PMA sure brings out the new camera announcements. I’m pretty excited to not be trying to cover all of the digital camera announcements coming out, since I’m sticking to the DSLR ones. There are some very interesting non-DSLR cameras being announced, but I’ll leave finding that information as an exercise for the reader.

Meanwhile, back in DSLRland, Sony has announced the A300 and A350. The Sony Alpha A300 is 10.2 megapixels, and the A350 is 14.2 megapixels. Both feature live view, with what sounds like a unique autofocus system. From the press release:

They both offer Sony’s new “Quick AF Live View” technology so you can frame photos on the camera’s LCD without sacrificing auto-focusing speed common to other live-view systems.

Sony’s innovative Pentamirror Tilt mechanism directs light to a dedicated live view image sensor, enabling fast and responsive TTL phase-detection auto-focusing, even during live view.

Eliminating the focus delay of other systems, the new models are equally responsive whether using live view or optical viewfinder.

With its two sensor design, Quick AF Live View can even continuously focus-track the subject and provide live view during burst shooting, helping you capture that special moment.

And Sony, being Sony, is including an adapter to let you use Sony Memory Stick flash media in the A300 and A350′s CF slot. They sure love pushing their weird proprietary formats that nobody else uses, huh? At least the camera isn’t a Memory Stick-only camera; they’re at least aware that doing that would kill it off as any kind of real threat for their competition.

Price and availability, again from the press release:

The DSLR-A300 kit with a DT 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 standard zoom lens will ship in April for about $800. The DSLR-A350 camera body will be available in March for about $800, and the DSLR-A350 kit with a DT 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 3.9x zoom lens will be available for about $900 at the same time.