"Not that the competitors have bad cameras, it’s just Canon and Nikon have sold millions of film SLRs and there are as many compatible lenses floating around. So when it came time for those film folks to go digital, it was only natural they stuck with the Big Two since they had investments in glass sitting in their closets. To capture some of these buyers, Sony introduced the alpha DSLR-A100 well over a year ago and I liked the 10-megapixel D-SLR (around $700 USD with an 18-70mm lens). It was based on the Konica Minolta 5D, whose D-SLR assets Sony bought around two years ago; that camera sold well but still is only a relatively small slice of the pie compared to the Big Two. As Digital Trends readers now, the megapixel race continues and 10MP seems so 2006 now that 12- to 21.1MP models are here. And so is the new DSLR-A700, a beefy 12.24MP camera with much speedier response (5 frames per second compared to 3 with the -A100)."Rave reviews for Sony with this camera. The A700 is a direct competitor to the Nikon D300 and it looks like the folks at DigitalTrends are calling the Sony the clear winner between the two. I have not used a Sony camera for almost a decade now but am certainly intrigued with this new camera.