Sony DSLR-A330 Performance

Very good to below average speed for a consumer digital SLR.

Startup time is a little slower than average for an SLR, but shutdown is more noticeably slow (probably due to sensor cleaning). Buffer clearing time depends on the image size and quality, burst length and how fast the card can be written to. With a fast memory card the Sony A330's buffer clearing times were fairly quick.

Mode switching is pretty fast for a consumer SLR, though switching from Record to Play immediately after snapping a shot was a bit on the slow side.

Looking at the A330's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times, its speed is faster than average for a consumer model. The A330 required about 0.199 second for full AF using the center focus point. This increased slightly to 0.203 second in wide-area AF mode. Enabling the flash raised the lag to 0.241 second, still quite fast. Continuous autofocus mode lag time was 0.199 second and manual focus was only slightly faster at about 0.183 second. When prefocused, shutter lag dropped to 0.107 second.

The nice thing about Sony's Live View implementation is that shutter lag in Live View mode is just as fast as when using the optical viewfinder. (In this case, full AF was slightly faster, at 0.191 second.) This is because the second image sensor located in the A330's viewfinder housing alleviates the need for the additional mirror flips required by most other phase-detect Live View implementations. Other phase-detect systems need to drop the mirror, focus, and raise it again to before taking a shot in Live View mode, or employ a slower contrast-detect autofocus method using the main image sensor. Since the image sensor feeding the A300's live preview is located above the mirror, the mirror stays down until the final exposure, exactly as it does in optical viewfinder mode. As noted elsewhere, though, the downside of this type of Live View implementation is lower accuracy for the Live View viewfinder display.

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. We also use the same Sigma 70mm f/2.8 macro with every camera (on all platforms except Four Thirds/Micro Four Thirds and Nikon consumer models lacking an in-body focus motor), to further reduce variation, and because our tests showed that focus-determination time with this lens was close to the fastest, across multiple camera bodies from different manufacturers. Being an older design with a non-ultrasonic motor, it wouldn't be the fastest at slewing from one focus setting to another, but that's exactly the reason we measure focus determination speed, which is primarily a function of the camera body, vs focus adjustment speed, which is primarily a function of the lens.

Shot-to-shot cycle times are pretty good, at 0.49 seconds for large/fine JPEGs, 0.73 second for RAW and 0.65 second for RAW + JPEG frames. Continuous speed is a bit slow for an SLR these days, at about 2.4 fps for any quality. Buffer depths are pretty good for a consumer model though, at 18 JPEG frames, 8 RAW frames and 4 RAW + JPEG frames. Buffer clearing times are also pretty fast with a fast memory card. The flash takes 4.1 seconds to recharge after a full-power shot, which isn't bad.

Connected to a computer or printer with USB 2.0, download speeds are quite fast.

Bottom line, the Alpha 330 is a very responsive camera when it comes to autofocus, but a little slower than average in continuous mode. Still, it should be fine for most family shots, including some fast action.

Battery
Slightly below average battery life for a lithium-ion design.

The Sony Alpha 330 uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery for power, and ships with a charger. Since battery live is a bit below average even when using the optical viewfinder, we recommend you pick up a spare battery and keep it freshly charged and on-hand for extended outings. If you plan to use Live View much, you'll definitely want to have a spare battery to bring along.

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))

Storage
The Sony Alpha A330 accepts SD/SDHC or Memory Stick Duo memory cards, and no card is included with the camera.

We strongly recommend buying either a large capacity SDHC, or a large capacity Memory Stick Pro Duo card, at least a 2GB card, preferably a 4-8GB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings. (Check the shopping link above, cards are really cheap these days, so no reason to skimp.)