The story of the Sony A35/A55 begins with two other camera manufacturers, Konica and Minolta. These storied names in camera history merged in 2003, and then decided to leave the camera business in 2006 and focus on other, more business-oriented technologies. They transferred all their camera assets to Sony, which continued developing the Konica Minolta dSLR line under the Sony Alpha brand name. Since that time, Sony has established itself as a serious contender, offering both inexpensive entry-level dSLRs and full-frame professional models.

Today, Sony has upped the technological ante by introducing cameras, including the A35/A55, with translucent mirrors: dSLT (digital single-lens translucent) cameras. Traditional dSLRs, like their SLR forefathers, use a reflex mirror to bounce light coming into the lens up into the viewfinder so you can compose the scene and manually focus. Just before the shutter opens to take the photo, the mirror has to flip up out of the way. That’s the loud “clunk” you hear when you take a picture with a dSLR and why the mirrors are called reflex mirrors. They move. The translucent mirror in the A35/ A55 doesn’t have to flip up out of the way when you take a picture. The light bounces off it and goes right through it, whether you’re framing, focusing, or taking the picture. Having a stable, translucent mirror makes the camera quieter, faster, lighter, and more mechanically reliable.

One other unique feature of the A35/A55 is the electronic viewfinder. Instead of seeing light bounced off a mirror, through a prism, and out the viewfinder, you look at a high-contrast, high-resolution electronic display. The electronic viewfinder functions like its optical counterpart in many ways, but it has some major advantages. You can look at camera menus, view photo and movie playback, check shooting functions, turn on a histogram, and see other displays impossible for normal viewfinders.