The Sony Alpha A230 shares exactly the same sensor and imaging pipeline as the A330, and the quality delivered by both models is identical. As such we're repeating the sample images from our earlier A330 review here. The following images were taken with a final production Sony Alpha DSLR-A330, running firmware 1.0 and equipped with the DT 18-55mm SAM kit lens.

The Sony Alpha DSLR-A330 was set to L:10 Fine JPEG quality, Auto White Balance, Multi-segment metering and the Standard Creative Style. High ISO NR and the D-Range Optimiser were set to their default On and Standard settings respectively. SteadyShot Stabilisation was enabled for all these handheld shots.

The individual exposure mode, file sizes, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO and lens focal length are listed for each image.

The crops are taken from the original files, reproduced at 100% and saved in Adobe Photoshop CS4 as JPEGs with the Very High quality preset, while the resized images were made in Photoshop CS4 and saved with the default High quality preset. The three crops are typically taken from far left, central and far right portions of each image.

Note: you may wish to open a number of galleries for direct comparison of detail and noise: Canon EOS 1000D / XS sample images, Nikon D3000 sample images, Sony Alpha DSLR-A380 sample images, Nikon D5000 sample images, Olympus E-620 sample images, Panasonic Lumix G1 sample images.