As you’d hope for the conditions, the crops show plenty of detail and no noise to worry about.

Like the A200 and A350 though, the A300 displays a modest amount of sharpening with its default settings. This can be boosted without detrimental effect at lower sensitivities.

As before, the A300’s modest in-camera sharpening can handle a boost here if desired. There’s certainly plenty of detail in the crops.

The A300’s AF tracked the approaching boat with no problems.

Despite bright sunlight shining against a predominantly white hull, the A300 resisted the temptation to under-expose and (unlike the A350) the increase in sensitivity hasn’t had a detrimental impact on quality.

The A300 has done a good job of balancing ambient light with the flash and produced a natural-looking result, although the low flash height can increase the risk of red-eye in low light.

Again the crops reveal lots of detail which can handle additional sharpening.

We shot his in Program mode, but a larger depth of field could have been achieved in Aperture Priority.

The increase to 400 ISO hasn’t had an adverse effect of the quality, with the crops revealing lots of detail and little noise or processing artefacts to speak of – although this subject can be forgiving.

Many cameras meter a little dark in this location, but the A300’s exposure is fine.

Unlike the previous example, a smattering of noise is visible if you look closely enough.

But there’s little to complain about and we’d be happy using the A300 at 400 ISO, although some rival models are producing cleaner results at this sensitivity.

Texture from noise and processing has become apparent here, but there’s still a fair degree of detail recorded which will be fine for smaller prints.

That said, 800 ISO is where the A300’s quality takes a bigger drop and again several rival 10 Megapixel DSLRs are capable of delivering cleaner results.

The crops reveal a significant increase in processing artefacts, smearing ultimate detail. .

The A300 at 1600 ISO is acceptable for small prints, but doesn’t stand-up to close examination at 100%.

Ultimately the A300 does deliver slightly lower noise than the A350 at higher sensitivities, but like the A200 and A100, it was already performing worse than some rival models.