Santa brought me an A6000 for Christmas (first impression)

[greybeard]

I've been using a Nikon D7000 for the past 2 years and have several lenses and accessories for it. The A6000 interested me because of size and features. Mine is black and came with the standard 16-50 kit lens. Charging the battery involves using a USB wal-wart that connects directly to the camera and takes several hours to charge. I ordered a 3rd party charger and 2 extra batteries ahead of time for around $25. They seem to work just fine. I also ordered a Nikon G and a Minolta MD lens adapter ahead of time so I can play around with some of my other lenses. I just ordered a Nissin i40S flash that should be here next week. I'll probably get the 55-200 e eventually to go with it. The camera reminds me a little of my old Sony 828. It is a mirrorless design but with a fixed zoom. The A6000 is tiny and will fit in your coat pocket. It is comfortable to shoot with as it has an eyelevel finder as well as the viewing screen. I shot about 100 frames with it so far and the IQ is OK. I'm only shooting JPEG for now as the 16-50 kit lens has so much distortion that I'm just letting the camera do the correction. I've pixel peeped a few shots and I can honestly say that the sensor is much sharper than this 16-50 lens but, it is OK for just general stuff. There are many many gimmicky features that the serious photographer will pass over, they clutter up the menus and I think I can move them around so as to get them out of my way.

Things I like so far:
1. 11 frames per second. It sounds like a sewing machine maxed out. Unreal.
2. Auto Focus. Fast and accurate.
3. Manual Focus. Much better than any dSLR
4. Ability to adapt any lens. I've tried my Nikon 35mm and 16-85 DX and they manually focuses like a rangefinder. Works better than I expected.
5. Size, lite and fits in your pocket
6. Pop up flash. Works well, I even mounted my old Nikon SB28, set it on automatic ISO 400 and f/8 engaged the pop up flash too. They both fired and the exposure was good. I bounced the SB28 and the exposure was even better. Not too bad.
7. Look and feel,
8. The sensor, 24mp is outstanding. You can even use the digital zoom to make the 16-50 like a 16-200 and the results are still usable.

Things I don't like so far:
1. Too many useless functions. (nuf said)
2. Placement of the SD card in the battery compartment. Hard to get to.
3. IQ of the 16-50 kit lens. I'm guessing that it is because it is so small. Distortion is so bad that I don't even fool with Raw files. I'll be waiting for a deal on a Zeiss 16-70 f/4 though I'm not holding my breath.
4. Lens selection is pretty spotty at this time. Sony needs to beef up their E mount selection, especially for their crop frame mirrorless.

Where will I go with this? Hard to say, I'm pretty heavily invested in Nikon Lenses and Nikon is still my main squeeze but, the A6000 sure is fun.

 

[greybeard]

Update
I shot some RAW today and LR 5.xx jumped all over it. Had the proper lens correction and all. Not as bad as I thought. I download the "PlayMemories" app for my Android phone. This lets you control the phone remotely with your phone. VERY COOL

 

[JustJazzie]

How's the AF speed? Have you used the tracking yet?

 

[greybeard]

How's the AF speed? Have you used the tracking yet?

AF is real fast and the tracking does work like it is suppose to.

 

[goodguy]

How's the AF speed? Have you used the tracking yet?

AF is real fast and the tracking does work like it is suppose to.

I only heard good things about the a6000, in its price range is a lot of camera but as you mentioned before the lens selection is the Achilles heel of all current Sony cameras.
With a good reasonably price lens selection Sony could become a leader in the camera market.

 

[JustJazzie]

How's the AF speed? Have you used the tracking yet?

AF is real fast and the tracking does work like it is suppose to.

I only heard good things about the a6000, in its price range is a lot of camera but as you mentioned before the lens selection is the Achilles heel of all current Sony cameras.
With a good reasonably price lens selection Sony could become a leader in the camera market.

I'm not too happy with how my nex7 has held up. Hopefully the a6000 has these issues fixed. Maybe I'll pick up a used one in a year or so!

 

[greybeard]

How's the AF speed? Have you used the tracking yet?

AF is real fast and the tracking does work like it is suppose to.

I only heard good things about the a6000, in its price range is a lot of camera but as you mentioned before the lens selection is the Achilles heel of all current Sony cameras.
With a good reasonably price lens selection Sony could become a leader in the camera market.

Sony has the resources they just need to make up their mind which direction they want to go. I think there must be an inner struggle between the E mount and A mount divisions of the company.

 

[gsgary]

Get adapters and get cheap but quality lenses off ebay, lens selection for me is not an issue because I won't be buying any

 

[greybeard]

From the mall last night. I know the 16-50 gets no love from the testers but it is better than they would have you believe. I went to the mall last night and did some candids. Most people thought I was looking at a cell phone and paid no attention to me. This shot was at 16mm f/11 ISO 3200 and 1/20 of a sec

 

[gsgary]

What shot

 

[greybeard]

What shot

I guessing that the shot was too big for the normal viewing setup Click on the funny looking icon and it should take you to the link. If that doesn't work, try this one.
<iframe src="Welcome to Flickr!" width="75" height="75" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[sashbar]

Judging by this photo, this lense simply has to go.

 

[greybeard]

Judging by this photo, this lense simply has to go.

yes but, it is so small that it makes the camera the same size as a P&S. I'll keep it and probably add a 35mm

 

[goodguy]

From the mall last night. I know the 16-50 gets no love from the testers but it is better than they would have you believe. I went to the mall last night and did some candids. Most people thought I was looking at a cell phone and paid no attention to me. This shot was at 16mm f/11 ISO 3200 and 1/20 of a sec

Went to the mall last weekend with the D750 and the 70-200mm 2.8 mounted on it, I looked like an elephant with the trunk sticking out, got lots of dirty looks from the people and one guy even told me off, luckily for me I am not overly worried about it, got some nice shots

 

[goodguy]

From the mall last night. I know the 16-50 gets no love from the testers but it is better than they would have you believe. I went to the mall last night and did some candids. Most people thought I was looking at a cell phone and paid no attention to me. This shot was at 16mm f/11 ISO 3200 and 1/20 of a sec

Wow, 3200ISO and the picture is clean, clean, clean.......I love Sony sensors
I dont think the lens is to blame here, just not very good composition, malls with their lighting and our general tendency to feel uncomfortable feeling of shooting in such busy places is not the "best" place to really get the best out of us and our equipment.
I am sure you will get much better shots in a different place and different environment.
The a6000 looks very impressive to me.