UPDATE: The Sony A850 has been announced on August 27, 2009. Please see Photography Bay’s Sony A850 Reviews and Resources page and Sony A850 Official Announcement page for more. The A850 is also available on Amazon.com.

It’s a sure thing now. The Sony A850 manual has leaked from a Sony website and is pretty much all over photo forums across the web. Initially, it seems like the A850 is an economy version of the Sony A900. No word on price yet. For now, here’s the high points on this new full frame DSLR.

Sony A850 Key Specs

24.6-megapixels

Full Frame 35mm (35.9×24.0 mm) CMOS sensor

3 frames per second

SteadyShot image stabilization

Viewfinder features 0.98x frame coverage & 0.74x magnification

9 AF points w/ 10 supplementary AF points

Sensitivity range of 0 to 18EV

ISO 100-6400

Flash sync: 1/250s (SteadShot deactivated); 1/200s (SteadyShot activated)

CF card and Memory Stick Duo compatibility

3.0-inch LCD at 921,600 dot resolution

Battery: NP-FM500H

Here’s the link to download the manual from Sony (I won’t expect it to stay up for long) – http://www.css.ap.sony.com/consumer/hkmc/index.aspx?usr=p&c=en