The Sony Alpha 65 ($999.99 direct with 18-55mm lens) represents a departure from traditional SLR design, one that Sony first introduced with 2010's a33 and a55. This second-generation model looks and feels like any other digital SLR, until you put the camera up to your eye. A bright, crisp, OLED EVF takes the place of the traditional pentaprism or pentamirror optical finder. Traditionalists may hate the idea of an electronic finder, but the camera's design allows for extremely fast autofocus and continuous shooting. The a65 handles very well, but the flaws in the included 18-55mm zoom lens are magnified by the high-resolution 24-megapixel image sensor. When used with better lenses, the a65 is an outstanding camera—it even manages to rival the Nikon D4 ($5,995.95) in terms of frame rate. As it stands, though, with the kit lens, it cannot oust the Nikon D5100 ($899.95, 4 stars) as our Editors' Choice for sub-$1000 D-SLRs.

Design and Features

The a65 is pretty compact for a D-SLR, although that comes at the cost of some physical controls. Its body is 3.9 by 5.3 by 3.3 inches (HWD) and the camera weighs about 1.4 pounds without a lens. In this regard it's similar to the Canon EOS Rebel T3i ($899.99, 3.5 stars), which is 3.9 by 5.2 by 3.1 inches and 1.1 pounds. The camera only has one control wheel, located on the front grip, which limits on-the-fly settings changes when compared with models that feature both front and rear dials.

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The control layout is one that should be familiar to you if you've handled a D-SLR before. The Power and Shutter button are on the top right, along with the buttons for EV Compensation and ISO. The Mode dial is located on the top, to left of the hot shoe. Rear controls include a Menu button, which is to the left of the eyecup, above the articulating LCD, and three buttons directly to the right of the EVF: Movie Record, AEL (Auto Exposure Lock), and an in-camera digital zoom control. The latter can also be configured to magnify a distant object to verify focus. Other rear controls, which are all grouped to the right of the LCD, include a Function button, a drive mode selector, a tracking autofocus toggle, and a White Balance button.

The camera makes up for a few missing buttons with a snappy menu system. Hitting the Function button brings up an overlay screen that allows you to modify many common shooting settings—including those that are also covered by dedicated controls.  This should give you a certain level of flexibility when using the camera, as you can configure controls to suit your shooting style.

Rather than a traditional flipping SLR mirror, the a65 uses a fixed translucent mirror. It lets lets most of the light coming in from the lens pass through to the image sensor. The little bit that it does reflect goes straight to the autofocus sensor. Because of this, the camera uses an OLED electronic viewfinder—which is one of the camera's many strong points. It is large, bright, and crisp—even when you use it in dim environments. I performed a side-by-side comparison with the optical pentamirror finder found in the Sony Alpha 580 ($799.99, 4 stars) in the somewhat underlit PCMag Labs and there was no comparison. The a580's finder was small and dark, while the a65's 2.5-megapixel EVF was large and bright. The OLED technology avoids some of the pitfalls that are found in LCD EVFs—a high refresh rate creates a very smooth image, and the resolution is high enough that it's very easy to see what is in focus and what is not. If push came to shove, I'd still opt for a large pentaprism like that found in the Canon EOS 7D ($1,699.99, 4 stars) or a fixed optical finder like that of the Leica M9-P ($7,995), but most cameras in the a65's price range are hamstrung by low-quality pentamirror finders that are comparatively small and dim.

The rear LCD is hinged so that you can view it from a multitude of angles. This allows you to frame and shoot photos above your head, at your waist, or when looking at the camera from its left or right side. The 3-inch display is quite sharp thanks to its 921k dot resolution, which will make it possible to review shots and confirm focus with confidence. The camera focuses with equal speed regardless of whether you're using the rear LCD or EVF for composition.