Sony DSLR-A700

Sony DSLR-A700 is the first DSLR with the new Sony’s 12 Megapixel CMOS sensor called Exmor. The camera is a direct successor of A100 and has all its best features and a few more new ones.

Intro:
The Sony A700 features a high quality and high resolution large - 3-inch LCD (full-color 640×480), HDMI video output, good built-in flash. Moreover, A700 has plenty of dedicated buttons, clear menus and many image parameter presets. On the top of that, it is surprisingly inexpensive when compared with similar digital cameras by other manufacturers.

The design:
Although the body of the camera is not made of metal it is of really good quality and with no rattles or creaks. The ergonomics of the camera is superb, with the rubber grip and excellent weight balance it is really handy. The most frequently used dedicated buttons are located where they should be so using Sony A700 with only one hand is not too difficult. The back of the camera is dominated by the 3’’ screen next o which you will find plenty of keys and switches, such as Menu, Display, Play, Delete, AF/MF buttons, Super SteadyShot switch and many others.

Performance:

Thanks to many dedicated buttons and image parameter adjustments that the Sony A700 features taking good quality photos is as easy as a pie. Apart from the predefined modes you can manually adjust brightness, saturation, sharpness, contrast, and zone. Of course there are modes such as sepia, black and white, landscape, night and many more. Generally, color

reproduction, sharpness, and detail are all fine. The fast auto-focus leaves nothing to complaint about, the noise is low also at high sensitivities and even the built in flash works well. Sony A700 not only supports USB 2,0 but it is the fastest camera in its class with the throughput of over 20MB/sec. Additionally, Sony A700’s continuous drive mode offers many settings and shooting five frames per second. According to Sony the new battery (NP-FM500H, which by the way is also compatible with Sony A100) allows you to take up to 650 shots, but in real life usage it is slightly less. The charging time is about 180 minutes for 80% and about 240 minutes for a full charge.

Menus:
As mentioned before Sony A700 has plenty of dedicated keys so most users will probably only occasionally plunge deep into menus. If you do so you will find that the menus are organized in a very clear and easy to access. The menus are divided into four different sections: Record, Setup, Playback and Custom. Both new and regular users of Sony digital cameras should quickly find their way through all the options.

All in all, thanks to its solid design, plenty of easy to use features and good performance the new Sony A700 will undoubtedly be a hit. And what is quite surprising to me is the fact that it is at least a hundred or two cheaper than its competitors which makes it a really good value for the money.
Selected Sony A700 specifications are as follows:

Source: Sony.