I used 35 mm years ago and then stopped taking pics. Started up because of some of the digital point and shoot cameras. When I decided to get back into SLRs, I did a lot of research. I have never been into snob appeal so I looked into features, picture quality and value as significant factors. Sony, who took over the older Minolta line, certainly had the right idea when they put together the 350. It is pretty easy to use right out of the box. I would consider a field guide if you are not camera savy, so you know how to get the most out of it. I recently used it on a trip to England and took about 800 pictures in 10 days. It worked great. I do not use the kit lens, but found some others that make this camera pretty flexible (but that's another review.) So far, there is nothing that I have wanted to do that this camera can't.

The majority of great pictures come from the photographer's eye, scene and light. IMHO, this camera will not hold you back if you have those.

I purchased the Sony A350 primarily to have an up-to-date, medium-high end DSLR that would accept my Minolta lenses: I have seven. Professional photography was my first career, and had other opportunities not presented, I likely would have remained a photographer. I remained an avid amateur photographer throughout two subsequent careers, and now in retirement. I've found the the A350 a competitive DSLR, with most or all of the functions and modes of similar price-range cameras. Couple that with allowing me to use my collection of Minolta lenses, I've made a good choice. One feature I particularly like since I print large format copies of many of my photos is the menu selection "Creative Style" allowing shooting in Adobe Photoshop color space.

Two downers:

1. The LCD screen is particulary vulnerable protruding rearward to accommodate the LCD tilt function. Moreover, when using the viewfinder, skin oils and sweat--I shoot a lot of equine sports action--soils the LCD continuously. This vulnerability is why I rated the camera 4 stars rather than 5.

2. I find the Camera Shake warning indicator distracting, and essentially useless. Even when I use a tripod the indicator indicates maximum at the slightest touch. I'll rely on controlling shutter speed.

Nonetheless, I am satisfied with the camera, and would recommend it to others.

I enjoyed A350 a lot. The image quality is very high. I shot some awesome family pictures, portraits, our vacation photos: everything came out superb. For an amateur as I am it is dream camera! I user DSC-R1 from Sony before and it also was terrific camera. If you aren't satisfied with the pics from this cam you need some real expensive lens and pro level equipment.

I'm very happy with this DSLR!

This is a fantastic camera. 14mp DSLR at under a grand is a bargin at this time. I have owned 35mm SLRs and digital point & shoot cameras over the years. This is my first DSLR. I have been pleased that given the complicated nature of such a device that it has been relatively easy to learn and use. I like the Tilt LCD but I wish it would articulate like some Point and Shoot cameras to be able to avoid glare from direct sun.

The body seems quite well made and comfortable to the hand, allthough the shutter button doesn't seem to to be intuativly placed to my hand. But I'm sure I'll get used to it as my experience with it builds. Sony eliminated the Depth Of Field Preveiw button that I understand was on previous models. I would have appreciated that feature. I use it often on my 35 SLR. I would like to see a Focal Length readout in the veiwfinder.

The 18-70 lens(28-135 in 35mm) is a good Focal Length choice and starter lens. That give a very wide angle up to mild telephoto. It gives sharp colorful images. Being a inexpensive lens, it has a couple of down sides. The worst trait is that the outside of the lens rotates when focusing, which when using a Polarizing Filter alters the filter setting. You just have to remember to focus first and adjust the filter after. The other is that 3.5 aperature is a bit slow, but a 2.8 is going to be a lot more money.

There are a number of lenses to fit availible from Tamron, Sigma, as well as Sony. Accessories from Sony tend to run high. But there are ussually less costly alternative brands for such things. Sigma makes compatible flashes for example, that are much less and do as much or more. Sony has a policy of not allowing retailers to discount. So don't expect any free printers or sales.

To start off, I don't really write reviews on products, and I am new to digital photography, so you can really take this review with a grain of salt... However, I just thought I would share why I gave this product a 5 star rating.

The five star rating simply put is because I love this camera. As stated earlier I am new to digital SLR photography so I won't be nearly as insightful as the Nikon/Canon buffs.

Why get the A350? 14.2 megapixels. Live view. Ease of use. Super Steady Shot built into the camera.

The high megapixels enable you to take high quality photos that will look great when blown up. Does this mean that this camera will take better pictures than a Nikon D300 because the megapixel count is higher... No, not at all that was a common misconception I learned. But knowing that I wanted to take a lot of pictures and make large digital prints to make my office look less lame, I figured I should go a step higher to get the blown-up image quality that I want.

The live view is great for so many reasons. Right on the display, it tells you all your settings from battery life, flash, aperture, etc... all while giving a great idea what your image will look like. Keep in mind, what you see on the live view isn't 100% what you'll see when you load the photos on computer or photoshop.

Ease of use: Grab the camera, go over the manual, play with the settings, take pictures. Coming from someone who knew nothing about cameras until about 2 weeks ago, the learning curve was easy with this camera. Right out of the box, you can set everything to auto and take great pictures just like a small digital camera. But for more advanced photos you simply learn by trial and error and the live view helps you see what you might need to adjust when taking photos. So even if you've never touched an SLR camera, you begin to learn what ISO, f/5.6, and all the other settings are and how to use them just by taking good pictures... or bad ones!

Super Steady Shot: Clear images, built into the camera, not the lens like other manufacturers. Down the line it can help you save some money because you can buy less expensive lenses because you don't need to pay the extra money to get the image stabilization in the lens like Canon or Nikon.

So why get this camera vs. other brands? First off, this camera is great for anyone wanting to get into digital SLR's. If you have old Minolta A-mount lenses you can use them with this camera. There are websites that give compatibility charts with some of the old lenses that you have.

If you have a bunch of DSLR Nikon and Canon gear, well that sucks for Sony because you won't be buying an A350 anytime soon. If you did, then you're either dumb or have a lot of free time and money to blow. However, if you're thinking about getting a camera, Sony makes a great product and offers tons of features in the camera at a low cost. Down the road, Sony will launch more professional and higher priced cameras so if you're starting out on a DSLR journey, you can begin it with Sony and start collecting lenses, tripods, filters and all the other happy stuff that goes into the expensive hobby of digital photography.

Side note: I think this camera was $100 cheaper when I bought it 2 weeks ago. I got the Sony A350X kit (The X is the 2 lens kit, the A350K kit is a 1 lens kit) so I don't know what the deal is there. But all in all, it's a great buy.

Oh yeah, if you're trying to decide whether or not to buy the A300 or A350, in case you didn't know the only difference, literally is the megapixels. So unless you are going to blow up your images, go save yourself $200 bucks and get the A300. If you're going to make large prints like I am, then go with the A350.

This camera is really unbelievable for the price. If we're talking about the camera body (with no lens), I prefer it over the Canon Rebel XSi anyday (and I've used both). The problem for Sony is that their lens is sooooo crappy that the image quality goes straight down the toilet, and Canons lenses are for the most part very sharp and colorful.

The solution? Minolta lenses. I got my camera in the mail this morning and have played with it all day. From the second I unpacked the lens I was disappointed- even before I put it on the camera. It has an extremely cheap and plasticy feel, probably because it is cheap and made of only plastic. I'm actually pretty sure there's not a single piece of glass in the lens (which means, for those of you are new to this, that it sucks). I put it on and sure enough the results were not pretty. Don't run off to Canon's page so quickly, though- remember that this IS a 5 star review.

What makes up for sony's crappy crappy lens is the fact that you can use any Minolta lens from the past 20 years. In anticipation of purchasing this camera I brought 2 Minolta lenses from a garage sale a few weeks ago for a hundred bucks, and when I put them on the camera it was like magic. The autofocus still works in an instant, and the sharpness and color combined with Sony's 14megapixel sensor have left this former film-snob utterly impressed.

So my advice to advanced amateur photographers is to buy this camera. But just the body only. Save the hundred bucks to buy yourself a Minolta lens (or two). I thought I'd throw in the extra hundred bucks with this cam just to have an extra lens for my collection, and it was absolutely not worth it. I don't even know if I'll mount it onto my camera ever again. Seriously- It's a big plastic turd. I wouldn't buy it again if it was 20 bucks.

Also- I learned the complete menu for this camera in less than a day. The only negative things about this camera (except for the crappy turd plastico lens) are that it's not a full frame sensor (look it up, and then decide if you really want to spend and extra 1300 dollars to get a full frame sensor DSLR), and that there's a really dumb and pointless digital zoom button that is a total tragic use of space. I could think of ten more used/usable functions that could have gone there instead.

Really though, I couldn't be happier with this camera.

I love this camera and all of it's many features. Don't buy the kit lens. It is not worth the extra money. I put a C. Zeiss 24-70mm lens on it and it is wonderful.

I bought this camera body a couple of weeks ago together with the Sony Zeiss 16-80mm lens. It is my first DSLR, with my most recent other camera being a Canon S2 IS superzoom point and shoot. Have not used a SLR camera since before the digital age. Am very happy with it! Image quality, as you'd expect, is *far* above that of the S2 IS... and there aren't any image quality issues that I can determine relative to other DSLRs. Resolution seems great, color is spot-on, etc.

Ergonomically, I'm also very happy. As I get back into using things like aperture and shutter speed settings, I find the controls to be well laid out and accessible. The Live View implementation is very easy to use...admittedly, I wish I could live-view things like depth of field et al, but for my uses, I don't really miss it. My only complaint is that when I hold the camera, occasionally my hand will press up against the AF directional-pad and alter the AF setting.

At the moment, I can't really imagining needing anything more complex than this camera. I'm sure that a pro photographer will want the flexibility of more lenses et al. But for me, I don't see myself needing a whole collection of lenses...maybe one more bigger zoom lens or something like that.

I got the Sony A350 about 2 months ago. The camera is great. I like the way it's laid out and it's easy to use. The live view and tilting screen is very hand when shooting small objects on the ground.

HOWEVER - I'm a bit disappointed in the 18-70mm lens supplied with it. Under certain conditions (which I'm not sure I understand what these are) there is quite a bad flair. Red on the left, green on the right of objects. Bright and contrasty pictures seem to show this up most.

When viewing the pictures normally, this defect isn't obvious. When the pictures are enlarged to the extent that you are starting to see the pixels, this flair becomes quite obvious. I'll try to submit a picture here illustrating this. If I'm not successful, trust me that it's poor.

The good aspect of this defect is that it's not obvious unless the pictures are enlarged quite a bit, so for most photographers, it's not an issue. Dispite this problem, I like the camera and I'm glad I got it. This amazon price was also good.

I bought the Tamron 70-300mm zoom and it works well on this camera and doesn't seem to have this red/green lens flair. The Tamron is a good companion at a great price.

After reading all the reviews I could find with pros and cons, I just purchased the sony a350, and am very pleased on its performance. The view finder is great (Some reviews said it was too small) I wear glasses and no problem. The color quality is very good, the camera in a nut shell just works great, reguardless of some less than favorable reviews. I have been doing photography for quite awhile, and I just like it ! Besides the camera alone, no matter what kind it is cannot take a great picture, its always the person behind it. So if you want it, like it, then buy it. Also remember Sony has been in the camera business for a while, (Movie cameras, etc. )So they know a little about good color.