Sony NEX 6 – First impressions

I posted a few weeks ago about moving to a mirrorless camera system and guess what? Yes – I did it.

Last week I sent for a Sony NEX 6 camera with 16 – 50mm kit lens and an e-mount to m39 adaptor. I’ve only had a few days to try the camera out in pretty poor weather but here are my first impressions.

The EVF was something I really wondered if I was going to get one with because I’ve always thought that it would be poor compared to an optical viewfinder. Well having now used one for a few days I can say that I’m sold. I worried that the image would be dark and grainy in low light and although that is true to a certain extend, it’s nothing like as bad as I imagined it would be. Also the additional information which is overlaid on the image is extremely  useful. For example, a lot of the images above are taken with a Jupiter 8 50mm f/2.0 lens which is fitted to an old Zorki 4 camera which my Dad gave me. In the EVF it’s possible to turn on focus peaking which makes this manual focus lens really easy to use. Also the addition of the level indicator is great for keeping the camera level for landscapes etc.

It’s a very small and light camera compared to my K5, but still feels pretty solid and tough. It handles quiet well, although there are not as many configurable options or short cut buttons as the K5. The thing I think I noticed most when I first used it is the fantastic shutter sound as you fire a shot. It’s a really pleasing click which I can’t really describe any other way  but I’m sure anyone who owns one of these will understand what I mean.

The pictures above are the ones I found most pleasing from the few dozen I’ve managed to take so far. Most of the candid shots were taken with the jupiter 8 lens and I’m particularly pleased with the way that lens works with the camera. The shots are not fantastically sharp or well composed, but they scream out 1960’s to me and I love them. In fact I think I’ve had as much fun with this camera in the first few days I’ve used it as any camera I can remember and I put a lot of that down to using that lens. So much so that I’ve started looking for other m39 mount or M-Mount lens I could buy from e-bay to pair with an e-mount adaptor so I can build a bit of a collection.

The picture quality is on par with my K5, which is pretty much what I expected as the sensor is, I believe, the same. There is certainly a lot of detail stored in the shadows which I found could be brought out with Lightroom.

On the down side the things I don’t like so much are the fact that you have to charge the camera with power supplied to the micro usb socket. This makes it difficult to charge spare batteries but that is solved with an external charger which I’ve sent for from amazon. I also found that the standard lens has a lot of barrel distortion at 16mm although this is easily corrected with lightroom. 

So far so good – I’m looking forward to lots more fun with this camera.