Gadgetory

hi I'm Laurie Brennan and this is the sony alpha a 3000 the a 3000 also known as the ILC ii 3000 it's sony's attempt to hit the $400 sweet spot of pricing for a kit with the 18 to 55 millimeter lens in a camera that seemingly has everything that people stepping up from a point-and-shoot would want it's basically a mirrorless interchangeable-lens model for point the shooters who want to fool people and possibly themselves into thinking it's a DSLR but while it produces really good photos for the money it doesn't deliver on the other aspects of DSLR shooting most notably performance that you can get for just a little more money on a real DSLR like the canon SL 1 the a 3000 is lighter and more compact than a typical SLR it's a good size for your dainty lady hands though the grip is better designed than the SL ones to accommodate big old man hands as well sony achieved the small size by using the mirrorless innards of the NEX series and that lines amount lenses it's not a particularly attractive camera but it's functional if clunky you have to delve into the annoying menus for most options though it offers some higher-end features like a hot shoe and an electronic viewfinder the viewfinder is small course and has poor color accuracy the 2.7 inch LCD is cheap extremely low resolution and really difficult to see in direct sunlight if you're even a little off angle the one nice aspect of the design is the location of the SD card slot intelligently placed on the left side instead of inside the battery compartment the performance drives home that this isn't a DSLR or even a mid-range ILC the autofocus is pretty sluggish and it's burst shooting tops out at about 2.6 frames per second neither of which is really sufficient for photographing active kids or pets if you want anything more reliable than just the occasional happy accident but the image quality is definitely better than almost anything you'll find for less than $400 unsurprising since warts-and-all it still incorporates sony's excellent 20.1 megapixel Exmor HD sensor and solid JPEG process you can usually get nice photos as high as ISO 800 and in some cases as high as ISS 1600 the video is pretty good as well it is the same artifacts I see elsewhere most noticeably jaggies on edges but I see those problems and far more expensive cameras to the a 30,000 supports full manual controls and video mode plus manual focus peaking and doesn't force you into specific movie mode to use them there's also a built-in stereo microphone which is rare in this price class on the other hand it's limited to 60 I or 24p for real HD video that's about it for the interesting features though it's pretty no-frills with the most basic effects options the a 3000 feels like a camera intended to be a transitional buy a step-up in image quality but designed to make you yearn for faster performance and another camera so just jump up directly to something else instead I'm Laurie grinning and this is the sony alpha a 3000