It's been almost 15 months since Sony introduced their first DSLR, the Sony Alpha 100. Now, they introduced a new one, the Alpha 700, at Baveno near Lago di Maggiore in Italy.

To be honest, the first impressions are a mixed bag. On one hand, the camera has many excellent features, while on the other hand, it has a relatively high price of about EUR 1400. Do try to keep this in perspective, though, it's just the first impressions. While the camera doesn't have live view, which is present in almost every competitive camera, however, the screen has very high resolution and displays the recorded images with amazing clarity. Also, a top LCD is absent, but the information are displayed on the big LCD screen which shuts off automatically, so it's not really much of an issue. The grip, on the other hand, is excellent, and with the additional battery grip, things just get better.

For all Konica Minolta and Sony DSLR users, this camera is a clear sign that Sony is committed to developing the system, and they've also hinted that a full frame camera is the next logical step. More about this in another article.

The Sony Alpha 700 will certainly get a warm reception from the existing Sony and Konica Minolta users, but as to those who have yet to get into the wonderfully expensive world of DSLRs, well, that remains to be seen. Let's wait till the cameras hit the shelves – with the final firmware.

The design is very modern, but the Minolta influences are still obvious.

The camera offers excellent grip. Really, really excellent.

A nice thing – no matter whether you hold the camera vertically or horizontally, the buttons are pretty much in the same position. This has to be some kind of record for the most buttons on a vertical grip ever.

It takes both CF and MemoryStick cards. However, there's a design flaw – the camera doesn't automatically switch to, say, the CF card, if it was set to record to the MemoryStick, but no Memory Stick is present. Still, this isn't something that can't be fixed.

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