My completely subjective Sony NEX-6 review
I've now used the Sony NEX-6 digital rangefinder camera with the 16-50mm pancake zoom for four weeks every single day while travelling Uruguay and a little bit of Argentina. I want to show some images I've shot there and point out a few findings I've made in the following, but to make this absolutely clear: this is not made for pixel peeping. Every picture got the camera-raw-treatment in terms of a basic contrast adjustment, some pictures have been cropped and others have been converted to black & white. Every pictures was taken in raw and converted with Adobe camera raw, no automatic lens correction or manual lens correction was applied. So please take all this with a grain of salt, these pictures only represent what I was able to do with the camera and not what the camera is capable of doing in other settings or other people's hands. It's about usability and results, not about numbers and pixels.
The captured dynamic range seems impressing to me, not particularly in this image (with raised contrast), but overall. Raw versability is great, just what I'm used to from other raw formats, mainly Canon Raw as I'm a 5DM3 shooter most of the time.
The new SEL-P1650 pancake zoom shows some real distortion on the wide end when used without automatic correction. This almost feels fisheye-like.
Another example of the 16mm setting. Of course this can easily be corrected in post or automatically in camera when shooting jpegs, but it's nonetheless there and can even add to some images. Photography is not about clinical perfection in my opinion, if it works, it works, even if it's some kind of distortion or aberration (not saying it works for this picture, though).
I really liked the viewfinder, not only in direct sunlight but in almost every shooting situation. Resolution is great and while there is some shuttering in low light, it's working really good most of the time. Of course it feels very different than looking directly through the lens. It took me some time to get used to it, but after four weeks of EVF-usage it felt equally strange to look through the 5D's optical finder again. What's great is: I can use the NEX-6's EVF without glasses, even with my faulty vision, as it's just a screen really close to my eye. This comes in handy from time to time while wearing glasses, mainly cause you can't really use the EVF with glasses, as you won't see the whole screen.
Something to dream about during the cold german winter. I've had no problems using really short shutter times, but of course had to pre-focus. Autofocus is snappy, but not that snappy. It's no DSLR and you sometimes have to adjust to the flaws of the AF-system, but hands-down: you can. Most of the time it just works and even features some things such as automatic face recognition that can really come in handy. I've really struggled before I gave it a try but honestly: automatic face recognition is great for photographing people.
Well it's not that easy talking about lowlight capabilites with a 3.5-5.6 standard zoom. The shot above has been taken while dusk with ISO3200 and yes, there is some noise in it. Of course there is. The Sony NEX-6 is no full-frame 5DMarkIII, but the 16mp sensor shows some impressive results if considered how slow the lens is. I'll definitely put some faster glass on the body really soon and I'm really confident this is a great street shooter for almost every lighting condition with the right lens.
Buenos Aires at dusk, another low light example.
In Uruguay, every car that would still move is still being driven, no excuses!
I have absolutely no idea what happened here. I think it is a raw conversion problem, but I haven't yet figured out how to solve it or to retain the undamaged picture. We made some basic data checks while travelling with Sony's own raw converter and didn't stumble upon something like this, so I'm confident a solution can be found.
Talking about problems. In this case, the vignette in the corners really bothers me. This is no light falloff, this is just a too small image circle for the sensor. The needed crop isn't too big, but you'll loose the widest angle the lens is supposed to offer. Not too great, to be honest.
The other thing really obvious in this image are the dust speckles visible against the sky. Of course, some dust can invade every camera, above all every interchangeable lens camera, but I had only one lens with me and didn't change it, but almost once in a week I had visible dust on the sensor. Remember, the NEX-6 has no mirror, so everything that comes past the mount is directly on the sensor. Not good, you'll better get some real sensor cleaning skills, fast!
The shape of the iris blades produce very prominent star-shapes. Not ugly, though, but it's there, so you have to like it. The lens flares and ghosts are not too pretty, for my taste, mainly cause there are only some unconnected parts spread across the image and not one continuous flare.
The times, they are a' changing.
Enough of the bad stuff, here's what I like and what matters most: The Sony NEX-6 makes an excellent street shooter and travel companion and really transfered the rangefinder essence to the digital age. It's cheap, light, has great IQ and one of the fastest AF-systems for any mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, a great EVF and enough physical buttons and dials to get going. It's a little small for my already small hands, but I'm going to add a leather ready-case anyway that is going to add some thickness to the grip. It almost never gets in the way, it just works. It's not without fault or even perfect, but I really liked it anyway. Most of the problems that I have been talking about are about the lens anyway and the pancake is what is is: a standard zoom. I'm really thrilled to add some serious glass to the tiny body and see what it can do then. And, most important, it makes me want to go out and shoot.
That's all that came to my mind for this little real-world-review, but please, if there are any questions that you want to have answered, post them in the comments or something and I'll do my very best to answer them. I'm sure I have missed tons of stuff, but maybe it's helpfull for some people anyways. Any comments are highly welcome!
