Sony A3000 Review

Optical Zoom
A typical zoom ratio of ~3.1x for a kit lens, with average performance.

The Sony A3000 is available bundled with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS "kit" E-mount lens. This lens possesses a typical optical zoom ratio for a kit lens of about 3.1x with a 35mm equivalent focal range of about 28-82mm.

Sharpness and contrast at full wide angle (18mm) are decent at f/8 over most of the frame, and chromatic aberration isn't an issue (the camera suppresses), however some flare is slightly visible around the building's white surfaces. It's difficult to judge corner performance here because of the depth in this scene, so we'll do that below. At medium focal length (31mm), the lens performs quite well at f/8 with good sharpness and contrast, though some corner softness can bee seen. At full telephoto (55mm), overall performance is fair, with decent sharpness in the center but soft corners, as well as some flare. The A3000's 2x Clear Image digital zoom works reasonably well, but still produces a loss in fine detail as well as interpolation artifacts.

See sections below for comments on macro, geometric distortion, corner softness, performance wide open, chromatic aberration, etc.

Macro
A slightly larger than average minimum coverage area, with good detail. Flash throttled down well.

As with zoom performance, the Sony A3000's macro performance will depend entirely on the lens mounted. With the 18-55mm kit lens set to 55mm, the A3000 captures a minimum area measuring 2.96 x 1.97 inches (75 x 50 millimeters), which is slightly larger than average for a kit lens. Performance is very good in the center at f/8 with strong detail, though the corners and edges of the frame are quite soft. (Most lenses have some softening in the corners at macro distances.) The flash did a good job throttling down at minimum distance resulting in a good exposure. The flash also had no trouble clearing the lens as there is no detectable shadow.

Geometric Distortion
Higher than average geometric distortion at wide angle, but about average distortion at telephoto.

Barrel distortion at 18mm is ~1.2 percent

Pincushion distortion at 55mm is ~0.4 percent

The 18-55mm kit lens produces about 1.2 percent barrel distortion at wide angle, which is higher than average and quite noticeable. At the telephoto end, there's about 0.4 percent of pincushion distortion, which is about average and somewhat noticeable. This is the tendency for the lens to bend straight lines outward (like a barrel -- usually at wide-angle) or inward (like a pincushion -- usually at telephoto).

Chromatic Aberration, Corner Sharpness & Vignetting
Low levels of C.A. in JPEGs (the camera suppresses it). The lens produces some soft corners.

Aperture: maximum
18mm@f/3.5: Lower left C.A.: Low Softness: Slightly soft	18mm@f/3.5: Center C.A.: Very low Softness: Sharp
55mm@f/5.6: Lower right C.A.: Low Softness: Soft	55mm@f/5.6: Center C.A.: Low Softness: Fairly sharp

Chromatic Aberration. Chromatic aberration in the corners with the A3000's 18-55mm kit lens at wide angle (18mm) is fairly low, and the center of the image shows very little C.A. The camera does a pretty good job at suppressing much of the lateral C.A. produced by the lens (see below for uncorrected results). At full telephoto (55mm), C.A. is lower in the corners, though the center shows a bit more than at wide angle (possibly the result of a slight focus difference), however it's still quite low.

Corner Softness. Wide open at full wide angle, the 18-55mm lens that came with our A3000 has decent corner performance, with good sharpness in right-hand side corners, and slightly soft corners on the left. What little softness there is extends fairly deep into the frame, though, however the center is pretty sharp and contrasty. At full telephoto, the right-hand corners are softer with the lower-right the softest, though blurring doesn't extend very far into the frame. Oddly, while the top left corner is fairly sharp, as you move toward to the center the image suffers from some doubling which extends fairly deep into the frame. The center exhibits good sharpness, though with slightly lower contrast than at wide angle.

Vignetting. Moderate vignetting (corner shading) is noticeable at full wide angle, as indicated by the darker corner crop. Vignetting is not as noticeable at full telephoto.

Aperture: f/8
18mm@f/8: Lower left C.A.: Low Softness: Minor blurring	18mm@f/8: Center C.A.: Very low Softness: Sharp
55mm@f/8: Lower right C.A.: Low Softness: Soft	55mm@f/8: Center C.A.: Very low Softness: Sharp

F8. "Stopped-down" to f/8, all four corners exhibit good sharpness and improved contrast at wide angle. At full telephoto, corner sharpness and contrast improved only slightly compared to f/5.6. Vignetting is also improved but still noticeable at wide angle.

Lens Corrections

When shooting JPEGs, the Sony A3000 includes the ability to automatically compensate for geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and lens shading (vignetting), as images are captured.

Geometric Distortion

Barrel distortion at 18mm is <0.2 percent

Pincushion distortion at 55mm is <0.1 percent

Above, you can see the corrected geometric distortion from the 18-55mm kit lens is very low, with less than 0.2 percent barrel distortion at wide angle, and less than 0.1 percent pincushion at telephoto. Note however than some of the wide-angle shot is cropped away during the correction process. The default setting for this compensation is Off (at least with the 18-55mm lens).

Chromatic Aberration

CA Correction Auto	CA Correction Off
18mm@f/8: Upper left C.A.: Low	18mm@f/8: Upper left C.A.: High and bright
55mm@f/8: Upper left C.A.: Very low	55mm@f/8: Upper left C.A.: Very low

Above, you can see fairly high and bright lateral chromatic aberration at wide angle with Chromatic Aberration Compensation disabled, though the difference at telephoto is minimal because C.A. is quite low at telephoto to begin with. The default for this setting is Auto.

Lens Shading

18mm@f/3.5		55mm@f/5.6
Lens Shading Correction:		Auto (default)	Off

Mouse-over the links above to see the difference Lens Shading Compensation makes when wide open (the worst-case scenario for most lenses). As you can see, at wide angle, corners are brightened significantly without affecting brightness at the center, though some fall-off is still left behind in the corrected image. There's however very little difference at full telephoto as there wasn't much lens shading to begin with. The default setting is also Auto.

Note that the A3000 like other Sonys applies Shading Compensation to ARW files as well as JPEGs, so if you'd rather correct for it yourself when shooting RAW, make sure to turn Shading Compensation off before shooting. As far as we can tell, Shading Compensation is the only lens correction the A3000 bakes into RAW image data (the other corrections are just tags in metadata).

Overall, a fairly typical performance for an inexpensive kit lens (which is to say decent but not great). It's a good start and a great value when bought as part of a kit, but to get the most out of the Sony A3000's 20-megapixel resolution, you'll likely want to invest in some better glass.

Coverage
Very good accuracy from the EVF and LCD monitor.

The Sony A3000's electronic viewfinder and LCD monitor both show slightly over 100% coverage in record mode. This is very good performance, though not a surprise given the preview image is derived from the main imaging sensor.

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Typical saturation levels and hue accuracy.

ISO Sensitivity
100	200	400
800	1600	3200
6400	12800	16000
In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center. Mouse over the links to compare ISOs and click on the links for larger images.

Saturation. The Sony A3000's overall default color saturation is oversaturated by 10.2% at base ISO in our tests, which is about average these days. Saturation remains fairly consistent across the ISO range, except at ISO 6400 where it dips to 104.3%. Reds and dark blues are boosted the most, but not as much as we often see. Most other colors are pushed just a bit or are pretty close to ideal, though yellow, light green and cyan are slightly undersaturated. Overall, saturation levels are quite pleasing to our eyes, and you can of course tweak saturation more to your liking. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. The Sony A3000 does fairly well with Caucasian skin tones. Brighter flesh tones have a healthy pinkish tint, though darker areas are nudged toward orange. Still, pretty good results here. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. Like many cameras, the Sony A3000 shifts cyan toward blue, red toward orange, orange toward yellow and yellow toward green, but shifts are relatively minor. (The cyan to blue shift is very common among the digital cameras we test; we think it's a deliberate choice by camera engineers to produce better-looking sky colors.) With an average "delta-C" color error of 4.94 after correction for saturation at base ISO, overall hue accuracy is about average, with accuracy only moderately lower at higher ISOs. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Saturation Adjustment
The Sony A3000 has a total of seven saturation settings available, three above and three below the default saturation. This covers a pretty wide range of saturation levels. Saturation also has almost no effect on contrast, which is how it should work.

Saturation Adjustment Examples
-3	-1	0	+1	+3

The table above shows results with five of the seven saturation settings, including the default and the two extremes. Click on any thumbnail above, then click again to see the full-sized image.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Slightly warm casts with Auto and Incandescent, good with Manual, but too cool with Kelvin white balance settings. Average exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under normal incandescent lighting, color balance is a bit warm and orange with the Auto white balance setting, though results here are better than average. Results with the Incandescent setting are a bit better but still somewhat warm and orange/yellow. The Manual setting is quite accurate, just slightly on the cool side. The 2,600 Kelvin setting which should match the color temperature of our lights is too cool and bluish. (Though it's nice a camera at this price range even offers a Kelvin setting.) The Sony A3000 required +0.3 EV positive exposure compensation here, about average for this shot, though images are just a touch bright (but default exposure is too dim). (Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.)

Outdoors, daylight
Very good results under harsh lighting, with good handling of contrast, color and exposure.

Outdoors, the Sony A3000 performed very well. No exposure compensation was required to keep the mannequin's face reasonably bright in our "Sunlit" Portrait shot, which is much better than average among the cameras we've tested. (Most cameras require about +0.7 EV here.) Contrast is a little high as you might expect under such harsh lighting, but the camera does a good job of holding onto detail in both the shadows and bright highlights, even without the help of DRO (see below). Both Auto and Manual while balance produced decent skintones, with lighter tones slightly pinkish while darker ones slightly warm, with a slight orange tint. Default exposure is quite good for our Far-field shot as well, just a touch underexposed but with very few highlights blown, again with DRO disabled. There are quite a few dark shadows in the trees, however only very dark shadows are noisy and posterized, but that's not usually an issue as we're talking *very* dark shadows. The Far-field shot with Auto white balance has very good color, just a touch on the cool side. Overall, a very good performance in harsh lighting, especially considering DRO was off for these shots.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Very high resolution, ~2,550 to ~2,600 lines of strong detail from both JPEGs and RAW files.

In-camera JPEGs of our laboratory resolution chart reveal sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 2,600 lines per picture height in the horizontal direction, and about 2,550 lines in the vertical direction. Some may argue for higher numbers, but aliasing and sharpening artifacts start to interfere at this resolution. Complete extinction of the pattern doesn't occur until about 3,300 lines. Some color moiré is evident in JPEGs, though that's not uncommon. Adobe Camera Raw wasn't really able to extract more lines of resolution here from a matching RAW file, and it generated stronger color moiré, so the Sony A3000 does a good job holding on to high-contrast detail at base ISO in its JPEGs. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Good default sharpness, though with moderate sharpening artifacts. Mild to moderate noise suppression visible in the shadows and areas of low contrast.

Sharpness. The Sony A3000 captures sharp, detailed images overall, though there are some visible edge enhancement artifacts seen around high-contrast elements such as sharpening halos around the lettering and lines in our bottle labels. While they look slightly excessive on screen at 100% magnification, they should lead to crisp-looking prints straight out of the camera which is probably what Sony had in mind for this target market. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows mild to moderate noise suppression in the darker areas of the model's hair. A number of low-contrast strands are smudged together, though higher contrast strands are still distinct. Still, pretty good results here, especially for a high-resolution APS-C sensor. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above, the Sony A3000 produces in-camera JPEGs with lots of crisp detail, though default sharpening is a bit high. Additional detail can often be obtained from carefully processing RAW files with a good converter.

Base ISO (100)
Camera JPEG, defaults	RAW via Adobe Camera Raw

In the table above, we compare an in-camera JPEG taken at base ISO using default noise reduction and sharpening (on the left) to the matching RAW file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 using default noise reduction with some strong but tight unsharp masking applied in Photoshop (250%, radius of 0.3 pixels, and a threshold of 0).

As is frequently the case, demosaicing in Adobe Camera Raw and sharpening in Photoshop delivers finer detail than the camera, with fewer sharpening artifacts. Looking closely at the images, ACR extracted quite a bit more detail that wasn't present in the JPEGs from the camera particularly in the red-leaf swatch where the thread pattern is treated as noise in by the JPEG engine. Fine detail in the mosaic is also improved, but as is often the case, more noise can be seen in the bottle crop. You can of course apply stronger noise reduction (default used here) to arrive at your ideal noise versus detail tradeoff.

JPEG	IDC

Aliasing Artifacts. It's not always easy to see without doing an A to B comparison by flipping between images, but the red-leaf swatch shows moiré patterns, an indication that the A3000's anti-alias filter is quite weak. In the table at right, mouse over a two links at the bottom to compare an in-camera JPEG to a conversion made with Sony's bundled Image Data Converter 4 software at default settings.

As you can see, the wavy moiré patterns move relative to the fabric, making it much easier to spot. We've also seen aliasing artifacts in some of our other A3000 shots. We don't think it's a deal-breaker as quite a few cameras produce similar artifacts these days, but it is something to be aware of especially if you shoot a lot of man-made subjects with repeating patterns, such as buildings, fabrics, etc. Techniques than can be used to reduce or avoid false colors and moiré patterns include shooting at a smaller aperture so that lens diffraction acts as an anti-alias filter, defocusing slightly, shooting at higher ISOs, and post-processing particularly with RAW files.

ISO & Noise Performance
Very good noise versus detail performance up to ISO 1,600.

Default High ISO Noise Reduction
ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 1,600	ISO 3,200
ISO 6,400	ISO 12,800	ISO 16,000

The Sony A3000's JPEG images are very clean up to ISO 400. There are minor demosaicing errors in the hair above the mannequin's forehead, though that's pretty common these days, especially with a sharp lens. We start to see some minor softening at ISO 400 where stronger noise reduction kicks in, but fine detail is excellent and chroma noise very low. ISO 800 is a bit noisier and softer, but detail is still excellent. ISO 1,600 is slightly softer though fine detail is still very good. ISO 3,200 is noticeably softer with stronger smudging and more noticeable noise "grain", and image quality continues to fall rapidly from there. ISO 6,400 still shows some fine detail, but 12,800 and especially 16,000 suffer from much stronger blurring from aggressive noise reduction and more noticeable luma noise accentuated by the camera's sharpening. Chroma noise is also stronger at these high ISOs, producing blotchy purple and yellow patches. Overall, though, these are very good results especially considering the A3000's price point and resolution.

As always, see the Print Quality section below for maximum recommended print sizes at each ISO, as printed performance often doesn't correlate well to what's seen on-screen at 100%.

A note about focus for this shot: We shoot this image at f/4, usually using one of three very sharp reference lenses (70mm Sigma f/2.8 macro for most cameras, 60mm f/2.8 Nikkor macro for Nikon bodies without a drive motor, and Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/2.0 for Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds bodies). To insure that the hair detail we use for making critical judgements about camera noise processing and detail rendering is in sharp focus at the relatively wide aperture we're shooting at, the focus target at the center of the scene is on a movable stand. This lets us compensate for front- or back-focus by different camera bodies, even those that lack micro-focus adjustments. This does mean, though, that the focus target itself may appear soft or slightly out of focus for bodies that front- or back-focused with the reference lens. We know this; if you click to view the full-size image for one of these shots and notice that the focus target is fuzzy, you don't need to email and tell us. :-) The focus target position will have been adjusted to insure that the rest of the scene is focused properly.

Extremes: Sunlit, dynamic range and low light tests
Very high resolution with very good highlight and shadow detail. Good low-light performance, capable of capturing bright images in near darkness.

Sunlight. The Sony A3000 handled the deliberately harsh lighting in the test above very well. We preferred the default (0 EV) exposure here as the face is reasonably bright while almost no highlights are blown in the white shirt. Some may prefer the +0.3 EV exposure for its brighter exposure in the face, though, while the +0.7 EV exposure is definitely too bright. It's really up to the photographer. Folks printing directly from the camera will likely want the +0.3 EV image, while people post processing will likely prefer the default exposure for its slightly better highlight retention (though +0.3 EV only blew a few highlights, mostly in the flowers). As mentioned previously, contrast is a little high, but highlight detail is very good at default exposure. There are some deep shadows however they contain good detail, though very deep shadows are posterized as is usually the case.

For best results, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown above; it's better to shoot in the shade when possible. See below for results with Dynamic Range Optimization and High Dynamic Range features enabled.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here. In actual shooting conditions, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown here; it's better to shoot in open shade whenever possible.)

Contrast Adjustment
We really like it when a camera gives us the ability to adjust contrast and saturation to our liking. It's even better when those adjustments cover a useful range, in steps small enough to allow for precise tweaks. Just as with its saturation adjustment, the Sony A3000's contrast setting meets both challenges.

Minimum Contrast
Contrast set to lowest, 0 EV	Contrast set to lowest, 0 EV

At its lowest contrast setting, the A3000 does a really excellent job of toning down highlights and opening up shadows while maintaining natural-looking skin tones. Very good results here.

Contrast Adjustment Examples
-3	-1	0	+1	+3

The table above shows five of the seven contrast setting, including the default and two extremes. It's pretty hard to evaluate small differences in contrast on small thumbnails like these, so click on any thumbnail to go to the full-size image.

One very nice feature of Sony's contrast adjustment is that it has very little effect on color saturation. Contrast and saturation are actually fairly closely coupled, it's a good trick to be able to vary one with out the other changing as well. As usual, Sony did a good job here.

Outdoor Portrait DRO Comparison
	DRO Setting: Auto (Default) Off Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5

Dynamic Range Optimization is Sony's name for their dynamic range enhancement technology. DRO divides the image into small areas, analyzes the range of brightness of each area, and adjusts the camera's tone curve and other image processing parameters accordingly to make the best use of the available dynamic range. DRO does not boost ISO like some systems, so increased noise is less of an issue, though existing noise may be more visible in boosted shadows. Auto DRO is enabled by default on the Sony A3000, but you can also set the level manually, from 1 ("weak") to 5 ("strong"), or turn it off. As one would expect, DRO is only available for JPEG files.

The above thumbnails and histograms show the effects of the available levels of DRO on our "Sunlit" Portrait shot with no exposure compensation. Mouse over the links to load the associated thumbnail and histogram, and click on the links to visit the full resolution image. As you can see from the thumbnails and histograms, DRO worked as expected, boosting shadows and mid-tones without blowing additional highlights, yielding more balanced exposures. Auto DRO setting did a good job here, and the five manual levels give quite a bit of control over the effect.

Outdoor Portrait HDR Comparison
	HDR Setting: Off (Default) Auto 1 EV 2 EV 3 EV 4 EV 5 EV 6 EV

High Dynamic Range. The Sony A3000's HDR mode takes three images in rapid succession, one nominally exposed, one underexposed, and one overexposed, then combines them into one high dynamic range JPEG automatically. Lighter areas from the underexposed image are combined with darker areas from the overexposed image to produce an image with compressed tonal range. The camera then saves a single composite image, as well as the nominally exposed image. The overlaid images are micro-aligned by the camera, but it can only correct for so much movement. If it can't micro-align successfully, an icon indicating HDR capture failed will appear. For best results, the subject should not move or blink, so it's not really intended for portraits. There is also a manual mode where you can select from 1 EV ("weak") up to 6 EV ("strong") difference in exposures.

Mouse over the links to load the associated thumbnail and histogram, and click on the links to visit the full resolution image. As you can see, the Auto setting did a decent job boosting shadows and mid-tones while reigning back highlights, however we prefer the lower manual settings for this subject. The higher the manual setting, the more highlights are toned-down and shadows opened up, but higher settings can produce flat and unnatural results with this scene. Still, it's nice that Sony provides six manual levels, giving quite a bit of control over the effect.

Dynamic Range Analysis (RAW mode)
While we once performed our own dynamic range measurements based on in-camera JPEGs as well as converted RAW images (when the camera was supported by Adobe Camera Raw), we've switched to using DxO Labs' results from their DxOMark website. As technology advanced, the dynamic range of modern high-end cameras in some cases exceeded the range of the Stouffer T4110 density scale that we used for our own measurements. DxO's approach based on RAW data before demosaicing is also more revealing, because it measures the fundamental dynamic range of the sensor, irrespective of whatever processing is applied to JPEGs, or to RAW data by off-the-shelf conversion software.

In the following, we use DxO's "Print" dynamic range results, which are scaled based on camera resolution. As the name suggests, this scaling corresponds to the situation in which you print at a given size, regardless of how many megapixels the camera might have. (In other words, if you've decided to make a 13x19 inch print, that's the size you're printing, whether the camera's resolution is 16 or 300 megapixels.) For the technically-minded, you can find a discussion of the reasoning behind this here on the DxOMark website. Also note that DxO Labs uses a signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold of 1 when defining the lower boundary of acceptable luminance noise in their dynamic range measurements, which corresponds to the "Low Quality" threshold of the Imatest software we used to use for this measurement.

It was a little tough to choose which cameras to compare the Sony A3000 to, as not many ILCs have an MSRP of only $400 with a kit lens. It really is a terrific bargain for what you get. While the Canon EOS-M and Olympus E-PM2 have higher MSRPs ($600 and $500 respectively), they can often be found on sale for around $400 or less, so we decided to go with them, and you can always compare to other models on DxOMark.com.

As you can see from the above graph (click for a larger image), at low ISOs the A3000's dynamic range bests both competitors, particularly the Canon. At base ISO, the A3000's dynamic range is about 1.6 EV higher than the EOS-M's (12.8 vs 11.2), and slightly better than the E-PM2's (12.2 EV). The Olympus catches up to the Sony at ISO 200, but the EOS-M continues to lag behind significantly up to ISO 800. As sensitivity increases further, though, the differences are so minor that all three cameras perform essentially the same. Click here to visit the DxOMark page for the Sony A3000 for more of their test results and additional comparisons.

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16 fc No NR
ISO 100	1.6 s f2.8	3.2 s f2.8	6 s f2.8	13 s f2.8	25 s f2.8	25 s f2.8
ISO 200	0.8 s f2.8	1.6 s f2.8	3.2 s f2.8	6 s f2.8	13 s f2.8	13 s f2.8
ISO 400	0.4 s f2.8	0.8 s f2.8	1.6 s f2.8	3.2 s f2.8	6 s f2.8	6 s f2.8
ISO 800	1/5 s f2.8	0.4 s f2.8	0.8 s f2.8	1.6 s f2.8	3.2 s f2.8	3.2 s f2.8
ISO 1600	1/10 s f2.8	1/5 s f2.8	0.4 s f2.8	0.8 s f2.8	1.6 s f2.8	1.6 s f2.8
ISO 3200	1/20 s f2.8	1/10 s f2.8	1/5 s f2.8	0.4 s f2.8	0.8 s f2.8	0.8 s f2.8
ISO 6400	1/40 s f2.8	1/20 s f2.8	1/10 s f2.8	1/5 s f2.8	0.4 s f2.8	0.4 s f2.8
ISO 12800	1/80 s f2.8	1/40 s f2.8	1/20 s f2.8	1/10 s f2.8	1/5 s f2.8	1/5 s f2.8
ISO 16000	1/100 s f2.8	1/50 s f2.8	1/25 s f2.8	1/13 s f2.8	1/6 s f2.8	1/6 s f2.8

Low Light. The Sony A3000 was able to capture bright images down to the lowest light level we test at (1/16 fc) at all ISO settings. Noise is well-controlled up to ISO 3,200, though as expected, at higher ISOs there are moderate to high amounts of fine luminance noise and some blotchy chroma noise.

Auto white balance did a very good job here, producing a fairly neutral, just slightly cool color balance.

We didn't detect any significant banding (pattern noise), even at high ISOs. A few hot pixels can be seen at higher ISOs and lower light levels, particularly with long exposure noise reduction turned off (the right-most column), but nothing out of the ordinary. Some heat blooming (the reddish tint) can be seen emanating from the bottom of the frame at the highest ISO and lower light levels, but that's not unusual either.

The Sony A3000's autofocus system was able to focus on our test subject down to just above the 1/16 foot-candle light level unassisted with an f/2.8 lens in our tests, which is very good. And the A3000 was able to focus in complete darkness with its built-in focus assist lamp enabled.

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Thanks to their larger pixels, compact system cameras like the Sony A3000 tend to do much better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

Print Quality

Very good printed image quality, with ISO 100 producing terrific 24 x 36 inch prints; ISO 6,400 images look good at 8 x 10, and even 12,800 prints a good 5 x 7.

ISO 100/200 prints are quite good at 24 x 36 inches, with crisp detail and accurate color. Wall display prints are possible to 40 x 60 inches due to the higher resolution sensor.

ISO 400 images are almost as good, with just a little softening beginning in low-contrast red areas. Detail is still nice and crisp at 20 x 30 inches and wall display prints look good up to 36 x 48 inches.

ISO 800 shots look good at 20 x 30 inches, only red areas continue to soften. We'd still call it good, and a relatively large print for this ISO.

ISO 1,600 prints are good at 13 x 19 inches, again with softening in red areas, and some cloudy noise appearing in the shadows, but they're still good. 16 x 19s here may be usable for less critical applications.

ISO 3,200 takes a sharp downward turn in potential size and really only look good at 8 x 10 inches. Still, not bad, especially at this camera's price range.

ISO 6,400 shots are also good at 8 x 10 inches, as the noise levels in flatter areas are still kept in check for the most part, and color saturation is still quite good.

ISO 12,800 produces a reasonable 5 x 7, which not many cameras in this price range can do!

ISO 16,000 yields a good 4 x 6. which is yet again out of the range for most cameras in this price range.

The Sony A3000 gets a lot right in the print quality department. For starters, it delivers low ISO images at 24 x 36 inches that rival much more expensive cameras. And, it delivers a good 20 x 30 inch print at ISO 800, which is rare for a camera costing under $500. Also rare are the sizes possible at ISOs 6,400, 12,800 and 16,000. The sharp turn by ISO 3,200 is the only small gripe for this performance, but that is a common phenomenon until you reach a substantially higher price point. Great job delivering image quality of this caliber at this price point.

Good autofocus speed and excellent shutter lag, but sluggish power-on and mode switching, and mediocre full-res burst mode.

Startup time was much slower than most DSLRs and slower than most CSCs, but shutdown was very fast. Buffer clearing times were good, but buffers were shallow.

Mode switching performance was sluggish (particularly Record to Play).

Looking at the Sony A3000's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times, its autofocus speed was good for a CSC, but a bit slower than most consumer DSLRs. The A3000 required 0.279 second for full AF using the center focus point in our tests. This decreased only slightly to 0.289 second in wide-area AF mode. With the flash enabled, the A3000's full AF shutter lag increased to 0.394s to account for the preflash metering.

Manual focus was quite fast at about 0.069 second. When prefocused, shutter lag was only 0.022 second which is very fast for a CSC, and much faster than even pro DSLRs.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance.

Shot-to-shot cycle times were sluggish even for an entry-level model, ranging from 0.98 second for large/fine JPEGs, to 1.84 seconds for RAW+JPEG files. The A3000 does not appear to support just RAW capture.

Full-resolution continuous mode speeds were below average these days even for an entry-level model at about 3.5 frames-per-second, and that's with focus and exposure locked at the first frame of a burst. (A 2.5 fps mode is available with continuous autofocus and auto exposure.)

Full-resolution buffer depths were quite shallow, with only 11 large/fine JPEGs or 5 RAW + large/fine JPEG files captured before the burst rate slows down, though that's not uncommon in entry-level models. You should be able to do better with typical subjects when shooting JPEGs (our target for this test is designed to be difficult to compress). Buffer clearing was relatively fast for the resolution, but keep in mind buffers are shallow.

The flash was able to recycle from a full discharge in 2.2 seconds, which is very fast.

Download speeds were fast, quick enough that you won't feel the need for a separate card reader, even with large memory cards. (Note that this test was performed with a SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec UHS-1 SDHC card: Slower cards would likely show slower transfer times.)

Bottom line, the Sony A3000 offers decent autofocus speeds and excellent shutter lag, but cycle-times and full-resolution burst speed are slower than average, startup and mode switching are sluggish, while buffers are shallow. This is not uncommon for an entry-level model, though.

Battery Life
Good battery life for an interchangeable lens camera with an EVF.

The Sony A3000 uses a custom rechargeable NP-FW50 lithium-ion battery for power, and ships with an AC adapter for in-camera charging via USB. Battery life is pretty good for a consumer-level interchangeable lens camera equipped with an electronic viewfinder, though not as good compared to most traditional consumer DSLRs using an optical viewfinder. We recommend you pick up a spare battery and keep it freshly charged and on-hand for extended outings or shooting video.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on either a fresh set of disposable batteries or a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

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.

Flash Range: Wide Angle
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200	1/60 sec f3.5 ISO 200

Flash Range: Telephoto
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200	1/60 sec f5.6 ISO 200

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 Range
Wide Angle	Telephoto
5.6 feet ISO 200	3.5 feet ISO 200

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.