It is no secret that I have been a huge fan of the Sony NEX series of cameras. Two years ago I biked around the US with a Sony NEX-5, the kit zoom and the small 16mm pancake. The camera, even with its limitations, worked perfectly for my style of lightweight travel allowing me to capture fantastic images and video. I must admit that I found it liberating, after years of using large DSLRs, to finally have a small camera that was capable of taking excellent images.
As the miles wore on, more than 8,000 to be exact, I roamed far (Africa, Norway, England, Ireland) using only my NEX-5 kit. With the miles came much abuse. Slowly I reached the point where an upgrade was needed. Searching for enhanced image quality and a need to overcome all of the travel induced damage that the camera and lenses had incurred I was able to finally acquire the much hyped, but incredibly delayed NEX-7.
With this camera my world was turned upside down. I thought finally I had reached near camera nirvana, at least as it relates to UL adventure based travel photography. A small, lightweight camera that was perfect for my adventure travels with big imaging qualities. While I was and still am convinced that it is not a replacement for a FF DSLR, it was for me the best travel compromise available. The only real issue remaining was the lack of lenses on Sony's part.
For my Spare Seat expedition, a kayak trip from Niagara Falls to the Statue of Liberty, I was able to obtain the new 50 1.8 lens as well as a rental Zeiss 24. With the addition of these two lenses the landscape was looking much brighter. While neither lens is what you would call pocketable, suddenly I had a very nice two lens setup which covers most of my travel based image making needs. In a perfect world, I would still like to obtain a more compact zoom for those one lens scenarios as well as a more performance oriented wide angle lens.
Fast forward to today and we can see that this has been a big week for Sony. Not only did my NEX dreams come true on the lens front, but we also have the new NEX-6. This is the camera that many felt the NEX-7 should have been, the great NEX-7 form with a more reasonable 16.1 MP sensor, 16.1MP APS-C sensor, up to 10 fps shooting, Fast Hybrid AF with phase
detection, AVCHD™ 1080 60p/60i/24p HD movies, XGA OLED electronic
viewfinder, built-in Wi-Fi®, Quick Navi controls...
Using a slightly smaller sensor, it packs all of the greatness of the 7 into the same body, but with the natural technology updates that seem to come with every iteration of a new camera. I have to say, this camera looks mighty sweet and my biggest gripe about Sony, "Are they really in this game to win", is slowly being wiped away with a resounding YES.