Sony Alpha 450

I just updated the tests/reviews in the database of the SLR photo cameras, mostly for the Pentax and Samsung cameras (and some Nikon, Sony, Canon, too).

According to AlphaMountWorld, the Sony Alpha A450 would not be distributed to the US market. Maybe Sony thought that the Americans don’t need to get this low-cost A500…

Sony Alpha 450

Sony just announced a new SLR photo camera: The Sony Alpha 450. As a matter of fact, it is merely a simplified version of the Sony Alpha 550. Gone is the tiltable LCD screen, removed the sensor which allowed to catch the image from the viewfinder in LiveView mode (a real specificity of the previous Alpha cameras). The LiveView mode is now equivalent again to the one of any other SLR camera (it uses the main and only digital sensor of the camera). The autofocus is less powerful, but if this is a sacrifice only in LiveView mode, I can see some photographers already interested…

7 frames per second bursts, an HDR mode which combines several pictures for you (without your intervention, it will takes several snapshots and assemble them in HDR). Here is a camera that, if well positioned in terms of price (and it should be), will certainly attract consumers with a little budget but interested in a really able SLR camera at a low price. This is a tune that Sony already played when they made a Sony Alpha 850 out of a more expensive Alpha 900. And they know how to create a camera family.

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A Chinese blog just announced a product that nobody really knew up to now: The Sony Alpha 450. But apart from the cover pages, there is not much to grab.

Sony A450?

Maybe an attempt to advertise the blog (and it works).

Via Photo Rumours.

Sony Alpha 700

From all sides, we hear that the Sony Alpha 700 is now reaching the end of its commercial life. Several web sites (including Sony UK and e-tailers like Adorama) indicated it as such.

The question, asked over and over here and there, is still: What camera will follow in its footesteps? For the time being, it’s all speculative. But it seems that the successor is really in the last mile before the official announcement (my own sources now have gone completely silent on this issue). Some tell that the CES show in Las Vegas (7th to 10th January 2010) will be the launch pad for this successor; It would be adequate, but I still think that it may take longer than that.