MY FIRST experience with a Sony DSLR was enjoyable. I welcomed the uncluttered organisation of buttons and dials. The extra large fonts on the menus are much easier to read on screen compared to the others.

It also has good handling and design.

Call me old fashioned, but I really like the twist dial button that controls the camera's exposure modes and preset scene selections.

Looking with wide-angle lens, you'll note that Sony keeps up with current technology, equipping the A700 with a HDMI terminal. This allows you to connect the A700 camera directly to a HDTV and share your pictures immediately.

It has in-body image stabiliser and a dual card slot. Other than the standard CompactFlash card, the A700 accepts the MemoryStick.

Like the competition, the A700 also has features like Creative Style and noise reduction.

One grievance: I miss the Live View function and the ability to delete images instantly at the preview mode. I also didn't like the proprietary flash shoe that accepts only Sony-compatible flash units.

Picture quality is generally good but to nit-pick, I found images shot on this camera lacking in finer details. The rock wall in my test shots, for example, looked flat and fairly smooth compared to the test shots from other cameras in this round up.