After six weeks with the NEX5 I thought it would be good to complement my earlier first impressions post. I have been using the NEX5 almost exclusively for the last six weeks both here in Tbilisi and on a short trip to Prague. The bottom line is that I'm very happy with this camera and can easily see it being my main camera from now on.
There has been a lot of discussion on various forums about how compact the NEX cameras are, especially with the kit zoom lens. Most of this tends to focus around the question of whether it can fit in a pocket. For me personally this is all irrelevant - I don't carry cameras in my pocket since I don't want them covered in the kind of crud that gathers in pockets (at least in my pockets). The real significance of the NEX format is not so much size as weight.
While in Prague I carried the camera either round my neck or in a shoulder bag all day long and never noticed it. In contrast, after a few hours of carrying my A200 DSLR - which isn't that weighty as DSLR's go - I have a sore neck. The ability to have a high quality camera to hand throughout the day without even noticing the weight of it is one of the great benefits of the format for me.
I mentioned in my earlier post that the large lens on the small body felt a little awkward at first. After a few days of continuous use the camera now feels completely natural and my hands have found a comfortable and effective way to grip and control the camera. I also find that the camera controls fall very naturally to hand now and I am generally very happy with the UI using the version 0.3 firmware. For my current set up I have assigned 'Shoot Mode' to soft key B and 'ISO', 'Metering Mode' and 'Autofocus Area' to soft key C.
I have been very impressed with the articulating screen. It is both clear and bright. I had never used an articulating screen before and did not know what I was missing. Having this available has been something of a revelation and I have made a lot more use of it than I ever imagined I would, especially for shooting from lower levels.
The lens, which has also been the subject of endless forum chatter, is fine. It is a kit lens and it performs as a kit lens should - that is, it is good enough without being brilliant. Talk on forums alleging that it is 'mediocre' or 'rubbish' is itself rubbish.
(As an aside, I'm not convinced that there are real variations in performance as a result of poor quality control. These lenses are designed by computers and manufactured and assembled by machine. The scope for wide variations in performance among individual lenses is practically non-existent. As the old saying has it, a bad workman blames his tools.)
The optical stabilisation built into the lens is very effective. I have been able to shoot comfortably at 1/15 and occasionally 1/10 of a second, though I find it useful to use the supplied strap and use this to brace the camera against my neck for extra stability. Autofocus is quick enough for me, silent and seems to me to be very accurate. Most of the time I have been using the centre autofocus area, with occasional use of multi.
My battery life has improved significantly. After the first three or four charges I was still only getting around 250 shots per charge. After a few more cycles the battery appears to be getting into its stride. One very cold (-5C) evening in Prague I got 112 shots including a couple of panoramas and ten or more shots in hand held twilight mode and still had 71% left on the battery. Though, while this is a significant improvement, it is still not wonderful. I have bought a second - Sony - battery, but I think two should be sufficient whereas at the start I was wondering if I might need to carry three.
The camera coped well with the cold temperature and the snow. While it did not get very wet it did get some surface moisture from the snow but showed no ill effects.
As well as a spare battery I also acquired a couple of extra Transcend SD cards, rear lens and body caps, and the rigid screen protector that Sony offers in Europe but apparently not in America. This latter item is permanently on my screen and works very well. I don't believe it is strongly scratch resistant, but it is good enough and keeps the screen safe.
I have posted a number of images from my Prague trip on my smugmug site and there are other images taken with the NEX, including panorama, high ISO and HHT images on other threads on Serious Compacts where you can judge performance for yourself. Suffice it to say that I am satisfied.
Finally, I should mention a couple of aspects of the camera that could be improved. First, as I mentioned in my previous post, the flash capabilities of the camera are very limited. It would be good if Sony could come up with a wireless flash trigger that could be attached to the accessory port that would enable the camera to trigger Sony Alpha flash guns. Alternatively, they should enable the supplied flash to act as an optical trigger for the Alpha flash system.
There are still a few quirks with the UI that Sony should iron out with a new firmware. If shooting panoramas, HHT and HDR the camera only works with jpeg files. In the case of the first two, even when the camera is set to RAW and JPEG, the camera will automatically switch to jpeg to produce the panorama and HHT files. Yet for some reason it requires the operator to manually switch from RAW and JPEG to JPEG only before it will enable the HDR option. It's hard to imagine any technical reason why this should be so (though since I have no technical knowledge whatsoever there may very well be sound technical reasons). Unfortunately, it is not possible to assign the 'image quality' setting to one of the soft keys so changing from RAW to JPEG requires a trip into the Settings menu.
Also, even though the 'anti-motion blur' mode is on the shoot mode dial, the 'hand held twilight' mode is not. Instead, you have to select scene mode and select HHT from there. Perhaps Sony assumes their customer base will be more likely to use the AMB mode but I would still like to see HHT on the shoot mode dial.
All in all though I'm impressed with this camera and am looking forward to seeing how the system develops.
There has been a lot of discussion on various forums about how compact the NEX cameras are, especially with the kit zoom lens. Most of this tends to focus around the question of whether it can fit in a pocket. For me personally this is all irrelevant - I don't carry cameras in my pocket since I don't want them covered in the kind of crud that gathers in pockets (at least in my pockets). The real significance of the NEX format is not so much size as weight.
While in Prague I carried the camera either round my neck or in a shoulder bag all day long and never noticed it. In contrast, after a few hours of carrying my A200 DSLR - which isn't that weighty as DSLR's go - I have a sore neck. The ability to have a high quality camera to hand throughout the day without even noticing the weight of it is one of the great benefits of the format for me.
I mentioned in my earlier post that the large lens on the small body felt a little awkward at first. After a few days of continuous use the camera now feels completely natural and my hands have found a comfortable and effective way to grip and control the camera. I also find that the camera controls fall very naturally to hand now and I am generally very happy with the UI using the version 0.3 firmware. For my current set up I have assigned 'Shoot Mode' to soft key B and 'ISO', 'Metering Mode' and 'Autofocus Area' to soft key C.
I have been very impressed with the articulating screen. It is both clear and bright. I had never used an articulating screen before and did not know what I was missing. Having this available has been something of a revelation and I have made a lot more use of it than I ever imagined I would, especially for shooting from lower levels.
The lens, which has also been the subject of endless forum chatter, is fine. It is a kit lens and it performs as a kit lens should - that is, it is good enough without being brilliant. Talk on forums alleging that it is 'mediocre' or 'rubbish' is itself rubbish.
(As an aside, I'm not convinced that there are real variations in performance as a result of poor quality control. These lenses are designed by computers and manufactured and assembled by machine. The scope for wide variations in performance among individual lenses is practically non-existent. As the old saying has it, a bad workman blames his tools.)
The optical stabilisation built into the lens is very effective. I have been able to shoot comfortably at 1/15 and occasionally 1/10 of a second, though I find it useful to use the supplied strap and use this to brace the camera against my neck for extra stability. Autofocus is quick enough for me, silent and seems to me to be very accurate. Most of the time I have been using the centre autofocus area, with occasional use of multi.
My battery life has improved significantly. After the first three or four charges I was still only getting around 250 shots per charge. After a few more cycles the battery appears to be getting into its stride. One very cold (-5C) evening in Prague I got 112 shots including a couple of panoramas and ten or more shots in hand held twilight mode and still had 71% left on the battery. Though, while this is a significant improvement, it is still not wonderful. I have bought a second - Sony - battery, but I think two should be sufficient whereas at the start I was wondering if I might need to carry three.
The camera coped well with the cold temperature and the snow. While it did not get very wet it did get some surface moisture from the snow but showed no ill effects.
As well as a spare battery I also acquired a couple of extra Transcend SD cards, rear lens and body caps, and the rigid screen protector that Sony offers in Europe but apparently not in America. This latter item is permanently on my screen and works very well. I don't believe it is strongly scratch resistant, but it is good enough and keeps the screen safe.
I have posted a number of images from my Prague trip on my smugmug site and there are other images taken with the NEX, including panorama, high ISO and HHT images on other threads on Serious Compacts where you can judge performance for yourself. Suffice it to say that I am satisfied.
Finally, I should mention a couple of aspects of the camera that could be improved. First, as I mentioned in my previous post, the flash capabilities of the camera are very limited. It would be good if Sony could come up with a wireless flash trigger that could be attached to the accessory port that would enable the camera to trigger Sony Alpha flash guns. Alternatively, they should enable the supplied flash to act as an optical trigger for the Alpha flash system.
There are still a few quirks with the UI that Sony should iron out with a new firmware. If shooting panoramas, HHT and HDR the camera only works with jpeg files. In the case of the first two, even when the camera is set to RAW and JPEG, the camera will automatically switch to jpeg to produce the panorama and HHT files. Yet for some reason it requires the operator to manually switch from RAW and JPEG to JPEG only before it will enable the HDR option. It's hard to imagine any technical reason why this should be so (though since I have no technical knowledge whatsoever there may very well be sound technical reasons). Unfortunately, it is not possible to assign the 'image quality' setting to one of the soft keys so changing from RAW to JPEG requires a trip into the Settings menu.
Also, even though the 'anti-motion blur' mode is on the shoot mode dial, the 'hand held twilight' mode is not. Instead, you have to select scene mode and select HHT from there. Perhaps Sony assumes their customer base will be more likely to use the AMB mode but I would still like to see HHT on the shoot mode dial.
All in all though I'm impressed with this camera and am looking forward to seeing how the system develops.