Introduction

Ease of Use

Announced in May 2009, the Sony A330 is the successor to the Sony A300 digital SLR, which we reviewed at the end of last year. The core specifications of the new model are remarkably similar to those of its immediate forebear, but it has undergone a complete design overhaul, which has resulted in a smaller and considerably lighter camera aimed squarely at compact camera owners wishing to trade up to a DSLR.

The first thing you notice when picking up the Sony A330 is that it feels cheaper built than its predecessor. Upon reviewing the A300, we wrote that the body was "unashamedly plastic", but noted that it did "not feel cheap or low quality at all". The same cannot be said of the new Sony A330, which feels much more plasticky. There is little doubt that at least some of the afore-mentioned weight loss comes from the use of less robust materials (which probably helps Sony's bottom line too).

The right-hand grip has been completely redesigned - for the worse, unfortunately. It is so uncomfortable it makes you wonder if the camera would do better without it (grip-less SLRs were the order of the day for decades, and nobody complained about that). And the grip is but one example where the new design lags behind the old one. The new, smaller body apparently forced the engineers to re-think the control layout and philosophy of the camera, and this has resulted in a number of questionable design decisions.

For starters, the number of external controls has been reduced, making the camera less intuitive to use. The A300's separate Drive Mode, ISO and Display buttons are gone, and these functions are now mapped unto the four-way controller. That alone would not be objectionable at all - we have seen similar solutions that worked quite well - but unfortunately Sony's implementation has caused the four-way pad to cease functioning as a quick AF point selector. Now you need to enter the Function menu via the Fn button, navigate to 'AF area', enter, select 'Local', then repeatedly press the left or right arrow button until the desired AF point is highlighted, and finally exit the Function menu. That's about half a dozen button presses (sometimes more) required for something as simple as changing the active AF point!

This effectively means that most people will only use the central AF sensor for focusing, and recompose if needed. This age-old focus-recompose technique is much faster than selecting an off-centre focus point on the Sony A330, and works every time except when dealing with extremely shallow depth of field. To choose the central AF point, enter Fn --> AF area, select 'Spot', exit and don't ever change it again. Alternatively, you can use the AF button in the centre of the four-way navigation pad to focus on whatever is in the centre of the frame, and hold it down not only while recomposing but also while releasing the shutter too (so that pressing the shutter button does not cause the camera to refocus).

Front	Rear

The AEL (autoexposure lock) button is also gone, as is the highly useful Manual Exposure Shift function I liked so much in the A300 (which allowed you to quickly change the aperture-shutter speed combination without changing the EV in manual exposure mode). Of probably less importance is the omission of the SteadyShot switch - the A330 retains the sensor-shift image stabilisation feature of its predecessor, but now you need to enter the main shooting menu to activate or deactivate it. Given that about the only time you will want to deactivate it is when you mount the camera on a tripod, the omission of an external switch for this particular function seems a logical decision.

The controls that do remain are rather haphazardly placed, with almost nothing falling readily under your thumb or fingers. The new power switch is in a place where you would expect the control wheel to be - in the dark, or with the camera up to my eye, I sometimes switched the camera off accidentally, when my actual intention was to change the aperture setting. The control wheel itself is located further down, and the best thing you can do is try to train yourself to use your middle finger to spin it.

One button that inexplicably escaped the axing of so many external controls is the nearly useless 'Smart Teleconverter'. Only active when shooting JPEG in Live View, the 'Smart Teleconverter' button acts as a 1.4x / 2x digital zoom, delivering a cropped 5.1 / 2.8 megapixel image respectively. When shooting RAW and / or outside Live View mode, the button is idle. Thankfully, pushing this button in these cases no longer prompts the camera to display the arrogant "Invalid operation" message I criticised the A300 for. The A330 says, "Smart teleconverter not available when shooting with OVF. Select Live View." or, "Smart teleconverter not available when shooting RAW. Select any image quality other than RAW" instead. These messages are certainly more civilised than the old one, but the real solution would be to make this button reprogrammable to do something more useful than its current function.

The optical viewfinder (OVF) of the Sony A330 appears to be identical to that of its predecessor, delivering 0.74x magnification and 95% frame coverage. The nine autofocus points are permanently marked on the focusing screen, and are therefore always visible in the viewfinder. The active AF point lights up in red when in use, and if focus is acquired, a green focus confirmation dot appears on the left side of the in-finder LCD; similarly to other manufacturers' models.

As with its forebear, one of the main highlights of the Sony A330 is its Live View implementation. None of the currently manufactured competitor models - the 'non-SLR' Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1/GH1 aside - can auto-focus quickly in live view mode, and that's because competing DSLRs get the live view feed off the main imaging chip, which means their mirror must be raised while in this mode, blocking light from reaching their AF sensors. So they either have to temporarily lower their mirror for auto-focusing, which is loud and interrupts the live view, or resort to contrast-detect AF, which their lenses are not optimised for.

Top	Pop-up Flash

Sony have circumvented this problem by using a secondary imager. While the solution is not new - secondary-sensor Live View debuted in the Olympus E-330 of 2006, where it was called Live View Mode A - Sony took a fresh look at it when designing the A300/A350 and came up with their own version. Given that no other manufacturer - not even Olympus - offers this in any of its current models, it was logical of Sony to continue using it in the A330. The benefit of secondary-sensor Live View is that autofocus is just as fast, and shutter lag is just as short as when using the OVF, unlike in the case of competing models that offer main-sensor Live View. The downside of Sony's solution is a much lower Live View frame coverage (90%) and the inability to magnify into the live image for accurate manual focussing. We suspect that the properties of the secondary sensor might also be behind the fact that the Sony A330 does not offer a video mode.

The LCD on which Live View is delivered is a 2.7-inch, 230,400-dot affair that tilts up and down, just like the one in the A300, albeit it feels considerably less robust. A tilting LCD is always a better choice for a Live View capable DSLR than a fixed one, though some competing models from Nikon, Olympus and Panasonic go even further by offering full LCD articulation. The brightness of the screen can be set manually, but it can also adapt to ambient light levels automatically. Outdoors visibility is average - we've seen much worse (more reflective) LCDs on some competitors, but would still like to see some improvement to the antiglare coating. Switching between Live View and the optical viewfinder is done by way of a mechanical switch to the right of the pentamirror housing - a simple and elegant solution, though once again the quality of the switch appears to be lower than that of the A300.

The Sony A330 has a pop-up flash with a guide number of 10 (in metres at ISO 100). This is a small step back from the one built into the A300, which had a guide number of 12. Of more importance is its mode of operation. There is no mechanical button to raise the flash, and neither are you advised to raise it by hand. Instead, if you would like to use it, you need to enter the Flash menu by pressing the right arrow key on the four-way pad, choose the required flash mode (Fill, Slow or Rear) and exit the Flash menu. The flash will only pop up when you (half-)press the shutter release. If you don't want to use it any more, it is not enough to push it back - you need to re-enter the Flash menu and select the Flash Off option. Otherwise it will pop up again the next time you hit the shutter button. As with the AF point selection procedure described above, I found this solution to be unnecessarily complicated and in conflict with the A330's billing as an easy-to-use SLR. To be fair though, some shooting modes allow the user to choose an Auto Flash option, which will probably please novice users - but it's no substitute for a well thought-out user interface.

The pop-up flash can also act as a TTL controller for wirelessly slaved external flash units. External flashguns can of course also be mounted to the camera itself via the hot shoe. Be reminded that it is not of the standard variety - non-dedicated flashguns and other hotshoe-mounted accessories such as PocketWizards physically cannot be mounted without a separately sold hot shoe adapter.

The camera has a few niceties inherited from its forebears. These include the sensor-shift image stabilisation system we already touched upon (and which Sony now calls SteadyShot Inside), an orientation sensor that rotates the status display so it remains readable even if the camera is in portrait orientation, a pair of eye proximity sensors beneath the viewfinder that automatically shut down the LCD when raising the camera to your eye (provided you are not in Live View mode), and Minolta's legacy Eye-start AF technology. In the field, I found the eye-start autofocus system to be somewhat useful, though not necessarily faster than the more traditional solutions.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

As far as the anti shake system goes, it works very well for providing camera stabilisation at relatively slow shutter speeds - see a demonstration in the Image Quality section of this review - but it's less effective at the other function Sony has tasked it with; namely, shaking off any dust particles that may have settled on the sensor during a lens change. Apparently the anti shake system was simply not designed to move the sensor fast enough to shake off the dust - this will be evident if you look at some of our samples that clearly exhibit a few dust spots.

New to the Alpha A330 - and to its bigger brother the Alpha A380 - is a so-called help guide display, which teaches beginners about the effects of aperture and shutter speed, both by way of a text guide and via icons such as stick figures. This approach is certainly better than simply throwing in an auto mode and a host of scene modes (which is not to say the A330 lacks any of these, but the inclusion of the help guide does mean it goes a step further).

The Sony A330 has slots for SD/SDHC and Memory Stick PRO Duo memory cards. Dual card slots are always welcome, though the A330 unfortunately has one of the least useful implementations of the concept I have seen to date. The camera cannot record simultaneously on both cards, cannot copy images from one to the other, and cannot even switch automatically to the secoond card when the first one fills up. To do that, you need to open the sliding cover that hides the memory card compartment and manually move a small mechanical switch to the desired position. The same compartment that houses the memory cards gives shelter to the USB and HDMI OUT ports too.

In use, the Sony Alpha A330 proved to be fairly quick, putting aside the operational glitches and design flaws described above. Start-up was nearly instant, autofocus with the kit lens was fairly speedy if not quite as quiet as with an SSM lens. Thanks to the secondary-sensor approach, there was no noticeable AF speed penalty when shooting in Live View. The camera's burst mode was an unimpressive 2.5 frames per second (fps) with the OVF, and 2fps in Live View. The latter value, though lower than the former, is actually much better than anything the competition's DSLRs can produce in Live View. Image playback speeds were also acceptable. Magnifying into an already captured image does take a couple of seconds though. Maximum image magnification is 12x, but there is little point in going beyond the default 6.1x setting as the image progressively falls apart at higher values.

To round it off the Sony DSLR Alpha A330 has a few features that put it ahead of its immediate competitors (such as fast AF in Live View, an Eye-start AF option for when shooting with the optical finder and eye proximity sensors that automatically shut down the LCD when lifting the camera up to one's eye), but it has a few comparative disadvantages too (no Live View magnification for accurate manual focusing, no video mode etc.), and is actually a step back from its predecessor the A300 in terms of ergonomics and handling, which ultimately leads to a less pleasant shooting experience.

But handling, features and performance are only one side of the coin - the other one is image quality. Read on to find out how the Sony Alpha A330 measures up in that area...

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 10.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 4Mb.

During the review, the Sony Alpha DSLR-A330 produced images of very high quality. The shots exhibit a pleasing combination of nice colours and wide dynamic range. Noise is not a real problem up to ISO 800, though it does become rather noticeable at ISO 1600, in the form of blotchy chroma noise that the in-camera noise reduction cannot remove well. Loss of overall saturation is not a problem though, even at the highest setting of ISO 3200. Sharpness, while not bad, is only so-so with the kit lens, meaning you will be wise to save up for better optics. General exposure accuracy with matrix metering is good though not outstanding - I found myself dialing in exposure compensation settings of +0.3...+1.0 surprisingly often. Flash exposure accuracy - and consistency - was, on the other hand, best in class with the pop-up flash; thanks to the Advanced Distance Integration (ADI) system inherited from Minolta. Another Minolta legacy is the sensor-shift anti shake technology, called SteadyShot Inside by Sony, which really helps with shutter speeds that are critically slow for the focal length used.

Noise

The base sensitivity of the Sony A330 is ISO 100, with the other selectable settings being ISO 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200. Although you can disable high-ISO noise reduction via the menu, the JPEGs will always exhibit signs of NR being applied above a certain point. This causes progressive loss of sharpness and detail as you move up the sensitivity ladder and leads to a frankly unpleasant look by the time you hit ISO 1600. Switch to RAW, however, and you get back the seemingly lost fine detail, albeit at the expense of more noise, including some blotchy chroma noise as well. The bright side of this is that there is little if any loss of overall saturation, even at the highest settings. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting:

JPEG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

File Quality

The file quality settings available on the Sony A330 are Fine and Standard for JPEGs, plus you can also opt to shoot RAW. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options.

10M Fine (100% Crop)	10M Standard (100% Crop)
10M RAW (100% Crop)

Sharpening

The out-of-camera JPEGs can be slightly soft with the kit lens. Applying some sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop may help, although this is no substitute for sharp optics. Here are two 100% crops - the right-hand image has had some  sharpening applied and then been Saved for Web... Quality 50 in Photoshop.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Moire Artifact

During the test, we found a strange, though rare kind of artifact in one of our images, which is shown here at 100%.

Example 1 (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Sony 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 SAM lens showed very little chromatic aberration - purple fringing - when mounted to the Sony A330. An excellent performance from this sensor-lens combination.

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

Flash

The pop-up flash on the Sony A330 has a guide number of 10 (in metres) at ISO 100. Depending on shooting mode, the available flash modes may include Off, Auto, Fill, Slow Sync and Rear-curtain Sync. In addition to these, the pop-up flash can also act as a controller for wireless slaves. Another function of the built-in unit is to provide an AF assist light - this solution works, but can be more annoying to your models than the red or white AF assist lamps of some competing models. These shots of a white coloured ceiling were taken at a distance of 1.5m, and demonstrate how much extra vignetting the flash may cause, particularly at the wide end of the 18-55mm SAM lens, where its coverage is not enough to evenly illuminate the scene.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (27mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (27mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (82.5mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (82.5mm)

And here are a couple of portrait shots. Red-eye was not a problem in this test. Exposure is dead on, as with every shot we took with the built-in flash.

Forced On	Forced On (100% Crop)
Auto/Red-eye Reduction	Auto/Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Sony A330 can use shutter speeds as slow as 30 seconds, and there is a Bulb mode available as well, which is very good news if you are seriously interested in night photography. The example below was shot at a shutter speed of 20 seconds, aperture of f/8 at ISO 100, with long-exposure noise reduction (dark frame subtraction) activated. I have included a 100% crop to show what the quality is like.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Anti Shake

The Sony A330 features Minolta's CCD-shift anti-shake technology, re-branded 'Super SteadyShot Inside' by Sony. This allows you to take hand-held photos at shutter speeds that are critically slow for the focal length used. The crops below are from two photographs, both taken at 1/10 second at a 35mm EFL of 83mm. As you can see, anti-shake does make a difference at shutter speeds like this. Importantly though, it won't help when even longer exposure times are required - in those cases, switch off IS and use a sturdy mount such as a tripod.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti-Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti-Shake On (100% Crop)
1/4th sec / 70mm

Dynamic Range Optimizer

DRO is Sony's solution to improve shadow detail in photos taken in contrasty light. The selectable settings are Off, Standard [D-R] and Advanced [D-R+]. The examples show the effect of the different settings.

Off	Standard	Advanced

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Sony A330 camera, which were all taken using the 10.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Sony A330 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Sony RAW (ARW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Flip-Out LCD Screen

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

It is not uncommon for a camera manufacturer to release an incremental upgrade to an existing model - we have seen this in the past from basically all the major players. Sometimes the new camera will lose some of its predecessor's functionality while adding new features. It is, however, quite unusual to see a new camera that is a clear step back from the previous iteration without offering any novelties or improvements worth mentioning.

The Sony A330 appears to be one such camera. Its immediate forebear the Alpha A300 was a somewhat chunky but generally well designed DSLR that offered good handling and ease of use thanks to its sensible user interface and fairly good ergonomics. With the arrival of the Alpha A330, it has been replaced by an undeniably smaller but at the same time much less conveniently designed camera that is frankly uncomfortable to hold and sometimes frustrating to use. And that's a problem especially if we consider that the key word in the A330 announcement was 'ease-of-use'.

During our test of the new camera we got the strange feeling that the - new? - design team either had very little idea of what ease-of-use means to a photographer, or was explicitly instructed to design the A330 for non-photographers. That you need some half a dozen button presses to change the active AF point or enter a menu to pop up the flash when it's not in auto mode pretty much says it all. At the same time, certain things the camera could be expected to do automatically, such as switch to the second memory card when the first one fills up (provided there are two cards inserted, of course), must be done manually - again, not in the spirit of user friendliness.

Comparing a camera to its immediate predecessor is one thing, but what the Sony A330 will be measured against is its competition - and here the new offering still has the same advantages as the older A300; namely, fast Live View autofocus and no extra shutter lag or unnecessary mirror slapping. This alone earns it an 'Above Average' rating. Our recommendation, however, still goes to its predecessor the Alpha A300 or its higher-resolution sibling the A350, which offer the same advantage in a much better designed and ultimately easier-to-use body - so grab one until stocks last.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	3.5
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4
Value for money	3.5

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Sony A330 from around the web.

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