Sony A3000 Flash

Coverage and Range
A weak flash with narrow and uneven coverage at wide angle. Our standard indoor portrait shot required more than average exposure compensation and still came out dim.

Coverage. Flash coverage is quite narrow and uneven at wide angle (18mm), leaving very dark corners in our flash coverage test image, though that's fairly typical. Coverage is more uniform at full telephoto (55mm), with less fall-off in the corners (though quite dim here at ISO 200).

Exposure. Our Indoor Portrait test scene came out dim even with +1.0 EV flash exposure compensation at ISO 200, and flash exposure compensation didn't make much difference. The average amount of flash exposure compensation required for this scene is +0.7 EV, so the A3000's flash system performed below average here. The camera's Slow-Sync flash mode produced very bright results with no flash exposure compensation, though with a strong orange cast from the ambient room lighting.

ISO 200 Range. With the 18-55mm kit lens flash exposures at wide angle started out bright at 6 feet, but exposure quickly fell from there with a range of only about 7 feet. At full telephoto, flash exposures started out dim at 6 feet and became dark quite quickly.

Manufacturer Specified Flash Test. The Sony A3000's built-in flash unit is rated with a Guide Number of only 6 meters or 19.7 feet at ISO 200. That works out to about 5.6 feet at f/3.5 and 3.5 feet at f/5.6, the maximum apertures of the kit zoom lens. In the test shots above taken at those distances, the A3000's flash produced bright flash exposures (even slightly overexposed), which confirms Sony's modest flash power rating is at least credible.

Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 200, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. We also shoot two shots using the manufacturer-specified camera settings, at the range the company claims for the camera, to assess the validity of the specific claims.