The following images were taken with a final production Sony Alpha DSLR-A550, running firmware 1.0 and equipped with the DT 18-55mm SAM kit lens. The action shots at the bottom of the page were taken with the DT 55-200mm SAM kit lens.

The Sony Alpha DSLR-A550 was set to L:14 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 Normal and Auto 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 500D / Rebel T1i sample images, Sony Alpha DSLR-A380 sample images, Nikon D5000 sample images, Nikon D90 sample images.