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$1,000-$2,000

Sony Alpha DSLR-A850

1. High-Res LCD: The 3.0-inch Xtra Fine LCD screen offers 921K-dot resolution with up to 100% magnification for highly detailed review of shots.
2. Solid Construction: The body is built for durability with a high-tensile aluminum chassis, magnesium-alloy body and rubber sealing around the viewfinder, card slots, controls and other areas. 3. SteadyShot: Sony D-SLRs incorporate image stabilization in the camera body, so it works with all lenses. Turn it off when the camera is on a tripod.

Sony Alpha DSLR-A850

ESTIMATED STREET PRICE: $1,999 (body only)

Sony’s Alpha DSLR-A850 is the first camera to bring full-frame digital photography under $2,000. Sony has accomplished this benchmark by paring down the feature set of its flagship A900 model. For $700 less, the A850 offers almost everything that the A900 does, including a 24.6-megapixel Exmor CMOS full-frame sensor, Dual BIONZ image processing, multi-stage noise reduction (including analog noise reduction on the Exmor sensor itself) and SteadyShot image stabilization, with some carefully chosen sacrifices.

DYNAMIC RANGE OPTIMIZER: Sony’s D-Range Optimizer helps the A850 to better handle extreme contrast and capture detail in both highlights and shadows within the same scene. Three modes—Standard, Advanced Auto and an Advanced Levels mode that offers five levels of compensation—give you flexibility to fine-tune the results.

CREATIVE STYLES: There are 13 customizable styles for setting ideal in-camera parameters that accommodate your subject or scene. Some of the Creative Style settings include Vivid, Neutral, Portrait, Landscape, Sunset, Night View and more.

QUICK NAVI: The A850 menu is fairly simple to access, but the Quick Navifunction makes the process even faster for frequently used functions and settings. The Function button (Fn) next to the LCD screen allows you to switch quickly through ISO, exposure sensitivity, flash settings, white balance and others.

AUTOFOCUS: Autofocus is performed via a 9-point AF sensor with 10 focus assist points. Ideal for night shooting, the AF Assist Illuminator works from 1m to 7m.

The biggest loss in the A850 is a reduction in shooting speed. The capture rate of the A900 is 5 fps, while the A850 offers only 3 fps. The 100% coverage in the A900’s pentaprism optical viewfinder has been reduced by a mere 2% in the A850 for a still above-average 98% viewfinder coverage. (The magnification rate is the same in both cameras at 0.74x.) The only other loss is the RM-DSLR1 remote, included in the A900. The wireless remote, offering off-camera control of shutter, display, metering, menu access photo viewing on HDTVs and other features, has now become an optional purchase for the A850. In truth, except for shooting speed, they’re barely noticeable changes.

The A850, on the other hand, carries over a whole host of other features from the A900, including dual memory card slots (CompactFlash and Memory Stick PRO/DUO), wireless flash control via the optional HVL-F28AM flash, swappable focusing screens for achieving a high degree of manual focus and a durable magnesium-alloy body with rubber sealing around the buttons.

The A850 also offers three metering modes for best determining the optimum exposure of a scene. Center-weighted places emphasis on the subject in the middle of the frame, spot-metering measures a specific spot and a 40-segment honeycomb pattern metering weighs the entire scene in a variety of lighting conditions.

There are more than 20 available Alpha-mount lenses compatible with the A850. The camera will automatically adapt to APS-C-sized lenses in the Alpha lens series, and the A850 also features compatibility with Minolta Maxxum lenses. Providing up to four stops of blur compensation, Sony’s SteadyShot image stabilization is built into the camera body, a unique feature in full-frame D-SLRs. The advantage is that stabilization is available no matter which lens you use.

STANDOUT FEATURE: While the A850, like the A900, doesn’t include Live View, the Intelligent Preview function captures a limited RAW still photo that allows you to apply the effects of exposure, white balance and D-Range Optimization on the LCD preview image prior to capture. It has most of the benefits of Live View, only without motion.
VERDICT: A $2,000 price point for a full-frame camera that offers this level of professional features, resolution and functionality is the real standout feature with the A850.