Sony has a dear place in my heart when I own the first Sony UMPC in the market. Its built to last though pricey all the time. Its to many, a love and hate relationship. Sony leads in many fields of technology but has outpriced herself beyond the reach of many more. Here comes Sony's acquisition of Minolta and viola! The alpha series DSLR is born. It took me over two months to evaluate Sony's DSLR, with many ins and outs of their concept stores. It was informative and heavily showered with fancy brochures and hands-on experiences.
Verdict - dated design with wobbly shutter release coupled with unproven Exmor sensor grid. Again, slow startup sequence (as power switch is across the body from the shutter release) hampers the overall friendliness and ergonomics of the product, making it lackluster and unattractive to own one. No doubt in the department of image quality when Carl Zeiss lens are used.
Custom functions menu are so limited and that it can only accomodate instant switching into one single predefined parameter, making spontaneous variety shots impossible. Perhaps, a wait of few more years may help Sony better position her photography unit against the leaders?