The new Sony Alpha 200 with a Carl Zeiss lens. Lovely, isn't it?

Almost naked. Almost erotic.

 Nice viewfinder, baby!

Full frontal ... Em, anyway, the paint on the mount is a nice detail, in my opinion.

Sony Alpha 200  - first impressions.

The Sony Alpha 200 is very similar to the Sony Alpha 700 when it comes to the body. Naturally, some knobs and dials were removed from the camera to make it less intimidating to beginners, but the ergonomics don't really suffer for it, and in addition, the camera still has all the nice features the Alpha 100 had, and adds a few that were exclusive to the Alpha 700.

To be brief - Sony have just made another giant stride forward by making this camera appeal to all those first-time photographers who are familiar with the Sony brand. Not only that, it'll also appeal to Minolta users - there's enough of that old Minolta magic in this camera, so it doesn't feel like a cheap electronic gizmo, but like a real camera. Image quality is very Sony - appealing straight out of the camera, reducing the need for postprocessing. Point and shoot, but only Photoshop if you really want to.

I was testing the preproduction camera. By the time it hits the shelves, things will only improve. That's not to say that they're bad as it is, considering the target audience. Images straight out of the camera look good, and the camera isn't too intimidating for a beginner. Also, metering works really well, making it easy to get images that are sure to astound anyone who just jumped from point-and-shoot digicams to a DSLR.

Sony Alpha 200 with fill-in flash.

We'll make sure you get more about the camera when production models are available. For the moment, though, it looks like a really nice camera, with good handling and image quality.

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