Sony A350 Review

Review Date: June 18th 2008
Author: Mark Goldstein

Leave a comment about this Review

Page 1
Introduction / Ease of Use
Page 2
Image Quality
Page 3
Sample Images
Page 4
Design
Page 5
Specifications
Page 6
Conclusion

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 14 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 5Mb.

Noise

There are 6 ISO settings available on the Sony A350 which you can select at any time if the camera is in the creative shooting modes. There is virtually no discernible noise at the slowest settings of ISO 100, 200 and 400. Noise is starting to appear at ISO 800, but it is still well controlled even at ISO 1600, although there is significant loss of detail. As you might expect, a lot of detail is lost at the fastest speed of ISO 3200, with the images having a "painted" feel, making this setting suitable only for emergency use. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting:

ISO 100 (100% Crop)

ISO 200 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 400 (100% Crop)

ISO 800 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 1600 (100% Crop)

ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

   

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are quite soft using the creative style of Standard with its default setting of 0 sharpening. You can change the in-camera sharpening level for any creative style if you don't like the default look.

Original (100% Crop)

Sharpened (100% Crop)

   
   

Chromatic Aberrations

The Sony A350's 18-70mm (27-105mm equivalent) kit lens handled chromatic aberrations well during the review, with small levels of purple fringing mainly present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations at the edges of the image, as shown in the example below.

Example 1 (100% Crop)
Example 2 (100% Crop)
   

Flash

The flash settings on the Sony A350 are Autoflash, Fill-flash, Rear flash sync., Slow Sync and Wireless. Red-eye Reduction is also available in the main menu. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (27mm)

Auto Flash - Wide Angle (27mm)

ISO 64
ISO 64
   

Flash Off - Telephoto (105mm)

Auto Flash - Telephoto (105mm)
ISO 64
ISO 64
   

And here are some portrait shots. Neither the Fill-flash or Red-eye reduction settings caused any amount of red-eye.

Fill-flash

Fill-flash (100% Crop)
   

Fill-flash & Red-eye reduction

Fill-flash & Red-eye reduction (100% Crop)
   

Night Shot

The Sony A350's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds and there's also a Bulb mode for exposures up to 30 minutes long, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 15 seconds, aperture of f/10 at ISO 100. I've included a 100% crop of the image to show what the quality is like.

Night Shot

Night Shot (100% Crop)
   

Anti Shake

The Sony A350 has an anti-shake mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with anti-shake turned off, the second with it turned on. Here is a 100% crop of the image to show the results. As you can see, with anti-shake turned on, the images are much sharper than with anti-shake turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length

Anti-Shake Off (100% Crop)

Anti-Shake On (100% Crop)
1/4th sec / 70mm
1/4th sec / 18mm
     

Dynamic Range Optimizer

Sony's D-Range (Dynamic Range) Optimiser adjusts brightness or contrast across the whole scene and is claimed to be particularly effective for high contrast, backlit scenes. When shooting in either JPEG or RAW, this mode improves shadow detail using standard gamma curves. The A350 has a simpler system than its big brother, the A700, offering 3 different DR settings (Off, Standard and Advanced).

Off (100% Crop)

 
Standard (100% Crop)
 

Advanced Auto (100% Crop)

 

Overall Image Quality

The Sony A350 produced images of very good quality during the review period. The 14 megapixel images are soft straight out of the camera using the default creative style and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera sharpening to one of six different levels. The Sony A350 handled chromatic aberrations well, with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations. The built-in flash worked very well indoors with no red-eye and good overall exposure. The night photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds and the Bulb mode offering lots of scope for creative night photography. The Sony A350's first impressive feature in terms of image quality is the extensive and very usable ISO range of 100-3200. ISO 100-400 is noise-free, whilst ISO 800 and 1600 produce more than acceptable results, and the fastest speed of ISO 3200 is OK for emergency use. The second one is the effective Dynamic Range Optimizer function, which extracts more detail from the shadow and highlight areas in an image, without introducing any unwanted noise or other artifacts. Overall then an impressive performance - just make sure that you either increase the in-camera sharpening level for JPEGs, or you're happy to post-process the images in Photoshop later.

Page 1
Introduction / Ease of Use
Page 2
Image Quality
Page 3
Sample Images
Page 4
Design
Page 5
Specifications
Page 6
Conclusion

DIWAPhotographyBLOG is a member of the DIWA organisation. Our test results for the Sony A350 have been submitted to DIWA for comparison with test results for different samples of the same camera model supplied by other DIWA member sites.

Compare Prices

Support PhotographyBLOG: Buy the Sony A350 from one of our affiliate retailers: