Sony Alpha SLT-A33L review

We also found the default JPEG sharpening to be too strong, giving high-contrast lines an over-processed look. It wasn’t hard to tone this down with the Sharpening control though. Sadly, control over noise reduction was less forthcoming – both the Normal and Weak settings were too strong for our liking. The lack of a customisable Auto ISO function is another frustration. It’s fixed to a 100-1600 range, but that often proved unsuitable when shooting indoors.

What the A33 lacks in advanced customisation, it makes up for in unusual extras. There’s automatic high dynamic range (HDR) capture for merging three photos at different exposures. Another feature, nestling among the ISO speed options, captures six exposures, aligns and combines them to lower noise. It works superbly for static subjects, but for any area of the image that is moving, only one frame is used. The result is effectively a variable ISO speed – high for moving parts of the frame and low for static areas. It’s a clever idea that works well, although the downside is that people tend to be noisier than the background, which can look a little odd.

Sony’s Sweep Panorama mode makes an appearance, capturing panoramic images simply by slowly rotating the camera. A 3D Sweep Panorama mode does the same thing but captures stereoscopic 3D images. We’re not quite sure how it works without two lenses, but it does, brilliantly. The camera can pipe them over HDMI to a 3D TV but there’s no bundled software for playing the MPO format files on a PC.

The A33 is a tricky camera to rate because it’s so different to the SLRs and other hybrid cameras it’s up against. Its video quality wasn’t as noise-free as from the Nikon D3100, but the superior autofocus made a far greater difference in general use. However, the lens motor noise, low-light video noise and overheating problems all dent its credibility for serious use. As a camera, it’s ultimately just an also-ran. The A33 is certainly an interesting camera, but Sony’s A55 is more accomplished and worth paying a little more for.