I sure hope this guy is joking about the new Alpha's!

[stevecim]

I stand around 5'11", the only way I could hold the A330/A230 was to use, the first finger for shutter, second finger on the control dial, then the last 2 fingers on the grip. this seemed fine for light lenses and after you get use to using 2 fingers to control shutter and control dial, you can adjust shutter speed/ap with out removing your finger from the shutter release. BUT it feels un-natural.

[UrsaMajor]

There is still a chance that I may buy the A330 for my daughter-in-law - but only after she has handled it herself, and only if she finds it acceptable. She is less than 5 ft tall, slender, and with hands in proportion to her size. That may make the A330 comfortable for her, and I'm going to hold off on a purchasing decision until she has a chance to sample the A330 in person. If she finds it uncomfortable to hold and use, I may hunt for a dealer that still has an A300 in stock, or I may get her one of the Canikon DSLR cameras. I would prefer to give her a Sony so she can take advantage of my duplicate copies of my favorite Minolta lenses, but I am not about to give her an A330 if it feels anywhere near as bad to her as it does to me.

It looks as if I will be giving my daughter-in-law a Sony A330 for her birthday after all. She and my son just looked at the camera and she handled it, having been warned in advance by me that the shape of the camera might be uncomfortable to hold. She found that it fit HER hands, and she commented that she liked the light weight. Staying with Sony will let me also give her some of my favorite Minolta lenses for which I bought duplicates and triplicates when the lenses were dirt cheap in the year before Minolta finally introduced a DSLR.

I still question the design of the new cameras. They may be an acceptable match for people such as my daughter-in-law, but only a small percentage of the market consists of people as tiny as she is, and it is a miserable design for people with larger hands.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[bakubo]

Popular Photography has a review of the A330 in the latest issue. I skimmed the magazine at the bookstore earlier today. They have it online too, but they left out the technical test result table (and maybe other stuff) that was in the magazine:

http://www.popphoto.com/Reviews/Cameras ... -Alpha-330

[David Kilpatrick]

For the record - Ailsa hated the A380 shape (she is used to an A350), Shirley did not mind it (she is used to an A700 and found it very different, but not a problem).

Seems the shape, grip and shutter position will polarise opinion. I did not pre-influence, I just handed her the A380 and asked what she thought. The three things she commented in immediately were an uncomfortable grip which dug into her hand when her pinky was placed below the camera, a badly placed shutter button, and a front dial which she tended to turn by mistake all the time.

David