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>> Hi, I'm Lori Grunan [assumed spelling], senior editor with CNET.com here at the Sony booth at CES 2008, to show you Sony's new entrant in the consumer digital SLR market. This is the Alpha A200K. It's one of the kits that replaces the A100. What's notable is the A100 wasn't really a consumer entry level model. It was a mid-range model that got sucked down with price reductions into the seven hundred dollar price point, but it's not really a camera designed for users going for their first digital SLR. This one is. It's a much more simplified design. It's got the ten megapixel sensor APS size, which is the standard size for CCDs. Always notable of course is the fact that Sony's using compact flash in their digital SLRs instead of a memory stick. It has a similar design to the A700, it's mid-range big brother, with the same onscreen navigation that I really liked in that camera. The camera has the same nice grooved grip that makes holding the A700, and several other vendor's models such a real pleasure. Like the A700, the A200 has the sensor that detects when you bring it up to your eye. So, and it automatically turns the menus off so they don't interrupt your vision through the view finder. It's coming into the market at the same price point as the D40X and the Eos Rebel XTI kits, which is heady competition to go against. But one thing that Sony adds that the Cannon and Nikon don't is in-body sensor shift image stabilization, and that is really important when you're stepping up from a point and shoot. Everybody wants IS, and Nikon and Cannon still have it in the lenses. To be fair, their models are a bit older, and we expect to see revs of them some time maybe later spring, early fall. So like the Nikon D40X and the Cannon Eos Rebel XTI, this comes in at a seven hundred dollar price point with the kit lens.
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There's also a nine hundred dollar version with a longer zoom lens. You should keep a look out for this in February of this year. I'm Lori Grunan, CES 2008.
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