I also liked the camera's focus peaking feature, which shows you the in-focus area with a bright glimmery highlighting (you can choose from several different colors for this highlight). It worked well for me, and I'm delighted to see Sony investing R&D effort on the ancient and seemingly unsexy art of manual focusing. I wish, however, that I could toggle directly, with one button push, between auto and manual focus; it's a two-step process on the NEX-6 no matter how you set it up. So, basically you have the next generation mirrorless camera technology from Sony in several areas.The video is much better due to the way it sampled and the BionzX processor power. The High ISO testing reveled very similar results in both color and dynamic range when taking raw photos, but low light video is much better on the A6000 regardless. That is it for now and sorry I have been so busy the past week or so. Work and day to day chores this time of year are taking up more time than normal 😉 Please feel free to ask questions and share your thoughts below in the comments area 😉 The Sony E-mount E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS power zoom lens, shown detached from the camera and attached to the NEX-6. When the camera is powered-up, the lens extends as you can see in the picture on the right. The Sony NEX-6 has a little pop-up flash with a guide number of 6 in metres at ISO 100/21°. The flash settings are Autoflash, Fill-flash, Slow sync and Rear flash sync, with Red-eye reduction available in the Setup menu. In the best Sony/Minolta tradition, flash exposures are generally excellent as long as the subject is within range. The NEX-6 can also trigger wirelessly slaved system flashes but you need a hotshoe-mounted commander unit for this as the built-in flash cannot act as a master.

I wish you the best in your photo ventures. I look forward to my “early Christmas present”. Hope to get some tips from you about my forthcoming a6000 as I’m sure I’ll need them. While the preset options are great to have, the custom setting provides the most control (though you can, in fact, change the settings for any of the presets). Firstly, you can choose between 24p and 30p HD encoding, then you select the shooting interval and the number of shots. If you don’t want your shots automatically compiled into a movie you can choose to save the individual still frames to the card, in which case you can also choose size and quality settings including RAW. Having entered the compact system market in 2010 with the (long discontinued) NEX-3 and NEX-5, Sony has spent the past couple of years refining its NEX range with a new model appearing roughly every six months. During the same period Sony has also ceased to manufacture traditional DSLRs in favour of its Single-Lens Translucent (SLT) range of fixed mirror interchangeable-lens cameras. More recently Sony has finally entered the advanced compact market with the launch of the RX100 – it’s certainly been an interesting couple of years for the company, with plenty of innovation on show.Below are our standardised ISO test shots, starting with the Sony NEX-6”s lowest standard setting of ISO 100 and rising incrementally to the top setting of ISO 25,600. I prefer to shoot panoramas hand-held, one exposure at a time in RAW, then stitch it in Photoshop, as explained in my Panorama Tutorial. Over the past couple of years there has been a marked improvement in the quality of electronic viewfinders and Sony has been very much at the forefront of this with its Alpha SLT and NEX cameras. The 2.4million-dot OLED display fitted to the NEX-6 impresses for a number of reasons. It’s large, it’s bright, it provides plenty of contrast and it displays 100% of the scene before it with unprecedented clarity. Naturally, it can’t reproduce colour and fine details as precisely as an optical viewfinder, however judged against other EVFs the NEX-6 is undoubtedly one of the very best we’ve used. On the other hand, the first thing I like to do on any camera that I'm using is to separate AF activation from the shutter release button. This is one of the great unsung camera features -- it simultaneously gives you most of the advantages of both auto and manual focus -- and the Sony NEX-6 doesn't have it. Not sure I could live without that. The Lumix G5’s touch-screen makes this kind of thing simple, but while it provides a best quality 28Mbps 1080p50/60 HD mode and can record in PASM modes, unlike the NEX-6, it doesn’t allow you to change the exposure settings during recording.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode is Sony's solution for capturing more contrast than a single exposure can handle by combining two exposures into one image, with an Auto setting and six different strengths available. The examples below demonstrate the difference between a single exposure and an HDR image created from two photos taken 6EV apart.As I read various review of the A6000, it seems an ‘upgrade’ to the A6000 may not be worth the money. I would appreciate your opinion on this. When you press the shutter Cinematic photo shoots a fast burst of about 18 frames and then provides brush tools so that you can select the area to be animated. This is yet another situation in which you find yourself wishing the NEX-6 had a touch-screen, but it is possible, if a bit fiddly, to paint the area using the control wheel. Once that’s done you’re shown a preview of the finished clip and given the option to revise your painting. You can also elect to have the animation loop, or run forwards then in reverse, which provides a more seamless blend for some subjects. The NEX-6 produces a slightly soft video here, with a bit of aliasing, but motion is smooth. This video was shot handheld. One other advantage of an Electronic viewfinder over an optical one is that it gives an indication of how your shot will look with the currently selected settings, so you can see if your exposure or white balance is off and preview effects. If you prefer a ‘straight’ view’ you can turn this off. Working alongside the CMOS sensor is Sony’s latest generation of Bionz image processor that allows the NEX-6 to reach a maximum continuous shooting speed of 10fps as well as facilitating video recording at a maximum quality setting of 1080/50p Full HD. Sensitivity ranges between ISO 100-25,600 which is pretty standard for a camera of this type and price.