Quote from North Wolf Photography on June 19, 2023, 6:23 pm

Here is a review of the Sony a290 snipped and with slight edits from my Blog.  It's a Basic no frills DSLR that takes some amazing shots for a camera with absolutely zero bells and whistles:

Released in 2010 the Sony a290 would be one of the last DSLRs Sony made alongside the a390 (same sensor/ body with a tilt screen and live view), a450 and a580 (which were slightly higher end models with the CMOS sensor).  It was 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.

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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.

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The Sony a290 is not going to be a camera I rely on at an event.  ISO noise is pretty terrible above 800 which limits this camera, as with many older cameras in my collection to a sunlight shooter only which honestly I can live with just fine.

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It has a slow burst rate and a fairly terrible buffer (unlike higher end CCD sensor cameras like 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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: