Sony A6000

Bought my 70-200/4 NEW on Ebay, $400.00 less than sticker price. Using the Newer battery grip on my A6000, now a blast for nature photography. The Grip makes a big difference to me, easier to hold and shoot. Thanks to Justin. You can get a great price for new or near new on Ebay or Amazon, timing is everything lol.

Wonder if there will be a battery grip for the A6300.

Tom :cool:

John, Dave, Justin and Tom

You do realize that my yearly budget for camera equipment is already up to year 2021?

You can always move to Florida, lower cost of living. Or retire like me and enjoy it while you can lol. Or just have ONE hobby. Didn't know what old was until we went to a ONE car family. Was thinking it was only a few years ago I was racing sport cars, wait that was in the 1970's, man time is flying. So get your toys now and enjoy!!!!!!

Tom :cool:

Wonder if there will be a battery grip for the A6300.

 

Tom :cool:

There's only a very slight difference in the thickness of the two bodies. The Neewer may fit both. If not, I can't imagine it will be long before one shows up.

Dave

What is a good price for one with both kit lenses? I'm pondering keeping the FZ-300 and replacing the FZ-200 with something that has better low-light and HDR capability.

Found 2 stores with what I found to be safe (to buy from) and lowest price.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Mirrorless-Digital-55-210mm-16-50mm/dp/B00NO1T55I

Lowest price

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-Alpha-a6000-Mirrorless-Camera-with-16-50mm-and-55-210mm-Lens-Kit-Black-/201512405372?hash=item2eeb13497c:g:Cn0AAOSwFMZWp~kb#viTabs_0

Or buy the camera and kit lens separate. I preferred the Sony 18-55mm and 18-200mm for kit lens.

Tom :cool:

Thanks for the search help Tom. I'll look into the different e-mount kit lenses.

Fun with the A6000 and the 16-50 kit lens in bad Super Bowl party light...

Boba Fett meets Josh the Revelator.

Dave

"GREAT PICTURE" Dave as always !!!!!!

The lens you used 16-50mm, found and interesting video on the inside of this lens. Sony E-Mount Camera Lens Teardown:

Tom :cool:

How would using a Sony A-mount, APS-c dSLR compare to an A6000? Something like a first generation A77 or maybe one generation before that. I'm afraid to go much older and can't afford to buy newer. Video is not that important since I'll still have the FZ-300 (4K and HD video). I'm thinking specifically of shooting a cruise ship interior, inside the house, HDR daylight scenes, and outside evening shots.

I've mostly been doing outside, daylight, wildlife pictures and I'll keep an FZ for that purpose.

I have large hands so a full-size camera would be easier to hold especially with a heavier lens. The smaller size of the A6000 is a slight con for me, but only slight. The lack of in-body stabilization forces me into newer, more expensive, lenses. The Sony dslr has in-body stabilization so the older a-mount lenses become a decent option. There is also the risk of buying new (a6000) vs. used (dslr). However, if the A6000 clearly or easily takes better pictures....

Are there an other options I should be thinking about?

I've learned a great deal here and hope to learn more.

PS: no one messes with Boba Fett - and that's a nice picture.

Most of us have gone from the full size A77 to the A6000, yes the A77 is a great camera no doubt, just spend a weekend with a mirrorless and you wonder why didn't I do this sooner.

John

Most of us have gone from the full size A77 to the A6000, yes the A77 is a great camera no doubt, just spend a weekend with a mirrorless and you wonder why didn't I do this sooner.

 

John

I have no experience with either camera. What makes the A77 so bad and the A6000 so great?

I have no experience with either camera. What makes the A77 so bad and the A6000 so great?

I wouldn't say the a77 is bad... But...

The a77 is fairly old technology at this point. 5 years old. I wouldn't say it's so old as to be an antique, it's still useable and can still get great shots. But the age will show. Any body you get will already have a lot of age on the shutter, and those shutters don't last forever.

Having older sensor technology, the image quality -- especially the low light performance -- lags behind the a6000 by quite a bit. (Also due to the SLT mirror that's present).

The a6000 autofocus system is far more advanced. Arguably, the a77 can do as well, if not better, in the center point. But beyond that, the a77 just doesn't have a whole lot of AF points.

The a77 is 2-3 times the size and weight of the a6000. This may not be a negative for you.

The a77 lacks some of the newer features found in the a6000 like eye-AF, wifi, etc.

In terms of fully AF compatible lenses, the a77 does have more choices and more affordable choices. But if you're just sticking to 1-2 kit lenses, there is no difference. If you want to use 2.8 zooms, add more primes, etc, you definitely can do more with the a77.

I have no experience with either camera. What makes the A77 so bad and the A6000 so great?

Nothing!

The A77 was my go-to camera for years before I bit the bullet, sold my A700 (another great DSLR) and went to a NEX-5 as a backup body. My reasoning at the time was that weight restrictions on carry-on luggage for international flights had made a second DSLR body nearly impossible to manage under the limit. After a few months of seeing the NEX-5 and the kit lens doing very well in situations where I didn't need the speed of the A77's focusing, I was blindsided by the release of the NEX-7 which basically had the same specs as My DSLR (except for the focus speed) and it became my new backup. Because of size and the zero compromise in image quality, I found myself using the NEX-7 more and more until it became the main travel camera with a NEX-3C (sold the NEX-5 for the newer sensor tech in the 3) as my backup. Except for an Alaska cruise where the A77 and the 70-200 f/2.8 made sense and a couple of weddings where the great 16-50 f/2.8 SSM were needed, I have been packing only the smaller cameras for trips.

The game really changed for me when the A6000 came along. It was lower on the food-chain than the NEX-7 but two generations of tech newer and the sensor (significantly improved low-light performance) and focus speed (equal to if not better than the A77) quickly made it my go-to camera.

The A77 is a great camera and the in-body stabilization is a real boon but the compactness and the generational improvements in the E-mount cameras have kept me packing the tiny bag for trips. If weight is no issue to you and the size is more comfortable (A6000 battery grip?), there is nothing to keep it from being a great shooter.

Here is a link to the aforementioned Alaska cruise where it was a 50/50 mix of A77 and NEX cameras doing the honors. You'll see that it was nearly impossible to tell what was shot with what:

http://galleries.pptphoto.com/alaska2013

Either way you choose, you will end up with a great camera that will serve you well.

Dave

Please, I did not mean to say the A77 is a poor camera, it is not but like Dave said the newer

Tech and size makes the A6000 fantastic. I was on the Alaskan cruise with Dave and lugged around the Sony 70-400G lens. I got great shots but it was Heavy!!!, bought the A6000 on my next cruise and it was a delight small great pictures, it just doesn't have IBIS so I can use all my Alpha lens.

John

I still use an ACTUAL Sony DSLR...not SLT, but DSLR! Yes, they made those once. ;) I keep my A580 DSLR alongside my A6000 (and NEX-5N before that, and NEX3 before that) - mostly because as much as the A6000 handles a vast majority of shooting duties for me, there's been one area where having the DSLR still plays some advantages - mostly when it comes to shooting with long lenses. My DSLR still handles work with my Tamron 150-600mm lens, and occasionally Minolta 300mm F4 plus 1.4x TC. There's no e-mount equivalent focal length, and other than the full-frame A7RII there were no e-mount cameras that could work as well or as fast with autofocus with A-mount lenses. Now the A6300 actually promises to focus perfectly well and even track with A-mount lenses - however, it still has no stabilization, so the Alpha mount bodies will still probably have a place for me. Little additional perks - like the larger body being a little easier and faster to control when shooting with the big lenses, the huge battery life means I never need to think about the battery even for 2-3 days of shooting and 3,000 or more shots. I've been considering even picking up an A77II SLT body to replace my old A580 (which is still very good - with the 16MP sensor that was one of Sony's best)...the A77II has much better autofocus than the A77, and has 24MP compared to the 16MP of my A580. The only other options for me to get stabilization with my long Alpha lenses would be the very expensive A7RII mirrorless, which being full frame rather than APS-C crop isn't really as beneficial for me with wildlife and bird work. I have the LA-EA3 adapter so if I get the A6300, I may play with the Tamron 150-600mm lens on that camera, but I expect it will be limited to tripod shooting and bird-in-flight work, as lacking stabilization when shooting at 900mm equivalent will be exceedingly difficult!

Zachie - I'm an eager novice who's trying to make a decision about a new camera and have been thinking about the A7Rii. I'm curious about something you said in your last post about the A7Rii not being good for wildlife and bird work due to its full frame instead of APS-C. So in my naivete, I assumed full frame was always better than APS-C. Sounds like I'm wrong?

Could you explain (in simple terms please!) why an APS-C sensor might sometimes be better?

Thanks!

Zachie - I'm an eager novice who's trying to make a decision about a new camera and have been thinking about the A7Rii. I'm curious about something you said in your last post about the A7Rii not being good for wildlife and bird work due to its full frame instead of APS-C. So in my naivete, I assumed full frame was always better than APS-C. Sounds like I'm wrong?

 

Could you explain (in simple terms please!) why an APS-C sensor might sometimes be better?

 

Thanks!

I'll jump in if you don't mind... :)

"Sometimes better" is exactly correct!

The ASP-C sensor is only 66% as large as full-frame and therefore the effective focal length of any lens is 1.5x as long. This makes Justin's 150-600mm zoom act like a 225-900mm one bringing the action closer. The A7RII is also limited to 5 frames per second because of the massive amount of data each 42MP image contains. The A6000 and the A77II both will shoot at 11 frames per second with autofocus and make it much easier to catch animal action while still retaining a great deal of detail at 24MP.

For scenic, portraiture and almost anything else where detail and control of depth of field is important, full frame has the edge and the A7RII is pretty much the current king in that area (excluding a few medium frame cameras costing more than a small house).

Justin may add more but that's it in a nutshell.

Dave

Zachie - I'm an eager novice who's trying to make a decision about a new camera and have been thinking about the A7Rii. I'm curious about something you said in your last post about the A7Rii not being good for wildlife and bird work due to its full frame instead of APS-C. So in my naivete, I assumed full frame was always better than APS-C. Sounds like I'm wrong?

 

Could you explain (in simple terms please!) why an APS-C sensor might sometimes be better?

You're not necessarily wrong...it's just something that some bird and wildlife photographers such as myself find a preference for with APS-C crop bodies.

While an A7RII, with it's big 42MP sensor, is excellent for resolution and has plenty of room to crop...a 24MP APS-C sensor will still ultimately have more pixels on the subject compared to a full-frame cropped (the A7RII in APS-C crop mode delivers 18MP). Plus, you have to crop every shot to match the framing you get from the APS-C camera. Generally, birders always want as much reach as they can get - the APS-C crop on a 600mm lens is shooting an equivalent 900mm. Take that 600mm lens on the 42MP full-frame sensor, crop it to match the 900mm equivalent, and you have an 18MP shot remaining. It's a tiny niggle, but it can matter. Of course, the full frame does have better low light sensitivity - but for me, I'm rarely pushing the limits of low light when I'm out birding, so equivalent reach and maximum pixels to work with are still priority for me.

Another factor that for me is very important: I find often focusing on a small bird through a lot of clutter is easier when you're actually viewing your framing at the 900mm equivalent. A tiny bird 20 feet away through a bunch of branches with a several-inch-wide gap in the branches to thread the AF point through is much easier to accurately autofocus with a spot focus point when that bird is filling 50% of the frame (APS-C, 900mm equivalent) versus filling 33% of the frame (full-frame, 600mm). Plus, from my experience with the full-frame cameras in crop mode, the flex spot focus point is not as small and precise as it is on the APS-C camera in its standard mode. As a birder, I'm often having to focus on subjects where I'm threading that focus point through to an eye in between a bunch of grasses or branches, sometimes taking up less than 5% of my frame and the smallest spot focus point selected. Losing that 1.5X crop view on a full frame would make things more difficult in framing and focusing.

It's all just little preferences - but I find full frame better and more desirable for portrait, landscape, and shorter focal length work - for birding and wildlife, I find APS-C to be a perfect sweet spot with the additional crop factor, yet still a nice big well-performing sensor compared to the little P&S sensors.

You're not necessarily wrong...

Great minds...

;)

Dave

Zachie - I'm an eager novice who's trying to make a decision about a new camera and have been thinking about the A7Rii. I'm curious about something you said in your last post about the A7Rii not being good for wildlife and bird work due to its full frame instead of APS-C. So in my naivete, I assumed full frame was always better than APS-C. Sounds like I'm wrong?

 

Could you explain (in simple terms please!) why an APS-C sensor might sometimes be better?

 

Thanks!

First off, the a7rii is a bit much camera for a novice.

Putting that aside... It's simply not a great camera for wildlife, because:

1. Aps-c gets a crop factor. So put a 300mm lens on full frame, it's 300mm. But put it on aps-c, it gets effective reach of 450mm. So if long telephoto is your priority, then aps-c has advantages.

2. The a7rii shoots a top rate of 5fps. There are similarly priced and cheaper aps-c cameras that shoot at faster frame rates, good for wildlife.

3. There just aren't really long telephoto lenses currently being made for the a7 series.

Thanks so much to all of you! I actually understood all of that (or most anyway). I currently have a "bridge" camera, a Sony DSC HX300. I'm starting to do things like close-ups of flowers with a blurred background and tack sharp images of landscapes with a desire for sharp foreground elements as well as sharp distance backgrounds. I'm finding the camera I have rather limiting. It only shoots Jpeg, only goes to f/8, in AutoFocus I can't change the location of the AutoFocus spot (I have to go to Program mode to do that and it's rather menu intensive to move the AF spot), and it's a fixed lens. I'm mostly a travel photographer and do like to zoom to get details of buildings and am often shooting in low light situations like interiors of cathedrals. However, I'm not trying to "thread the needle" like zachie - that sounds really difficul! I have a whole new appreciation for wildlife photography based on your reply.

I've been toying with the new a6300, but the lack of stabilization worries me as I refuse to lug around a tripod on my travels. (Wimp I know.) With my current lens that goes to 215, my chances of getting a clear image zoomed out is about 50/50% hand held. So, hence my interest in the A7Rii, even though it's a huge step-up in price.

Any other advice you have would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, one other thing my camera doesn't do, when I manually focus, there's a focus button that magnifies the image quite a bit (I think it's 8 times), but it only enlarges the dead center. You cannot move this magnification area around the frame. And my subject is seldom in the center. I move the camera to put the subject in the center and focus, but then when I move the camera a bit to put the subject off center, it's out of focus. And on those rare occasions when I am using a tripod, this lack of being able to move the magnification area is a big problem. Of course if I were 30 years younger and could see without the magnification, that would help too!

Thanks again!

Thanks so much to all of you! I actually understood all of that (or most anyway). I currently have a "bridge" camera, a Sony DSC HX300. I'm starting to do things like close-ups of flowers with a blurred background and tack sharp images of landscapes with a desire for sharp foreground elements as well as sharp distance backgrounds. I'm finding the camera I have rather limiting. It only shoots Jpeg, only goes to f/8, in AutoFocus I can't change the location of the AutoFocus spot (I have to go to Program mode to do that and it's rather menu intensive to move the AF spot), and it's a fixed lens. I'm mostly a travel photographer and do like to zoom to get details of buildings and am often shooting in low light situations like interiors of cathedrals. However, I'm not trying to "thread the needle" like zachie - that sounds really difficul! I have a whole new appreciation for wildlife photography based on your reply.

 

I've been toying with the new a6300, but the lack of stabilization worries me as I refuse to lug around a tripod on my travels. (Wimp I know.) With my current lens that goes to 215, my chances of getting a clear image zoomed out is about 50/50% hand held. So, hence my interest in the A7Rii, even though it's a huge step-up in price.

 

Any other advice you have would be greatly appreciated!

Don't worry about the lack of stabilization --- The lenses are stabilized.

The point of in-body stabilization, is mostly for when you use non-stabilized lenses. If you are adapting a-mount lenses-- those lenses are not stabilized. A few of the e-mount primes are not stabilized. But if you are shooting with the E-mount 55-210, or the FE 70-200/4, or the FE70-200/2.8, or the FE 24-240 -- all those lenses are already stabilized. So you can shoot them handheld, without any tripod.

The A7rii is a detail crazy 42mp machine -- Only a narrow subset of specialty photographers really benefit from that high of resolution.

You may want to consider the A7ii or the A6300.

Just remember that in addition to the cost of the body, full frame cameras are more demanding on the lenses, and generally require more expensive lenses than you would put on an APS-C camera.

What Havoc said is true - in general with the A6000 and A6300 you won't often need to worry about stabilization, as most of the e-mount lenses you would buy have stabilization built into the lens. It's only when using the odd unstabilized lens, or adapting manual lenses from other mounts, that the in-body stabilization will play big benefits. For the type of shooting you mention, I'd guess you'd be more than fine with the APS-C sensor on these bodies, which will perform umpteen times better than your P&S for low light, and will have significantly shallower depth of field potential when you want to narrow the focus and blur the backgrounds. Full frame might indeed just be overkill for your needs. Not that there'd be anything wrong with it!

My current A6000 is pretty much my travel rig - interiors, churches, macros, basic wildlife, scenics, landscapes, architecture, etc all are fine and well within the wheelhouse of APS-C sensor cameras, even for publishable and printable results and semi-pro use. And there are some neat tricks on the Sony cameras for shooting handheld in low light so that you can even get away with high details and low noise at very high ISO levels - in-camera modes that stack multiple frames to keep the noise down at high ISO levels - you can get JPGs right out of the camera at ISO6400 that are virtually noise free.