The Latest Sony Digital Camera thinks it's an SLR

We have been living with and expecting a lot out of our digital cameras for more than two decades now. And honestly, it's only over the past year that we've finally begun to get what we've always really wanted -- mind blowing pictures of the kind you would associate with a big black heavy SLR, in a package that would slip into your shirt pocket without too much trouble. The latest Sony digital camera certainly takes a bold step in this direction. But to do this, it uses technology that doesn't even seem to have a complex sounding consumer buzzword attached to it.

It's a curious kind of camera, actually, this latest Sony digital camera is. The NEX-C3, tries to look pretty with a beautiful tiny magenta body. But to give you SLR-quality pictures, they did need to endow it with a super great lens. The massive lens attaches to the petite camera body and looks kind of out of place there. But I try to make as pretty and as consumer-ey as possible, giving it a beautiful polished silver look. But the real news has to do with what the camera does.

Certainly, the NEX-C3 takes spectacular pictures. It is able to do that because of that massive lens, of course; but the massive sensor that's a transplant from a high-end SLR has a lot to do with it too. If you like taking pictures in low light, you'll be delighted with what having a large lens and sensor can do for you. And it can do this taking five pictures a second.

Certainly, you'll find a few reproachful things to say about how this latest Sony digital camera is capable of only 720p high definition. For most purposes though, that's a rarity; and not having the extra burden of full high definition to carry around makes the camera super responsive. It's a camera that's completely capable of behaving like a regular camcorder, allowing you to zoom any which way you wish right in the middle of shooting video. You can even make changes to things like the camera's exposure setting in the middle of shooting video.

If you're trying to really, really pretend you have an SLR with this $600 beauty, you'll get along fine for the most part; you may notice though that having only four lenses to choose from is a bit of a problem. Of course, the line of cameras that this model comes from has a particularly hard time ways to user-friendly. But if you could overlook these, you have a winner on your hands here.