A Big Week for the Sony NEX Lineup
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.
Time will tell how this all plays out, as there is much that Sony still needs to do. First they need to make sure they are supporting their base with Firmware updates to fix the issues with existing models. The NEX-7 is in desperate need of these, and those of us that were big supporters of Sony's need to be rewarded with an upgrade path that does not revolve around buying the latest and greatest new camera that they release. Second, they need to continue down the path of producing quality lenses that are available for purchase. This past year has been a horrible one with regards to actually obtaining Sony lenses. The Zeiss 24 is a classic example of a lens that is forever out of stock.
Time will tell, but things are certainly looking up on the NEX front. Below is Sony's marketing video for the new NEX-6. This thing looks very very nice.
NEX-6 Pre-order Link at Amazon
New Sony lenses, with Amazon pre-order links, include:
- 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 (SELP1650)
- 35mm f/1.8 prime (SEL35F18)
- 10-18mm f/4.0 super-wide angle zoom (SEL1018)
