tech: Sony Alpha A300

You might think that in the current economic climate, spending money on a high-end digital camera would be a luxury that most people couldn’t justify.

After all, millions are being lost on Wall Street and in the city every day. High street sales are down, jobs are being lost and nobody is spending money on anything. How on earth could you think about trading up that little point and shoot for something serious?

Well, my friends, here’s the good news. Sony has come to the rescue of your wallet with this, the Sony Alpha A300 - which is available from Jessops for a mere £330 including an 18-70mm lense. Now that is a super price for a digital SLR especially one that includes a live preview mode. And you know what? It’s just perfect for some credit crunch-busting fun.

After all, once you’ve spent the initial upfront cost, photography is a hobby that’ practically free to pursue. Get out into nature and shoot pictures of the beauty of the world. Use your imagination to create amazing shots that give you a massive amount of personal satisfaction. Or just use your photographic habit as an excuse to do something else that’s free and interesting.

The A300 is a great choice for all of these pursuits and let me tell you why. It’s a 10megapixel camera with all the optical quality you’d expect from the latest and greatest in digital SLRs.

The headline feature is the live preview. Unlike other SLRs where you have to squint down the viewfinder, this one allows you to see the picture you’re taking with the minimum amount of hassle and even makes an attempt at showing you exposure compensation and other settings incorporated. You can even fold out the screen to look at what you’re doing from tough angles.

The menu system is very easy to get your head around and very quick to use, which is good news if you’re a newcomer to SLR photography - because it means you can play around and really start to get the hang of all the shot variables.

There’s the standard rotary dial which includes picture presets. There’s a button to turn off the steadyshot feature, although why you’d want to do that I’m not sure, since it does a very good job of steadying your aim. The function button on the back allows you quick access to choose metering and focus options and when you’re in viewfinder mode, all your selected options are displayed on the LCD making for a very quick and easy reference.

Now the pictures at the Sony takes are very good and assuming you know your way around an SLR, you’ll get some fabulous pictures out of this.

There are a few bad bits but, to be fair, the A300 doesn’t have very many. Burst shooting is a bit slow, with only a couple of shots a second which slows down even further if you’re trying to shoot RAW. That’s too slow. Although the live preview is fantastic, if you want to go old school then the viewfinder itself is a bit bizarrely small leaving you with a bit of a squint, and I also have to say that the plasticy body doesn’t quite have the same feeling of quality that competitors from Canon or Nikon have managed to achieve (The D40 feels a little better).

But these are relatively small quibbles on an entry-level SLR like this and nothing should take away from the fact that for the ridiculously small amount of money, the Alpha A300 is a great camera, a bargain at the price and so I’m going to give it a well-deserved 5 stars.