Introduction

Ease of Use

The Sony A450 is positioned as a cheaper alternative to the higher-end A5- series of Sony DSLR cameras, with the more expensive A500 and A550 models sitting above it in the now extensive range of Alpha DSLRs. Those two cameras benefit from Sony's excellent Quick AF Live View system and larger tilt and flip LCD screen, with the A450 instead only offering Manual Focus Check Live View and a smaller fixed 2.7 inch LCD.

Unlike the two two cameras directly below it, the A330 and A380, which featured a complete design overhaul with smaller, lighter plastic body and uncomfortable handgrip, the A450 is bigger, better built (although still made of plastic) and has a much more pronounced handgrip that markedly improves the handling, particularly if you have medium-to-large hands. I much preferred using the A450 compared to the A330/A380, predominantly because of the chunkier handgrip.

Another side-effect of utilising a slightly bigger body is that the A450 doesn't suffer from having too few controls, one of our other main criticisms of the A330/A380. Whereas Sony's designers had to re-think the control layout and philosophy of those cameras and reduce the number of external controls so much that they became less intuitive to use, the A450 reinstates some key controls, making it much easier to operate. The separate Drive Mode, ISO and Display buttons are back, no longer mapped onto the four-way controller, which can now function once again as the quick AF point selector in the Local AF area mode.

You can also choose Wide to let the camera choose the most appropriate AF point from the 9 choices, or use the central AF sensor and recompose if needed. This age-old focus-recompose technique is much faster than selecting an off-centre focus point on the Sony A450, and works every time except when dealing with extremely shallow depth of field. Alternatively, you can use the AF button in the centre of the four-way navigation pad to focus on whatever is in the centre of the frame, and hold it down not only while recomposing but also while releasing the shutter too (so that pressing the shutter button does not cause the camera to refocus).

Front	Rear

The AEL (autoexposure lock) button is also back, logically positioned for operation with your right thumb. Of probably less importance is the omission of the SteadyShot switch - the A450 retains the sensor-shift image stabilisation feature, but now you need to enter the main shooting menu to activate or deactivate it. Given that about the only time you will want to deactivate it is when you mount the camera on a tripod, the omission of an external switch for this particular function seems a logical decision. The power switch is back in a logical place surrounding the shutter release button, and the control wheel falls naturally under your right forefinger. All of these small changes add up to make the A450 a much more enjoyable camera from a handling point of view than the cheaper A330 / A380 models and puts it on a par with the more expensive A500 / A550 models.

The optical viewfinder (OVF) of the Sony A450 delivers 0.83x magnification and 95% frame coverage. The nine autofocus points are permanently marked on the focusing screen, and are therefore always visible in the viewfinder. The active AF point lights up in red when in use, and if focus is acquired, a green focus confirmation dot appears on the left side of the in-finder LCD, similar to other manufacturers' models. The LCD screen is a fixed 2.7-inch, 230,400-dot affair just like the one in the A230. The brightness of the screen can be set manually, but it can also adapt to ambient light levels automatically. Outdoors visibility is average - we've seen much worse (more reflective) LCDs on some competitors, but would still like to see some improvement to the antiglare coating.

The A450's Live View mode provides the ability to magnify into the live image for accurate manual focusing in macro and tripod shooting. Simply press the MF Check Liveview button when in Live View mode to allow critical assessment of focus and fine detail. The live image in this mode offers an improved 100% field coverage, assisted by framing grid lines for precise composition, and you can also select the 7x/14x zoom function for close-up confirmation of focus by using the AEL button.

The Sony A450 has a pop-up flash with a guide number of 12 (in metres at ISO 100). There is a mechanical button to raise the flash or you can raise it manually by hand. The pop-up flash can also act as a TTL controller for wirelessly slaved external flash units. External flashguns can of course also be mounted to the camera itself via the hot shoe. Be reminded that it is not of the standard variety - non-dedicated flashguns and other hotshoe-mounted accessories such as PocketWizards physically cannot be mounted without a separately sold hot shoe adapter.

Front	Pop-up Flash

The Sony A450 offers the sensor-shift image stabilisation system we already touched upon which Sony now calls SteadyShot Inside. This works very well for providing camera stabilisation at relatively slow shutter speeds - see a demonstration in the Image Quality section of this review - but it's less effective at the other function Sony has tasked it with; namely, shaking off any dust particles that may have settled on the sensor during a lens change. Apparently the anti-shake system was simply not designed to move the sensor fast enough to shake off the dust - Sony really need to make some improvements here.

Other long-standing Sony DSLR technologies present on the A450 include a pair of eye proximity sensors beneath the viewfinder that automatically shut down the LCD when raising the camera to your eye (provided you are not in Live View mode), and Minolta's legacy Eye-start AF technology. In the field, I found the eye-start autofocus system to be somewhat useful, though not necessarily faster than the more traditional solutions.

The innovative help guide display is a useful tool which teaches beginners about the effects of aperture and shutter speed, both by way of a text guide and via icons such as stick figures. This approach is certainly better than simply throwing in an auto mode and a host of scene modes (which is not to say the A450 lacks any of these, but the inclusion of the help guide does mean it goes a step further).

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

The Sony A450 has slots for SD/SDHC and Memory Stick PRO Duo memory cards. Dual card slots are always welcome, though the A450 unfortunately has one of the least useful implementations of the concept I have seen to date. The camera cannot record simultaneously on both cards, cannot copy images from one to the other, and cannot even switch automatically to the second card when the first one fills up. To do that, you need to open the sliding cover that hides the memory card compartment and manually move a small mechanical switch to the desired position. The USB and HDMI OUT ports are located on the left side of the camera along with a port for the optional Remote Cable for hands-free operation of the shutter release. Battery life is just over1,000 shots if exclusively using the optical view finder, or 500 shots for the Live View mode, both very impressive for this class of camera.

In use, the Sony A450 proved to be pleasingly quick. Start-up was nearly instant, autofocus with the kit lens was fairly speedy if not quite as quiet as with an SSM lens. The camera's burst mode is an impressive 7 frames per second (fps) with the OVF, and 4fps in Live View. The latter value, though lower than the former, is actually much better than anything the competition's DSLRs can produce in Live View. Image playback speeds were also acceptable. Magnifying into an already captured image does take a couple of seconds though. Maximum image magnification is 12x, but there is little point in going beyond the default 6.1x setting as the image progressively falls apart at higher values.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 14.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb.

The Sony A450 produced images of excellent quality during the review period. The Sony A450's first impressive feature in terms of image quality is the extensive and very usable ISO range of 200-12800. ISO 200-800 is noise-free, whilst ISO 1600 and 3200 produce more than acceptable results, and even ISO 6400 is OK for emergency use (though we'd avoid the headline grabbing ISO 12800 setting).

The second one is the effective Dynamic Range Optimizer function, which extracts more detail from the shadow and highlight areas in an image, without introducing any unwanted noise or other artifacts. The new High Dynamic Range mode combines two shots taken at different exposures to produce one image with greater dynamic range than a single image would produce. It only works for JPEGs and for still subjects, but does produce some very effective results.

The 12 megapixel images are soft straight out of the camera using the default creative style and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera sharpening to one of six different levels. The built-in flash worked well indoors with no red-eye and good overall exposure. The night photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds and the Bulb mode offering lots of scope for creative night photography. The built-in SteadyShot anti-shake system works well when hand-holding the camera at slower shutter speeds.

Noise

There are 7 ISO settings available on the Sony A450. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting for both JPEG and RAW files.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately you can't change the in-camera sharpening level.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

The file quality settings available on the Sony A450 are Standard and Fine for JPEGs, plus there is the option of shooting in RAW. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

12M Fine (4.21Mb) (100% Crop)	12M Standard (3.06Mb) (100% Crop)
12M RAW (14.2Mb) (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Sony A450 are Off, Auto, Fill-flash, Slow Sync, Rear Sync and Wireless, with a Red-eye Reduction option in the main menu. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Off - Wide Angle (28mm)	Fill-flash - Wide Angle (28mm)
Off - Telephoto (82mm)	Fill-flash - Telephoto (82mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Auto/Red-eye Reduction settings caused any red-eye.

Fill-flash	Fill-flash (100% Crop)
Red-eye Reduction	Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Sony A450's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds and there's also a Bulb mode for even longer exposures, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 15 seconds at ISO 200.

Night Shot	100% Crop

Anti Shake

The A900 has a SteadyShot INSIDE function, which is an improved version of Minolta's Anti Shake technology; an image stabiliser that is built into the camera body itself rather than the lens, adjusting for external hand-shake by counter-moving the CCD in a compensating manner. Crucially, it works with any lens that you attach to the camera, removing the need to buy more expensive lenses with anti-shake. This allows you to take hand-held photos at shutter speeds that are critically slow for the focal length used. As you can see, anti-shake does make a difference at shutter speeds like this. Importantly though, it won't help when even longer exposure times are required – in those cases, switch off SteadyShot and use a sturdy mount such as a tripod.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti-Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti-Shake On (100% Crop)
1/10th sec / 28mm
1/13th sec / 82mm

Dynamic Range Optimizer

D-Range Optimiser (DRO) is Sony's solution to improve shadow detail in photos taken in contrasty light. The selectable settings are Off, Auto and Advanced Level 1-5. Especially the last of these, the ability to set DRO to one of five levels, is very effective, as our examples show.

Off (100% Crop)	Advanced Level 1 (100% Crop)
Advanced Level 2 (100% Crop)	Advanced Level 2 (100% Crop)
Advanced Level 4 (100% Crop)	Advanced Level 5 (100% Crop)

High Dynamic Range

High Dynamic Range Optimiser (HDR) is Sony's solution for capturing more contrast than a single exposure can handle by combining two exposures into one image. The selectable settings are Off, Auto and 1-3 EV, as shown in the examples below.

Off (100% Crop)	1.0EV (100% Crop)
1.5EV (100% Crop)	2.0EV (100% Crop)
2.5EV (100% Crop)	3.0EV (100% Crop)

Creative Styles

Sony's Creative Styles are akin to Canon's Picture Controls in being preset combinations of different sharpness, contrast, saturation and brightness settings. The default Creative Styles include Standard, Vivid, Neutral, Portrait, Landscape, Sunset and Black-and-White, and are accessed on the interactive status screen. Within each Creative Style the user can fine-tune the sharpness, saturation, contrast etc. settings. Shown here are the six default Creative Styles for illustration.

Standard	Vivid
Portrait	Landscape
Sunset	Black-and-White

 

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Sony A450 camera, which were all taken using the 14.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Sony A450 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Sony RAW (ARW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

As of February 2025, we are no longer providing full size sample images or videos for download.

Please contact us if you have any feedback on our new policy.

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Flash Raised

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Function Menu

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Sony A450 is an eminently capable but rather uninspiring DSLR that feels like the stop-gap solution that it is, designed to hit a certain price point in the market. The loss of Sony's clever Quick AF Live View mode is a particularly bitter pill to swallow, as is the 2.7 inch screen inherited from the entry-level A230. On a more positive note, it does benefit from the excellent ergonomics, solid build quality and long-lasting battery life of the A500 series cameras.

Equally excellent is the A450's image quality, with the 14.2 megapixel CMOS sensor and BIONZ processor combining to produce great looking images all the way up to ISO 3200. The Dynamic Range Optimizer reliably improves shadow detail and highlights, while the High Dynamic Range Optimiser combines two exposures into one image and produces quite natural HDR images (if you could ever call HDR images 'natural').

Sony has only recently promised to introduce HD video to its DSLR range, so it's no surprise to find that the A450 doesn't offer what has quickly become a standard feature on most rival products. It's obviously not a problem if you have no interest in using your DSLR for moving images, but Sony must be losing customers lured away by all the excitement surrounding video on a DSLR. Another criticism is the rather small and dark optical viewfinder - Manual Focus Check Live View partially alleviates this problem, but is no substitute for a better OVF.

Which leaves the Sony A450 rather caught between the cheaper yet still capable A380, which does offer Quick AF Live View, and the more expensive Live View supporting A500 series models. The only camera in the A400 series is a solid but rather odd mix of features borrowed from across the Alpha range - we'd ultimately save some money and go for the A380 or splash out a little extra on the A550.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	3.5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Sony A450 from around the web.

Specifications

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