Digital Home Thoughts: Sony Announces A290 and A390 DSLRS; Rest of the World Yawns

"Sony's A290 DSLR may not have been the hottest of this summer's Vietnamese leaks, but nevertheless it was about a month ago that the entry-level shooter was spied over there, and now we know when it'll be coming over here -- roughly, at least. Sony has made the 14.2 megapixel A290 official, along with its A390 sibling."

After the NEX cameras, we get the most ho-hum DSLR launch ever. These cameras bring nothing new to the table, have what looks like a very simplified UI, and are not aesthetically appealing either (the chunky design feels really ancient for some reason and is lacking in Sony's usual design sense). The only real advantage these cameras have is price, but I'm not sure that saving a hundred is going to matter when there are more interesting options on the market, and in a tier of a market that's increasingly enticed by the Micro Four Thirds camp despite the price.

Also, the more expensive of the pair, the A390, is going to have a terrible viewfinder because of Sony's implementation of live view; a secondary sensor residing in the pentamirror region means the viewfinder is even going to be tinier than the D70's viewfinder which I used as a baseline in a previous article. Sony's implementation of live view in a world of EVIL cameras now looks like a failed compromise.

All in all it really makes me wonder about Sony's DSLR ambitions. It is not like they have a bad base to begin with - Minolta's legacy is a decent system, but despite brave talk by Sony in saying they want to be a main player, 2009 saw the Micro Four Thirds camp upstaging them in a big way, while not being able to penetrate the Canon and Nikon hold on the market. With cameras like the A290 and A390, Sony can just about forget achieving that goal.