Live from Las Vegas: Sony announces two more DSLRs under $900

There wasn't much exciting at the PMA 08 Sneak Peek press event this afternoon (Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung, and Pentax all had tables showing the same cameras we already know all about). But Sony has sparked some excitement with two sub-$900 DSLR announcements today. On the heels of its Sony Alpha DSLR-A200 announcement a few weeks ago at CES, Sony has added the A300 and the A350. The A300 is priced at just $100 more than the A200 ($799 with a DT 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 standard zoom lens). What that C-Note buys you is the A300's live-view shooting mode that allows you to frame, focus, and shoot using the 2.7-inch flip-out LCD, something you can do with all point-and shoots, but not all DSLRs (though that's changing: Canon's new Rebel XSi sports a live-view mode too, as does the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10 among others). You'll sacrifice magnification on the optical viewfinder (the A200 viewfinder's magnification is 0.83x, while the A300's is 0.74x), but presumably you'll use the LCD more to make up for that. The extra cash you'll dish out for the A350 bumps resolution from 10.2 megapixels (on the A200 and A300) to 14.2 megapixels, but the extra megapixels knock

continuous shooting speed down to 2 frames per second (vs. 3 fps for the A200 and A300). The A350 has the same flip-out Live-View LCD and lower magnification optical viewfinder as the A300. The A300 will ship in April and the A350 (which is also available body-only for $800) will ship in March.`

CNET's Lori Grunin posted a good comparison of Sony's four DSLR offerings here and DPreview has a quickie hands-on with the A350.