Sony’s A900 Packs 24.6 Megapixels Under the Hood

I have to admit… whenever I think about cameras, Sony is one of the last companies to come to mind. It might not be for good reason, though. The first time I ever laid my hands on one of their D-SLRs to take it for a spin, it felt cheap, and really didn’t impress me in terms of design. But, I might have had a bad impression, because after taking a look at some sample images from the new A900, it definitely seems like a worthy contender.

It’s not often that we see a new camera launch for a model over 15 megapixels, unless it’s $8,000 or higher, but Sony’s new A900 offers a staggering 24.6 MP resolution, resulting in images at 6048 x 4032 resolution. Granted, the megapixel race is a little ridiculous, but the samples shown at DP Review showcase that it actually does have what it takes to give nice results at the full resolution.

Other key features include a full-frame SteadyShot INSIDE sensor, dual Bionz processors, penta-prism glass at 0.74x magnification, 9 points of AF with 10 assist points, 5 FPS speeds, HDMI support and oh so much more. For the $3,000 (body only) price tag, it definitely seems like a camera capable of doing battle with Canon and Nikon’s higher-end offerings. But alas, we’ll have to wait for the final reviews first.

The success of the Alpha 900 amongst the Minolta, Konica Minolta and Sony faithful seems assured; at a launch price of just shy of $3000 it offers a lot of ‘bang for your buck’ and there is undoubtedly a significant number of Minolta film SLR users who’ve been waiting years for a full frame digital body on which to use their existing lenses.