16-50mm Zoom Sony NEX-6L B
16-50mm Zoom Sony NEX-6L B
In 1973 I bought a Rollei 35 - a 35mm camera
with a collapsible 40 mm f/3.5 lens. It cost $200, equal to about $1,000
today. It was fully manual - no auto- anything. There was an optical
viewfinder but no rangefinder. It took great pictures and fit in a coat
pocket. Now we have the Sony NEX-6, only marginally larger than the
Rollei, effectively for the same price when you adjust for inflation.
Even though I have a Canon 5D Mark II, a wonderful DSLR, its size and weight are a big deterrent to taking it with me routinely. So I wanted a camera designed in the spirit of the Rollei 35 - to fit in a coat pocket, have a sensor big enough to make 11 x 14 enlargements, have a zoom lens with a 24mm field of view, and a have a built-in viewfinder, not an add-on, and not just an LCD. Until now (11/2012) the options were the Sony NEX-7, upcoming Fuji X-E1 and the larger Olympus OM-D, all at $1300 or more.
I have now taken about 500 shots and the NEX-6 is close to perfect for my purposes - a digital reincarnation of the Rollei 35. But it won't be right for everyone.
The heart of the NEX-6 is an APS-C size sensor, the size in the vast majority of DSLRs. It's 1.5 times the size of a the "4/3rds" sensor found in similar Olympus and Panasonic cameras and 3 times the size of the sensor in Nikon 1 cameras. As a result, the image quality is excellent up to ISO 1600 and not bad up to ISO 6400. A new Sony kit lens gives a field of view equal to 24-75mm on a 35mm camera. The lens focuses quickly and collapses to a small size, so the camera fits in a coat pocket or the corner of a backpack. There are some complaints on Internet forums about the lens vignetting and about distortion at the wide end. Read more
Even though I have a Canon 5D Mark II, a wonderful DSLR, its size and weight are a big deterrent to taking it with me routinely. So I wanted a camera designed in the spirit of the Rollei 35 - to fit in a coat pocket, have a sensor big enough to make 11 x 14 enlargements, have a zoom lens with a 24mm field of view, and a have a built-in viewfinder, not an add-on, and not just an LCD. Until now (11/2012) the options were the Sony NEX-7, upcoming Fuji X-E1 and the larger Olympus OM-D, all at $1300 or more.
I have now taken about 500 shots and the NEX-6 is close to perfect for my purposes - a digital reincarnation of the Rollei 35. But it won't be right for everyone.
The heart of the NEX-6 is an APS-C size sensor, the size in the vast majority of DSLRs. It's 1.5 times the size of a the "4/3rds" sensor found in similar Olympus and Panasonic cameras and 3 times the size of the sensor in Nikon 1 cameras. As a result, the image quality is excellent up to ISO 1600 and not bad up to ISO 6400. A new Sony kit lens gives a field of view equal to 24-75mm on a 35mm camera. The lens focuses quickly and collapses to a small size, so the camera fits in a coat pocket or the corner of a backpack. There are some complaints on Internet forums about the lens vignetting and about distortion at the wide end. Read more
16-50mm Zoom Sony NEX-6L B
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