(SR5) New external OLED viewfinder for NEX-5N coming.
UPDATE: We just learned (Thanks sources for the correction) that the upcoming new external viewfinder will NOT (!) be compatible with the current NEX cameras! It only works with the NEX-5N which will be announced on August 23/24! It has 2,4 million dots and intelligent eye sensor. I don’t know the price yet…but it’s a bad news that it will not work on our current NEX-3/5 and NEX-C3!
P.S.: Once again I do invite you to stay tuned on SAR. Sony will really make an impressive announcement on August 23/24!!! Join us on Facebook, Twitter and follow our RSS-feed!
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Wishmaster
10 months ago |Finally! I’m starting to save money right away!
sudhir
10 months ago |awesome news. i am lusting for it already
Boo
10 months ago |Great news! Not a need to change my Nex-5 to 7 then.
Raul S.
10 months ago |Read again, it says that will NOT be compatible with NEX-3/5/C3. So yes, if you want EVF, you got to buy either NEX-5N or NEX-7
Carl
10 months ago |All going well, it’ll be nice and compact, and not a big box like the Olympus one is.
jh
10 months ago |wonder if it’ll be able to be used with the flash…
Bugger
10 months ago |Ah crap…I’m gonna have to cut a hole in my leather case
duque
10 months ago |sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
uh oh erm, wait ……..
Keep NEX-5 and get the Ex Viewfinder oder up the later to NEX-7
Well I am more than everything else waiting fpr that 24mm Zeiss baby.
Any more news on that ? I am going on a short trip around 16th of Sept.
Any chance to have it by then ?? pls pls pls let the lens be out and in stores by start of Sept.
Kalpurush :)
10 months ago |Too good to be true!?
Sky_walker
10 months ago |Too good? I don’t think so. M4/3 offer EVF for quite some time now, Olympus recently released second generation EVF. It’s good that Sony tries to catch up with a competition, though.
Raul S.
10 months ago |I think also that it’s too good to be true..! I don’t know if I’m dreaming or what, but seeing all those announcements happening…NEX-7, new external EVF, new adapter that provides fast AF and does drive screw-driven AF lenses, the 24mm Zeiss for E-mount…and even, new SLT cameras, and hopefully new A-mount lenses…maybe this happens once in life =)
Thundercats
10 months ago |All of this comes about one year after the initial NEX-3/5 release (not announcement). It is not as long as some people make it seem. Now they are unleashing the features that many of us demanded since the initial models…..all at once. Great! Who says Sony doesn’t listen to their customers?
Kalpurush :)
10 months ago |Any news on A-mount G/CZ lenses Andrea?
Much thanks
N.R.
10 months ago |Lately, I have the feeling that the site owner publishes all BS that the fanbois send him
Too good to be true, but we will see.
Edgars
10 months ago |It seems Andrea is right and Sony is intended to sell A77 camera by parts: AF module, EVF… what next? Separate LCD screen or sensor module?
Jiri
10 months ago |The whole story starts to remind me on the very beginning of my photographic life in the sixties when I was using the Exacta Varex models with exchangeable prisms and light shafts. Nikon F had a similar system at that time too. By the way the Nikon had besides the SLR F line the rangefinder S system, very much like the Sony Alpha / Nex lines today.
Sören
10 months ago |Looking forward to see this EVF.
Lets see what the price is. The current prices of the Pen-VF are much too high, so competetion in the market is appreciated.
With the new EVF coming, the Nex has everything except lenses. Thats a strange way to push a system… So far it isn’t a system, it is a very good sensor holder for using legacy lenses.
Simon_P
10 months ago |Nex C3 + EVF + Translucent adapter = ultra protable a55
Interesting
Sören
10 months ago |= ultra expensive a55
Anonymous
10 months ago |Totally agree. It would be far cheaper to get the a55 and more logical.
Still, more options and choices are good.
admin
10 months ago |Sorry guys. There as a huge mistake in the communication between me and my soruces. The new external EVF doesn’t work on NEX-3/5 and C3
Raul S.
10 months ago |any word if the NEX-5N or NEX-7 provides In-body image stabilization? Thank You for the great work..!
frosti7
10 months ago |E-System wont have IBIS because
1)its video optimized for OSS
2)there are pro&semi pro video E-mount systems
3)they want to make small bodies and have less heat problems
duque
10 months ago |:O
Well that’s like a kick in the …..
Oh so erm, it is like Sony corrects all the problems and missing things with their new products and were just the dumb ones to go for the first version of NEX System….. I mean it is mostly like that anywhere.
But still a EVF that everybody wanted from the firt place now is there but only for the new models -> but hey there’s a NEX-7 with built in EVF so what.
NEX-5N + EEVF = 1000$
NEX-7 with EVF = 1100$
or where do we stand on this ?
emopunk
10 months ago |Even horrible pseudo-ergonomics, I’d say.
Agent.Pires
10 months ago |I’d like more specs on the NEX-5N please! Not much is known about this device.
knurd
10 months ago |Can someone explain to me how this is better than live-view on the NEX and SLT systems?
The Lotus Eater
10 months ago |It isn’t really better than live-view, it just means you can put the camera up to your eye, so as to make you look like a more serious photographer.
knurd
10 months ago |LOL, that’s what I thought.
Helena
10 months ago |Easy, when you are under a burning sun and the lcd screen is barely visible, a tilting EVF ala Olympus, is the solution.
Simon
10 months ago |Sounds like we finally have three distinct NEX lines to choose from: ultra-compact c3, 5n with optional viewfinder (and possibly more powerful flash options? Hotshoe?), and the NEX 7 with inbuilt viewfinder. Sounds good to me!
Helena
10 months ago |Waiting for this since the launch of the NEX system. This was a long time. And now it doesn’t fit in my NEX3.
The NEX7 will wait two years for save cash, and then I will have 7 years without buying any camera, 1200€ is too much money!
Wishmaster
10 months ago |I’m officially pissed right now!
It’s like buying NEX-5/3 when they appeared was a bad idea cause now we’re forgotten by sony and they choose not to grant us something that many people wanted from the beginning!
Hopefully your source was mistaken and it will work on current nex cameras.
duque
10 months ago |thumbs up / +1 on that.
I am pretty pissed myself.
Mikey
10 months ago |The Nex was never designed for the enthusiast in mind so it wouldn’t surprise me if the older NEX’s can’t support the EVF. The 3C is still aimed at the average consumer who doesn’t care about EVF.
Don’t blame Sony for improving the NEX line. Thank them that they are choosing to make the NEX more relevant. They’ve provided firmware updates that have made the camera better so no old users aren’t forgotten. This is electronics though and as the saying goes, its outdated by the time it reaches your home.
Like a previous poster said though, even SR5 rumors should be taken with a grain of salt. These rumor sites typically don’t know the real information till a week or two of the actual announcement.
Instead of getting all emotional about these rumors you should just wait for the official announcement.
shade
10 months ago |Forgotten by Sony? You just got a brand-new firmware with lots of new features, not just minor tweaks. (PEAKING
)
Expecting new lenses was realistic since there is a roadmap for that (GIIIIIVE MORE LENSES, SONY!!!), but expecting an EVF that was not even announced/promised is a bad reason for buying into a new system.
duque
10 months ago |I did buy into the NEX system for the fact the roadmap Lenses they showed andthe MF lineup I use.
Not really because of the EVF -> (just should have said no)
Don’t get me wrong, I still love my NEX-5, it just feels like a bitter pill to swallow, now that the NEX-5N will or MAYBE will have an EEVF.
oh and yes, with my MF lenses, I love the peaking function. But it doesn’t always work that well, still need the magnification in some conditions (but still a big step forward).
I just got carried away with the rumor on having a EEVF on my NEX and then the correction
The Lotus Eater
10 months ago |There are so many spoilt brats on this planet.
I’d hardly say NEX3/5 users have been forgotten. It’s barely a month since Sony released Firmware 04, which introduced new features.
If you wanted a viewfinder, why did you buy an NEX3/5 in the first place? At no stage have Sony ever indicated an EVF would be available for the NEX 3/5 cameras.
What next, are you going to be screaming that the new 24MP sensor isn’t available for the NEX3/5? I guess Sony should just keep adding features to a camera forever to keep owners happy. Afterall, we are entitled to it, right?
nopt
10 months ago |Exactly what Lotus Eater said, I can’t really say it any better myself. Like spoiled kids with a false sense of entitlement. How can you complain about this EVF not being compatible with your NEX3/5 when you knew damn well you were buying into a body with no viewfinder? It’s silly.
rds
10 months ago |Actually, I can see why you’d be a little peeved by this. The NEX is a system, something like an EVF should really be considered as part of the system as a whole and not a specific iteration of the system. If I buy a NEX and an EVF (at some expense,) I should expect the EVF to outlast the body and be compatible with (at least some) future iterations of body. If the (rumoured) EVF doesn’t support previous models, how do I know if it will support future models or will I have to buy a newer EVF?
Of course, we don’t know the true story. It’s quite possible that the accessory port design on the NEX-3/5 is insufficient for an EVF.
shade
10 months ago |People seem to forget we are talking about rumors here.
Seriously, some of you guys get too emotional, which leads to a neverending oscillation between cheers and frustration. (Well, there are those who always cheer and those who always complain ^^).
Realistically, you couldn’t expect a hotshoe that was designed > 2 years ago to support the interface of a brand-new addition. Designing “plugs” is 99% interface/dataport/communication design and 1% “making-it-fit-mechanically”.
So, yeah, maybe Sony just excludes NEX-3/5 to sell new products, but it’s more realistic that those devices are not capable of handling EVF with an easy firmware fix.
duque
10 months ago |True, and yes after 1 1/2 years I also wouldn’t mind buying a new NEX-7
Fact is though that from day 1 of the NEX rumors and news that there is no built in EVF everybody was crying for an external EVF.
So if it is not possible for the NEX-3/5 to handle an EEVF then Sony could have just opened there mouth and said so, simple as that.
But they did not.
And what we or most of the complainers, do complain about.
Is the simple fact that, something that pretty much everybody wanted is now beeing adressed by Sony on their new Products making all the current NEX owners some what of labrats.
Which like I already stated, is nothing rare nowadays.
Cheers
shade
10 months ago |I must admit that from my point of view, things are not as hard as they are for current NEX owners. I started with Canon entry level DSLR system a few years ago, but got excited of mirrorless systems over half a year ago. Since then I have followed reports and rumors regularly and waited for the point where the advantages of mirrorless cameras outweight my DSLR system in any aspect.
It would be really a (constant) bitter pill to buy a new system that is worse than my old even in only one single aspect, so I perfectly understand your disappointment. I love to shoot low-light so I was a bit disappointed about the reports on the latest pana/oly m43s, G3 is not quite “sexy” enough and GH3 too far in the future. Right now I’m quite confident that NEX-5N / NEX-7 will satisfy all criteria I am waiting for.
That all being said, I don’t think 1st generation NEXes are “beta” products (referring to your “labrats”), it’s a fully functional system that even can compete with pana/olys released one year later. And if you don’t want EVF then NEX-5 is still a recommendation (getting cheaper now). Personally I think I would buy NEX-7 over NEX-5N simply for the fact that anything attached on top of a small camera makes it too bulky for my taste, ruining the advantage over the smaller-tier DSLRs.
Morton
10 months ago |I am happy that the new viewfinder will not work on the old Nex’es. This way new buyers secure their investment
Chris Lewis
10 months ago |If it’s true that the new external viewfinder will not be compatible with earlier NEX models, then it’s a shame and I think Sony have missed a trick (once again…)!
Having said that, they probably don’t want to miss out on sales for the NEX7 with its built in viewfinder, look out for many used NEX 3 and 5 models discarded in favour of the NEX7??? I will most likely trade my NEX5 for a NEX 7 just because the habit of raising a camera to my eye is difficult to lose.
kybel
10 months ago |new photos of nex7 and sony 16-50 F2.8 SSM http://photorumors.com/2011/08/02/upcoming-sony-announcement-nex-7-nex-5n/
Wishmaster
10 months ago |After looking at the picture of 5N I’m even more pissed! It looks just like last years NEX-5!
Hopefully your source is wrong or literally Sony is screwing us with this EVF!
BTW NEX-7 is looking very nice, not that much bigger from NEX-5.
Also the new lens is looking very professional
The Lotus Eater
10 months ago |What are you talking about? How is Sony screwing you?
They might look similar, but for all you know the internals of the NEX-5N might be completely different from the NEX-3/5, and therefore impossible for an NEX-3/5 to accomodate a viewfinder.
You bought an NEX-3/5 knowing that there was no viewfinder available, but now that Sony are about to introduce new and improved products with the EVF option, then somehow they are screwing you.
Maybe Sony should put a stop to any form of innovation or product improvement, just to prevent causing you annoyance. Grow up, I say.
Wishmaster
10 months ago |The fact that there is no change in the model number, they kept the same styling and added improved sensor(probably from C3) so it looks like NEX-5 Revision 2. This time with added EVF support. And you really believe they invested additional R&D to make new camera instead of slight modification of already existing one? They would have made more if released only EVF for all current cameras instead of releasing only one new camera that will support it – bigger potential market. From this economical perspective it has no sense.
If the rest stays the same N5 is going to be no different than C3 or last year’s 5/3 with new sensor. So the only advantage it’s going to have is support for EVF. Even if the hardware is different from 3/5 as you say it probably won’t be that much different from C3, yet it too won’t support EVF.
One thought that I have on my mind right now. If it uses new accessory port then I wonder if it means that old accessories won’t work, if it uses the same accessory port than sony missed a chance of making their customers happy.
And to answer your question. How is Sony screwing me?
I invest in system when it’s released, buy accessories, buy new lenses and hope that when some new and interesting accessories will come I’ll be able to buy and use them. But instead they release almost twin camera to the one I bought only year ago but this one will support EVF and mine won’t. That’s how you screw customers. And as someone already said, they could have said at the beginning that there won’t be EVF for nex5/3 cause it can’t handle it.
I wouldn’t complain if NEX was old system, already few years on the market with old cameras that really could not meet the performance requirements and were radically different from new cameras, but after a year hardware is too weak to handle mirroring of the screen?!
End of my long comment. Hopefully the source was mistaken(as was the case with 16-50 lens being SAM and now we know it’s going to be SSM according to writings on the lens)
Sky_walker
10 months ago |NICE! Looks really good!
Matt
10 months ago |Andrea, any chance you can ask your sources whether the external EVF uses the same connector found on the 3/5/C3? It may be a case where they have tried it and it doesn’t work, but simply requires a firmware upgrade? It would seem silly to me for Sony to introduce a whole new port for the 5N which would mean the current flashes and rent compatible etc.
However it might just be that the current cameras don’t have enough processing power to supply a 2.4MP live view feed and thus why the EVF won’t work.
For all those complaining, seriously? Yes it would be nice if it would work – however up until now Sony have added lots of new features to the NEX line while still supporting the older models, if it doesn’t work there would likely be a technical reason for it. My guess is the live view processing as listed above. For the same reason that you can’t use the screen and a HDMI monitor currently – in fact very few cameras can due to a lack of horsepower.
axii
10 months ago |I’m thinking that the current accessory port does not have sufficient bandwidth required for the EVF.
Wishmaster
10 months ago |Actually current models support HDMI mirroring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5PCoJllJaE
Pex
10 months ago |A while back, someone already reversed engineered the pinout of NEX 3/5 accessory port and published it in the forums. There is simply no video out in the accessory port and evf support is not possible.
I guess you can say Sony screwed up in designing the NEX 3/5, but they never hinted an evf was possible.
Wishmaster
10 months ago |Actually pinout was based on dismantled Flash, see here http://www.pbase.com/pganzel/inside_nex_flash
Conclusion was that probably camera recognizes what kind of accessory was connected, so it didn’t clarify anything. We just know that it doesn’t have standard video output pins, but considering that on mobile phones 5pins can be used for HDMI output, USB OTG, charging and syncing nothing is impossible when we have 14 pins.