Sony Alpha DSLRA350X 14.2MP Digital SLR Camera with Super SteadyShot Image Stabilization with DT 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 & DT 55-200mm f/4-5.6 Zoom Lenses

This is an excellent camera! I like it very well and very pleased with the service!

The best thing about this camera is that it is super easy to use in the normal auto mode. It also has a lot of other special settings for custom shots for maximum creativity. The Super Steady Shot image stabilization reduces blur. The screen is tiltable for high and low angle shots. You can use Live Preview on a large w.7 LCD screen. The camera allows you continous shooting at 2 fps (frames per second) while you are viewing your subject in the view finder. You can also check out the high resolution thumbnails. Auto pop-up flash has delayed flash to eliminate red eye issues. 14.2 MP for ultra high resolution. I really don't have much to say about the lenses because I swapped mine out for some prefered ones once I got the camera.

After a extensive research , I choose a350 + tamron 18-200 as my first DSLR solution .
The DSLR is good , i used in my trip to grandcanyon , regret that i should buy it earlier.

Pro:
Price and function , with LiveView/14M pixel/anti shake buildin body/flippable LCD/... and <550Dollar , what you can ask for more ?

Con:
High Iso noice , avoid to use higher than 400 , still fine
OVF slightly small ,
Fps too low , 2to2.5 , what a pity

I bought a 350 from sony and either one or both of the 50mm and 28 mm fixed focus lenses on Amazon. Very unreliable auto focusing with both lenses. Trying to communicate with Sony to get repairs was very frustrating (almost as frustrating as with a cable/dish TV provider). Their "repaired" camera isn't. Printing a 24x36 poster from my Canon point-and-shoot is as good as one from the 350 and these lenses. Avoid.

I've never once had to service Canon equipment that is over thirty years old; I am less confident in Sony because I've had other products (notably an HD camcorder) that failed and customer support and repair costs are outrageous. However, if this camera continues to perform as new it is a really good buy. It was the 14+ megapixels that sold me; nothing comparable was available from others.

I only bought the body, as the cheapy lenses offered in packages were of poor Chinese quality. Why Sony would sell such junk with a good camera, thereby degrading it, is beyond me. Only buy the body; the cheap lenses are crap. Instead I bought the 18-250 and 11-18mm Sony lenses, which each cost as much as the camera, but the quality is very good. (I've covered these separately here).

All functions work as advertised. I don't use the LCD at all taking pictures, which I suppose goes back to the film viewfinder days. But I find it impossible to see anything outside, and you save battery life by not running the LCD all the time. Battery life is excellent over a long period of time, and you can easily fill an 8 gig card with several hundred pictures before making a change.

On the other hand what you see in the viewfinder or LCD is NOT what you get. The value of "live view" escapes me. There is a claim of 95% for the viewfinder and 91% for the LCD, but from what I've seen at least a quarter or more of the picture is cut off. If you want something in the center of your picture you have to compensate for it by raising its position to the top of the view to get it centered. This is a real nuisance, although it apparently seems to be the case with some other digital SLRs as well. I haven't had to deal with this kind of problem since the old rangefinder days and it is really unacceptable on a relatively advanced product. You can use a point and shoot and not have to deal with this. The other nuisance is that the lenses make a racket when the camera is turned on, because even with the lens cap on it is adjusting autofocus.

I'm giving the camera 3 stars based on my experiences so far, after almost a year in use and several thousand shots. It might have been 4 or 5 but for the negatives I described above. I say "so far" because I have lost faith in absolute Sony quality. I'll revise this if it changes, but so far so good.