What NEX(t) ? The new Sony Nex-5- a field trial

Blinded, Cashel Mall

Those of you who have been keeping up with the play will know about the new market which has opened up in the camera scene. Panasonic and Olympus opened the game with the four thirds format. First there was the BSLR (Baby SLR) with the Olympus E-600’s and the Panasonic G-1.  Then the game heated up. Olympus fired a broadside with the Pen EP-1 & 2. Panasonic returned fire with the GS-1, both of which were aiming for the rangefinder ground inhabited by the M-series Leica and the Voigtlander Bessa. Technically cameras in this category are known as EVIL ( Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens).

The  photographic market place has seen a revival of interest in photography, because cameras of this type, quite simply, make it fun to be a photographer. And make serious photographs in the process. To date the Big Three (Canon, Nikon and Sony) have held out, but now Sony have entered the battle with the paradigm-shifting NEX-3 and NEX-5.

When I first read the NEX-5 review on DPReview, I was disappointed by their take on the camera. They panned it. That may have something to do, however with their being miffed at being beaten off the blocks by imaging-resource.com’s review.  Both sites write fabulously-detailed and eye-wateringly pixel-peeping reviews of cameras. If you can’t find it there, it probably isn’t there. Fabulous reviews if you are a gear freak. I use a camera however to make photographs, and I am more interested in how easy it is to use, how intuitive, and whether the results are both technically accurate and enable me to freely explore in my own way. This then is a review for photographers, rather than gear junkies.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to play with a prototype NEX-5 and make some photographs. (Production models will be out in shops in New Zealand around July 6). A ubiquitous Sony camera bag held a NEX-5, with an 18-55 zoom 3.5-5.6 zoom lens and the 16mm/2.8 pancake lens.  Also included were the small Flash gun and a charger. Notably absent were a manual (yes, I do read them sometimes) and any software. Because this was a pre-production model, I failed to find some of the promised features (Auto HDR and 3D Panorama). I am told they are there…The rest was, however, worth waiting for.

So I picked it up and began to fiddle (oops, explore) its many functions.

The first thing to realise is that the NEX-5 has different genes to most cameras in its class. Sony have stuck to their knitting and come out with a camera which may irritate old school photographers who need a camera to have traditional values. It isn’t festooned with buttons like a pro DSLR or a lift on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. In fact buttons are distinctly absent. There are just three buttons and a rotating wheel to do all the many things the camera can do.  A button on the top for playback, a switch to turn the camera on, and that is about it.  The rest you do on the LCD, by accessing the menu. At first it can appear counter-intuitive.  Much has been made of the buttons which need to be pushed to get a result and agreed, if you need to micro-manage every parameter constantly, then there could be an issue. However, having just acquired a Sony HSX-5V, it was a straightforward transition. In fact an eerily similar one. Frankly, once I had dealt with the basics, I found switching modes relatively easy.

I was out to photograph.

The NEX-5 is the HSX-5V’s Big Brother/. It is clearly evident that, while it bears the Alpha badge, the design team came from the Department of Cybershot. It owes more to a Cybershot than the Konica/Minolta/Alpha tradition of the Alpha DSLR’s.  What is even more iconoclastic and therefore interesting is the way in which it echoes Sonys of yesteryear. In many ways it is the grandson of the Sony DSC-F717 of 2002, the Sony DSC F828 of 2003 or the Sony DSC R-1 of 2005 ( still my favourite camera). It shares the same Dalek DNA, the same wonderfully eccentric design characteristics, but it is a generation younger. And all the better for it.

Picking up the camera is a wonderfully tactile and “fondling” experience. I passed it around my friends and all of them picked it up and started petting it. They sat there, just playing with it, and some ( especially the hardened professionals) even stroked it. Strange.

Until l I found myself doing the same thing.

There is something infinitely friendly about this camera, some way in which it feels like a best friend you would share your secrets with. It has something to do with the way it sits in your hand and invites you to make photographs, to just be warm, happy and have fun. After a few hours of passing it around, I found myself developing large doses of selfishness and unwillingness to share it. So bite me.

If you are expecting a cut-down DSLR, keep on walking. You have come to the wrong place. As I said, this camera has Cybershot genes and to get the best out of it, you have to get out of your own way , put your knowledge to one side and adapt. You have to bow to its unique interface. When you begin to do that, the pictures flow and you find yourself somehow …more creative. It sits in the palm of your hand like a pet hamster and begs to be used. Interestingly it seems to sit comfortably in my bear-sized paws while doing the same in a petite female hand. How do they do that?

Ergonomics 10/10

The NEX-5 is one of the new mirrorless cameras, like the Panasonic GS-1 or the Oly Pen EP-1/2. It is designed to sit somewhere between a compact and a DSLR. A kind of poor man’s Leica, perhaps. Where this camera differs from the rest of the pack is its sensor. The NEX 3 and 5 use a 14.2 MP 23.4 x 15.6 mm Exmor APS HD CMOS Sensor, similar in size to an Alpha 550 or Pentax K10. In comparison, a Four Thirds sensor is 17.3 x 13mm.

The crop factor on this camera is 1.5, so the 16mm/2.8 pancake lens becomes a 24mm Full Frame equivalent. My friends who commented on the camera design made remarks along the lines of” a lens with a sensor/camera on the back”. And why not?  Camera design hasn’t moved much in the last century. The EP-1 takes its cue from the Leica M-series, first built by Oskar Barnack at Ernst Leitz Optische Werke, Wetzlar, in 1913. A design nearly a century old.

The Nex-5 is a lens with a capture device on the back. Remember that 35mm camera design has always been constrained by the need to account for the shape/size of the 35mm film canister, the advance mechanism and take up. Curiously digital camera design has slavishly followed this, even though there is no need to do so. The NEX attempts to break this paradigm.

At first the lenses seem rather out of proportion. But according to interviews I have read on the Net, the engineers were not prepared to compromise optical quality, so the lenses are bigger. But they fit the quirky nature of the camera.  They use the new Sony E mount, so aftermarket lenses will require an adapter in order to be able to use your Canon FD, Leica and Voigtlander lenses with it. Fortunately adapters are already in production. Read about it here (if you speak Japanese).

What really works is the large screen, a 3.0”XtraFine TruBlack LCD with 920,000 pixels. The cool thing is that it is adjustable, with the angle 80 degrees up/45 degrees down. This enabled me to walk around, using it as a waist-level finder. On a busy Saturday night in Christchurch’s CBD, surrounded by raucous partygoers, I was just another person fiddling with his mobile phone. The screen is amazingly crisp and bright and easily visible in all lights. Nice one.

Design 9/10

Chucky, Alice in Videoland

With minimal time to use it, I decided to take it out on the street in Christchurch and shoot more mannequin images for a series I am working one, entitled Frozen Narratives. I had one evening, and the conditions were dark (mid-winter), cold and grey. Whatever.

Because I had come from the HSX-5V, the interface was familiar, and I found it took only 10 minutes or so to get used to the interface. Two  technologies were of particular interest to me; the Sweep Panorama and the Handheld Night Shot. The camera has the full complement of modes (PASM), plus the usual scene modes, although it doesn’t always offer what you want, when you want it. For instance it only offers HHNS in jpeg, not RAW, and menus grey out as you change options. It takes a little getting used to.

And here is where the camera differs from the competition. The EP1/2 and GS-1, to my mind are aimed at advanced/well-heeled amateurs, and are quite capable of serious work in the traditional way. In fact with their Poor-Man’s-Leica attitude, they invite us all to do a bit of Cartier-Bresson. The NEX, on the other hand, sits somewhere between a compact and a DSLR.  It encourages a photographer to break with tradition rather than follow it, to break out of the mould and try something different. It says ”camera, but not as we know it, Jim”.

So I did.

Lately, as part of an exploration into the panorama (one the oldest picture space formats) as a visual form, I have been exploring the concept of multiple interlinked picture spaces. My first visit was into Alice in Videoland, where I spent 10 minutes among the DVD canyons, making images which contained multiple narratives. It is easy. Turn the dial to Sweep, select the direction of capture (vertical is possible too), and slowly pan across the scene. Wait a few seconds and voila-a stitched image. Lightroom 3 tells me each finished file is 8192 x 1856 pixels across, so serious prints are possible. I pretty much left the camera to its own devices (Auto WB-very accurate; and Auto ISO, which goes from ISO 200-12800). The camera shot in Auto at ISO 1600 and selected 1/500@f2.8. Therein lay bones of contention. It offers no way of changing the aperture, records only in JPEG, and there is no facility to turn off the sharpening. Herein it betrays its compact heritage. A family snapshooter does not care about these things; a serious photographer does. How hard would it be to do some firmware updates, Mr. Sony?

What it does offer me is the opportunity to shoot spontaneous panoramas, to unreel a frieze as I pan across a scene, rather than assemble it by separate capture and later stitching. Because it is such an intuitive process, it allows me to experiment without getting my technical head too involved. Perfect for creative play. The end result gave me a sense of the surreal world of Alice’s, of narratives, both frozen and unfrozen, including a confectionary doll that was waaaay too reminiscent of Chucky.

I went across the road to Plume, where I made some sweep panoramas among the hanging models there.

Then after tea, we went into town and I prowled the City Mall, making photographs of the mannequins and drunken revellers. I tested out the Hand-Held Night Shot mode. It works like this: the camera studies the scene, then shoots six frames and stitches them to improve exposure and ensure low levels of noise. I pointed it into darkened shop windows and it astonished me with its ability to draw out and show details my eyes could not perceive.  In most cases the camera chose 200ISO for these lowlight images, which makes big enlargements a breeze. The downside is the insistent chatter of the shutter, which makes working in the street a little fraught. A noisy bar or nightclub would be fine. Again the NEX-5 is so different in design that no one took any notice of me shooting. I was just another guy playing with his phone.

Creative Street photography Cool   10/10

And to the other stuff.  Battery life for me was around 300 frames per charge with a lot of chimping (chimp= check image preview). If I was going for a day on the streets of Berlin, I would take 2-3 batteries.

Build quality on both lenses and body is superb and there is a feeling of solidity which inspires confidence. The zoom lens rings have that oil-dampened smoothness which makes you just want to play with them.

The flash, while a bit of a fiddle to attach, is surprisingly powerful. It is powered by the camera. Another good reason to carry a spare (charged) battery.  Just don’t drop it in the grass!

There are other accessories available. There is a clip-on viewfinder for the 16mm lens and I understand a clip-on electronic viewfinder is in the pipeline. There is also an 18-200mm zoom lens available.

Sony are planning a third camera in the series, a NEX-7, which will be released later this year but no one will shed any light at this point. My spies have nothing to report.

I would love to tell you about the RAW files, but they are currently sitting there on my hard drive until I find a converter which will allow me to see them. LR 3 does not, as does CS4.

In summary, the NEX-5 sits in an interesting space, somewhere between the compact and the DSLR. So who is it for?

Well, I am often asked for my recommendation for the perfect travel camera, something which delivers superb quality while being small, unobtrusive and kind on the shoulders and back, yet something which would deliver fabulous pictures while allowing one to be creative and make panoramas or just play.

The NEX-5 has to be a lead contender.

Combine this with a Vaio VPCZ126GGB laptop and you have a whole digital photography kit, which would fit into a  single shoulder  bag along with  your gels, Dan Brown book, sawn-off toothbrush , Kathmandu wallet and all your other travel stuff.

Nice.

Frozen Narratives proof 101

The price?

Sony NEX5K + 18-55mm kit $1,269.00

Sony NEX5D +16mm+18-55mm kit $1,465.00

Sony NEX5A + 16mm kit $1,170.00