduation ceremony. Really, this stuff isn’t that hard.)
“What makes it so damn easy?” you ask. The A230 (10.2 megapixels), for example, is plenty light, weighing only 15.9 ounces, or, just shy of one pound. All the cameras have built-in image stabilization, so even if you’re using a rubbish lens your photos won’t suffer too much. The other two, the 10.2-megapixel A330 and 14.2 megapixel A380, also let you auto focus while in Live View mode. (Live View is when you use the big, adjustable LCD to compose your photos instead of the viewfinder—useful in certain situations, like when you’re holding the camera above your head.) There’s also a handy HDMI port to immediately display photos on your big screen HDTV.
The camera should be in stores by July.
But, really, Sony makes it seem like operating a DSLR requires a Ph.D from the Sorbonne. It doesn’t.
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