The Sony a290 comes from a very short period of time where Sony manufactured traditional DSLR cameras. While Canon, Nikon and Pentax (the latter has made a statement that they would not switch to Mirrorless) would make DSLRs for years to come and only recently start whispering about ending the long tradition of producing high-end mirror flipper cameras; Sony would be among the early adopters of a "Mirrorless" style system alongside Olympus and Panasonic and become the biggest force to gradually steer the photography industry away from DSLR cameras as "The Standard" for professional imaging.
But for the first 4 years of Sony's "Professional" camera division from 2006 to 2010 Sony did indeed make DSLR cameras just like everyone else. The interesting thing is however, that Sony would continue to produce and support APS-C CCD sensors right up until the very end of their true DSLR line (as the SLT cameras which replaced them was not an actual DSLR camera) intermixed with CMOS sensor cameras. Sony continued development on CCD sensors a full year after Nikon abandoned CCD technology in 2009 with the low-end consumer D3000 which re-used the same sensor developed in 2006 for the Nikon D60, D80 and D40x.
I only own one Sony DSLR and it is one of the most barebones DSLRs Sony ever made. The direct competitor to the Canon Rebel TX lines or Nikon D3xxx bodies; a Sony a290:
Released in 2010 the Sony a290 would be one of the last DSLRs Sony made alongside the a390 (same body with a tilt screen and live view) a450 and a580 (which were slightly higher end models with the CMOS sensor). It also had the last CCD APS C sized sensor ever used in a large camera brand, a 14mp APS C sized CCD sensor; and this is what really makes this camera shine and worth holding onto inspite of the lack of features and somewhat mediocre AF system and write buffer.
The other quality that makes this camera unique and fun to use outside of the CCD sensor is the Sony a Mount; which allows you to use Rock Solid vintage Minolta lenses with full Auto Focus and electronic aperture control. Combine these together and you get some absolutely dreamy photos out of this camera.
The Sony a290 is not going to be a camera I rely on at an event. Like the Nikon D200 I reviewed earlier ISO noise is pretty terrible above 800 which limits this camera, as with many older cameras in my collection to a sunlight shooter only.
It has a slow burst rate and a fairly terrible buffer (unlike the D200) as I could hit the maximum number of shots per burst and have to stop shooting often even with just doing casual street photography.
That said it has a fast write speed and can support higher speed SDHC cards meaning the camera could shoot RAW files easily and dump its small buffer to card in a second or two. The pause in shooting between bursts as the buffer filled therefore was quite manageable and I never ran into the camera having to wait to write files to the card before I could power it down unlike a lot of my older CF based DSLRs.
This is a great camera for someone who wants to go "back to basics" with Digital Photography and honestly feel like they are shooting a more modern film DSLR with the convivence of shooting digitally. There is no live view nor video mode so you have to be comfortable shooting through the viewfinder at all times.
As someone who started on a Canon Rebel XTi (a camera which I own but have yet to review) this mindset is comfortable for me and shooting cameras like this that have no LiveView shooting option brings me back to my roots in Digital Photography. It's refreshing for the times I need to slow down and re-think my approach to Photography.
And now I'll let the sample images I took this week speak for themselves of why I won't ever trade or sell the Sony a290 from my collection (Unless it was to upgrade to the a390); even if I had considered doing so in the past:
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