Sony A3000 Mirrorless Digital Camera with 18-55mm Lens
- 20.1 MP Exmor APS-C sensor for great images
- Light body and dependable grip for worry-free shooting
- Full HD video recording for capturing life’s moments
- Model: ILCE3000K/B
Now even you can take professional-looking 20 megapixel photos effortlessly. Unlock your artsy side the easy way and shoot stunning, frame-worthy images and HD video with small-camera simplicity. Best of all, can’t-miss moments and fast-action shots are captured with DSLR quality and speed-all in a lightweight camera you’ll want to take everywhere.
Use this comparison chart to compare all Sony Alpha Mirrorless cameras.
List Price: $ 398.00
Price: [wpramaprice asin=”B00EH5UGR6″]
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Excellent Product from SONY at an unbelievable Price.,
My full frame and full size SONY’s with additional battery holders, and glass were just too big. Great cameras for what I do here in the states. 21 Days, one suitcase, I go light. Besides I have an adapter that allows alpha lenses on the NEX size bodies.
Trudging through castles and churches, Photokina and Octoberfest, I wanted small with interchangeable lenses, the whole kit with the 12mm, 16mm, 18-55, 55-200 weighs less than one unit of the larger size. This type of trip is wide angle country.
I have owned a camera store, a full house lab, and still the CEO of the “Black Box Company”. I was and still am at times been a professional photographer owning Nikon, Canon and Bronica systems for the past 50 years. When I retired, finally, I became interested in SONY and retired all my other gear. I had a lot, it got me a new car.
People are not aware SONY makes the chips and motherboards for the others mentioned and the results in tests we ran with the camera and optics especially in the wides with incredible low light and little or no distortion. Color rendition showed no red or blue fringing, I noticed with other products, even pushing 20-30’s in our lab from a sub 400.00 dollar camera. So far we have been blown away by the results, fit and finish, but the pictures we processed and blew up were outstanding.
One of the magazine writers commented about the viewfinder not being exact enough (pixel count) but I had no problems whatsoever. If thats their main con, they had to look awful hard to find it. Most critics even in the magazines (ad buckets, we call them) shill for either Canon or Nikon and I ignore many of their comments. 50 years of handling repairs, none of the makers mentioned attained sainthood, they all had their quirks and we did a robust repair business.
This is an incredible price point camera that delivers, and four of us going to Germany already switched because of the weight situation.
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|Sony A3000 compared to Canon T3i, Nikon D3100, and Olympus E-PL1,
I am not going to go into all of the details as to which camera has what features since my primary concern is picture quality followed by video quality. Features are great but would rather have fewer features but better photos and videos!
I took all four cameras, put them on a tripod and shot photos using the standard 18-55mm kit lens that came bundled with the camera. I took photos of a house on the side of a hill that is located about 500 yards away and then enlarged the resulting JPEG files on my computer using a 23″ HP LCD screen. I did not print them out but viewed them at 200-300% to check out every bit of detail. I used ISO speed from 100 to 3200 to get an idea of how well the noise reduction worked on each camera without sacrificing image quality,
RESULTS: The best camera from ISO 100 to 1600 – Sony A3000. The second best – Canon T3i ( not as good as the Sony from ISO 100-1600, but just a little better than the Sony at 3200), third place goes to to the Olympus E-PL1 which did very well when you consider that it has a 12mp sensor versus the others that range from 14.2MP to 20.1MP. In LAST place is the Nikon D3100.
The D3100 is better than my old Nikon D40x for sure but not as good as any of the other cameras I used in this comparison. You could say that it is not fair since the Nikon has 14.2MP and the others that rated better have 18-20MP. But then, the Olympus with 12.3MP also did better than the D3100!
In terms of Video quality, the Canon T3i and Sony A3000 are pretty close with the T3i being slightly better. The Olympus PL1 fell to last place because the output is in 720p when all the others are 1080p. Nikon D3100 took third place in video quality.
Hope that helps a little in clearing up some of the picture quality issues between at least this batch of cameras.
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|The Good and the Bad,
Upon picking up the camera, the first thing I liked was the feel. It’s the perfect sized travel camera for someone used to a bigger DSLR while having a comfortable, deep recessed, rubberized grip. The included 18-55 zoom feels mechanically solid for a kit lens, and it’s also fairly sharp corner to corner. There’s very little geometric distortion or chromatic aberration.
Shooting stills in low light, the shots are amazingly clear with very little noise. In decent light or with flash, the photo quality is amazing for a 400 dollar camera. Pretty much in the top ten list in this price range. It’s also quick to turn on and shoot the first shots. If you’re buying this to shoot primarily stills, you’ll be very happy. It’s good enough and fast enough for anyone but a hard core pro. You’ll have the usual gamut of full auto, full manual and many combinations in between.
The first videos I shot were at night in a well lit downtown open air mall. What I observed through the view screen was stunning. The stabilizer isn’t very good at damping out motion from walking, but it’s fine for stabilizing shots while you’re standing still. Looking at the well lit video shots on a computer at 1920×1080, I was impressed. The autofocus tracked accurately and silently, and the auto white balance always kept the colors true. Depth of field, while not film-like, was better than most video cameras. Edge sharpness was better than my Alpha 57, but saturation looked more video-like than film-like. Again, you can use full auto, full manual or several combinations in between. Your outdoor vacation shots will simply be amazing. It shoots video better than most cameras under 1000 dollars, especially if you go through the menu and turn off some of the automatic features. So why the three stars?
When I shot some indoor footage at home, I was expecting decent results, and a first quick look didn’t disappoint. But as I looked with a practiced eye, I saw blue vertical lines throughout the image on all my indoor footage. Granted, they are very subtle and in very soft focus, but they are there regardless of the camera settings. I noticed them particularly when slowly panning against solid colored areas like a plain wall. At fist, I thought it might be an interaction with my LED room lights, but this was dispelled when I saw the blue bars in the outdoor footage as well, just not as prevalent. This may be a subtle problem, and many viewers may never notice it or be bothered by it unless it’s brought to their attention. But to me, it means I could never use this camera for footage I intend to use in a project. The blue bars are caused by what is known as fixed pattern noise in the image sensor. It’s not something you can solve by a firmware upgrade or by replacing it with another camera of the same model. While fixed pattern noise exists to some extent in any image sensor, it is usually mistaken for grain and not visible as a pattern of vertical lines.
Another huge disappointment is there is no HDMI port. I like to hook the camera to a TV to set up various parameters and see the live results as I make changes. No can do with this camera. It also means you can’t immediately play back footage from the camera on a TV until you edit it and put it on a disk or an SD card if your TV has a slot. There is also no external mike jack, so you are relegated to using only the built in mikes.
Sound quality is clear, but there is no means of making any adjustments to the volume or turning off the AGC. However, the AGC does a good job bringing down the levels of loud music without distortion.
In conclusion, the image quality is excellent on this camera aside from the aforementioned sensor noise. That may not be noticed in outdoor shots, and may not be objectionable enough to most users on indoor shots.
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