It's been some time since my last post....Dec. 2009 to be exact. Much has happened but still loving photography. So to the meaty bits...
The Sony Nex-5
point worthy specs:
23.4 x 15.6 mm Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor 14.2 million effective pixels
RAW
MP4 1280 x 720p @ 29.97 fps
AVCHD 1920 x 1080i @ 60/50 fps
ISO 200-12800
3.0 XtraFine TruBlack LCD 920,000 pixels adjustable.
I purchased my Nex-5 for the purpose of a trip to HK this past March 2011. My normal travel camera a Fujifilm Finepix F100fd was accidentally destroyed by tire of a BMW. The replacement Canon PS digital cam was...PoS.
Deciding on the Nex-5 was not the easiest decision as I've had a long love for the Olympus Pen series cameras especially the EP-2 and the EVF (electronic viewfinder) and it looks damn retro sexy. I finally chose the Nex-5 due to 2 main reasons 1. APS size sensor vs the puny 4/3 (tho excellent). 2. cheaper by a margin. I still fondly eye the new EP-3 every so often though for it's charms and the fact that it now has the new M.Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2.0 and the voigtlander 25mm f/0.95. Olympus... why must you tempt me so?
Back to the topic, I've found the Nex-5 to be a very capable camera. I've used it from random travel to the main camera for a wedding banquet...yes seriously. Surprisingly the Nex-5 performed very well. The only things I would have liked would be better battery life and the included attachable flash to have the ability to bounce. The flash already has the ability to flip down against the camera body to remain compact, so why not design it to flip another 45 degrees for bounce? (with the release of the Nex-C3, Sony also released a new optional flash which is larger more powerful and also can tilt for bounce.) For the better part of my use with the Nex-5 I used the standard kit lens E 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OSS optical stabilized. I found the combo usable as a standard zoom becoming a 28-83mm full frame equivalent. IQ wise I found the lens decent and generally quite good for a kit lens. Sharpness was good especially center of the frame, the edges tended to get a bit soft, but hey, it's a kit lens and a decent one for that matter, considering the type and price range of camera in question.
One function I particularly enjoyed was the panorama mode where the camera will continually shoot "rapid fire" as you sweep from left to right or however you feel like shooting and the camera would automatically stitch the captured images to a single panoramic photo. It works surprisingly well and as long as you are smooth with your motion, the camera would normally have few stitching errors. The panoramic mode can be used for some interesting results as well, such as seeping in a downward "u" shape or arcing upwards then down.
Another plus for the Nex-5 is the amount of adapters available on the aftermarket for pretty much any lens you can imagine. For me, I purchased adapters for my Olympus OM, Voigtlander LSM (screw mount with M-mount adapter), and my Nikon 50mm f/1.2 lenses. The Nex-5 has a great zooming option to assist in manual focusing and with the most current firmware update adds a useful peaking function which will superimpose a red or white border around the part of the image which is in focus. The combination and the Nex-5's large APS sensor and fast lenses such as the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 you can get some great bokeh where even the Olympus Pen series has a hard time with due to the physically smaller sensor. Yes, I Love bokeh.
If you are looking for an EVIL (electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens) camera, take the time to consider the Nex line of cameras. Excellent image quality and low noise at high iso. And Sony decided to let us use normal SD cards if we didn't have enough extra memory sticks lying around.
