Are sony slr cameras good? Is sony a good brand?

I just want to know if sony slr camera are good or better then a canon or nikon

Maybe.

Recently one of my colleagues sold all their Sony gear and bought used Nikon. Reason? They said that some of the lenses that they needed were not made by Sony and that she also needed to tether her camera to a notebook computer on occasion and that Adobe Lightroom only supports Nikon and Canon cameras.

Here is more information on Sony dSLR's you may want to know before investing in a Sony camera system.

"2010 was the year Sony took off on a tangent. NEX and Pellicle mirror cameras are definitely both a bit on the side of non-traditional DSLR plays. The inexpensive full frame thing failed, as did the dozens of low-end traditional-DSLRs-with-minor-differences thing. Somewhere in the organization Sony execs sent and responded to a different memo than the one Canon didn't see. Sony's is a high risk, high reward (or big failure) strategy. Ironically, the best NEX camera is the video model, the NEX-VG10. But Sony has a lot to work on still for stills, even if they get the A700 replacement out and maybe a new full frame sensor flagship: lenses. They need more lenses (NEX, APS, full frame, you name it). Without those lenses, the rest of the strategy will almost certainly fail to bring Sony up to the Nikon/Canon level." -- Thom Hogan

I use sony, much sharper lens for the money, on my third body A 55 slt amazingly fast camera.well worth considering…

And don't forget the Sony A Mount takes all the old autofocus Minolta lenses. Many were extremely high quality, as good as anything from Canon and Nikon.
Sony's newer range of mirror-less SLRs combine bridge camera easy functionality with good image quality.

When it comes to dSLR's, all brands are equal. It's just a matter of preference. If you search thoroughly though, you may find out that some Sony dSLR users don't find Sony lenses as sharp as they want it to be. I haven't read anyone complaining about the more expensive Carl Zeiss lenses yet however.

Sony makes very good cameras, not necessarily better than Canikon stuff, but just as good. The downside to Sony is the difficulty in finding their gear in a store, or finding anything but the low end stuff.

All DSLR cameras are capable of taking pictures as well as you are. With Sony, you can add in the SLT models, and the NEX bodies as well. If you want a more traditional approach to your photography, the SLR/SLT models are the way to go. If you don't, the NEX bodies are very capable as well. You just don't have the same amount of control as you would with an SLR/SLT.

EDIT: to Keerok's point below, that is no different than any other brand. Users that start with any of the various 18-55 kit lenses soon want to move up in quality. The Sony 18-70 and 18-55 kit lenses are no worse than the kit lenses from Nikon or Canon. They are not stellar performers by any means, but they serve the purpose of any kit lens… Get you hooked on buying better lenses! The Zeiss stuff would compare more to the L series Canons and the ED lenses from Nikon.

I LOVE Sony's Cyber-Shot DSC-W530 camera! Only had it for a week, but this is the best part so far: I'm not a photographer and not super tech-savvy, but I opened the box, put in the battery and extra storage thingy and turned the camera on and started taking pictures. I still have not looked at the directions and have been taking pictures and downloading them to my computer for a week… The photos look really great to me. If you are looking for a camera for dummies that takes nice pics and is low priced, this is the one!