Best Sony Camera For Portraits

If you're just looking for better photo quality than a point-and-shoot on a really tight budget, but not better performance, the Sony Alpha A3000 meets that criterion.

The mirrorless Sony Alpha 3000 cuts a lot of corners to hit its low $400 asking price, but there are no compromises in image quality.

There's no getting away from that price-tag, which will almost certainly decrease even further, making the Sony A3000 an attractive proposition despite the shortcomings that we've identified. While certainly not perfect, this DSLR doppleganger is an intriguing entry into the market that may just prove to be a hit for Sony.

The new Sony A58 offers most of its predecessor's design, features and performance at an aggressive price-point, which can only be good news for us consumers. Look under the hood and you do find a few corners have been cut to keep the cost down, but all things considered, this is simply a very good interchangeable lens camera at a very attractive price.

Overall, Sony has produced a very good camera in the Alpha a58, and we're sure that anybody who buys one will be very pleased with its performance. At its current retail price of £449 / US$599.99 / AU$799 with the 18-55mm kit lens, it also offers excellent value for money, especially compared with its closest rivals.

The entry-level DSLR market is one of the most competitive in photography and, as a result, anything that a camera can do to stand out is more than welcome. Sony had achieved this with past SLT range cameras, but the Sony A58 is a step back. The full resolution continuous shooting rate of 5fps isn't even best in class - other similar DSLRs shoot faster and maintain that speed for longer.

The Sony A58 is a decent camera, but it's difficult to recommend it above several other models in a competitive market.

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All in all, there's little doubt that, Sony has created a DSLR that's packed with revolutionary technology, one that many pros will fall in love with instantly, and that many more will learn to love over time. For the first time, Sony has a full-frame SLR (more properly, SLT) to challenge Canon and Nikon, and even win a few rounds in the process.

The Sony Alpha SLT-A99V is a generally great camera that's equally adept at both stills and video, but with a few caveats.

The Sony Alpha 99 is a full-featured full-frame D-SLR that can focus as quickly when recording video as it does for still images, but it doesn't have an optical viewfinder.

A good option if you're looking for something fast with a viewfinder and tilting LCD, the Sony Alpha SLT-A37 is a solid but not outstanding sub-$800 dSLR-style camera.

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The Sony Alpha A37 is a fairly standard upgrade for the company's entry-level SLT DSLR lineup. It replaces the A35 with some basic upgrades to control, a new image sensor, but a largely unchanged design. The A37 is aimed largely at beginners, with most of its features designed for those adapting to DSLRs from point and shoots. The highlight feature is the auto portrait framing mode, which will automatically crop your portraits shots to better highlight your subject according to standard rules of photographic composition.

The Sony A37 is a compelling entry-level DSLR camera with features, still and video image quality, and overall performance that beat its main rivals. Only the small, low-resolution, non-articulating LCD screen detracts from an otherwise outstanding camera that will more than satisfy the needs of its target audience. The A37 marries most of the core features of its bigger brother, the A57, with the more diminutive body of its predessor, the A33, resulting in the cheapest SLT camera to date.

Sony's Alpha 57 digital SLR is capable of producing excellent images and video, but its EVF has some issues, and the camera is a little slow to start and shoot.

The new Sony A57 is a compelling intermediate SLT/DSLR camera that has a list of features and performance that few other rivals can match. The Sony A57 essentially offers the same excellent handling and features of the more expensive A65 model, but uses a more modest 16 megapixel sensor rather than the A65's 24 megapixels.

The Sony Alpha SLT-A57 really delivers when paired with the 18-55mm kit lens. With bright, vibrant colours, plenty of fine detail and super-fast underlying hardware, .