Gadgetory

I really like the sony alpha any xyx possibly the best designed NEX model thus far this interchangeable-lens camera delivers excellent photo quality very good performance and a great feature set as well it's also cheaper than the NEX 7 all of that makes it a much better deal and as such it replaces the NEX 7 as editor's choice for people who are looking for something more compact than a DSLR but with the same level of control quality and performance unlike other NEX models the 6 has a real mode dial on top plus enough direct access controls to streamline shooting for those of us who like to operate that way the electronic viewfinder is bright and refreshes quickly enough for burst shooting because the cameras bigger than the models without a mode dial or EVF there's even more room on the back for a comfortable grip the menu system still gets a little annoying and now the card submenu has been rolled into setup which makes it quite tedious to find important options like card formatting and Wi-Fi setup like the 5r the Wi-Fi features are pretty basic though most competitors offer similar you can upload to Facebook or Sony's play memory service or transfer directly to your phone there's also a remote shutter app that lets you use your phone or tablet as a larger screen but all you can really do is snap the photo also new is the ability to download and install proprietary apps but the whole operation seems to offer more benefit to Sony than to the camera owners for instance the free picture effects plus app duplicates the effects in the camera but adds watercolor and illustration both of which are already built into the NEX f3 the photo quality really is quite good with clean JPEGs as high as ISO 800 and for the most part usable images as high as ISO 6400 depending upon the scene Sony's image processing is so well done that I really couldn't get noise reduction better at any ISO level by processing the Raw's though it still helps for recovering highlights a shadow detail colors look relatively accurate though Sony doesn't offer a neutral color option and renders a nice tonal range the video has some artifacts notably aliasing and moire but the low-light tonal quality looks better than average and there's less color noise than usual the new 16 to 15 millimeter power zoom lens complements it well though there's no way to control the zoom from the camera body it's got a nice easy to feel in fine zoom switch and unlike Panasonic's power zoom lens you don't give up a manual focus ring the lens is good but at 16 millimeters there's quite a bit of edge distortion and vignetting the camera is quite fast as well pretty much quick enough for any shooting except maybe fast-moving sports while the Wi-Fi and app implementation is pretty annoying the rest of the camera feels pitch-perfect I'm Laurie brunnen and this is the sony alpha any axis