Vienna coffee houses-Working with the Sony NEX5n for broadcast from Johnnie Behiri on Vimeo.

Johnnie Behiri sent me an email to share his first “video-experience” with the [shoplink 8452]Sony NEX-5N[/shoplink]. He realized that video for the BBC: “A minute before the new Canon C300 and Nikon D4 are here to lift the picture quality bar, here is our attempt to work with the Sony NEX5n in a “normal short feature for broadcast environment”. It is part of our ongoing effort to test different modern working tools.
The little Sony is a lot of fun to work with. Its low light capability is very nice and working in even 1600 ISO is a absolutely “worry free”. Moiré and aliasing are surly there but after working with the Canon 7d how can I complain…:)
Camera DID NOT warm up and shut off probably due to the fact that I was working with EVF connected and my sequences (even the interviews) did not stress the camera to the limit.”

It’s interesting to notice that the NEX5n was never approved by the BBC as a “certified broadcast camera“:  “Nevertheless, in the on going changes in our media world where budget and personal must be taken into consideration, there is always a need for an alternative tool(s) to support and do the job. Luckily the BBC is not ignoring the technical changes and as such there is some freedom to “explore, report from the field and share the experience” with other colleagues.”

For the price you really get a lot with the NEX-5n! And it’s good enough even for ral broadcasting productions :)

P.S.: The black NEX-5n is back in Stock at Amazon US (Click here). And here are all the links to the NEX-5n search pages at [shopcountry 8452].

La Parroquia from The Luminous Landscape on Vimeo.

There is a new NEX-7 versus A900 comparison at Luminous Landscape (Click here). As usual with LL this is a very honest and interesting review (Bravo!). I am not surprised to see the NEX-7 image quality to be on par with the A900. And it also makes me even increase the expectations on the image quality of the upcoming new A99 with 24 Megapixel full frame sensor. P.S.: Here are the links to the still amazing A900 camera: [shopcountry 3032].

Meanwhile 3Dkraft (Click here) made a sort of crazy test. He attached the [shoplink 11180 ebay]12mm f/1.6 Hypeprime m43 lens (Here on eBay)[/shoplink] on the NEX-7 via m43 to E-mount adapter: “As expected, the image circle of this m4/3 lens does not cover the whole APS-C sensor format. But the shadowing effect is less than expected as you can see in the following example taken at F2.0”

NEX-7 availability status:
I am in contact with stores in Europe and USA. They all told me that the new NEX-7 body only stocks will arrive in February. The kit version is due for March. So here is the full link list:
[shoplist 8454]

Image from Photozone. Also the famous lens review website noticed the lens-cast issue on the [shoplink 10350 ebay]Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 ZM[/shoplink].

A week ago I got my NEX-7 and I am going to use third party lenses on it (by using appropriate adapters). But is it really so easy and flawless to use whatever lens you want on your NEX?

There are is one fundamental thing you have to watch out before to chose your lens. The “lens-cast” issue which creates color shift (mostly cyan shift) in the corners of your image. That problem appears or is stronger under following conditions:
1) Lenses with symmetrical design are not optimized for digital sensors, while lenses with tele-centric design do work well.
2) Wide angle lenses do accentuate the problem.
3) Problem gets worse on bigger sensor. Leica M9 shows more color shifting than the NEX-5n.
4) Problem gets more visible on cameras with smaller pixels. The NEX-5n has less problem with lens cast than the NEX-7.

Example: The Voigtländer 15mm f/4.5 M-mount lens ([shoplink 11043 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]) does a wonderful job on film cameras but isn’t that good on the NEX-5n and completely sucks on the NEX-7. This because it has a symmetrical design and extreme wide angle. Does it mean you cannot use it on your NEX? There is a solution: The problem can be fixed with the use of the CornerFix software (there are both Windows and Mac OS X versions). It can correct Sony RAW files and transforms them in DNG files.

But if you like me don’t have time to convert every single file than you have to really watch out for the design of the lens you want.An alternative for the Voigtländer is the Zeiss 18mm f/4.0 lens ([shoplink 11044 ebay]Click here to see it on ebay[/shoplink]). Unlike the Voigtländer it has a tele-centric optical design. Those lenses are usually bigger than symmetrical lenses. That’s why the Zeiss is still bigger even if it has more or less the same aperture of the Voigländer.

In general wide angle Voigtländer lenses, Zeiss ZM Biogon lenses, Older Leica lenses come with symmetrical design. All new Leica lenses, most medium and tele lenses and soem Zeiss ZM lenses will work fine. With the help of our readers I will now collect info about a huge variety of lenses you could use on your NEX. It should become a sort of general guide to see how good a lens works on NEX cameras. I will post 1-2 guides per week starting from the next week.

To read more about the problem read that short text at LL (Click here), the guide at Digitalhapeman (Click here) and an M-mount index at Ken Rockwell (Click here).

We didn’t talk a lot about the new A-mount 16-50mm f/2.8 lens. So let’s take a deep look at the lens by reading the latest review from our friend Kurt Munger (Click here). He tested the lens on the probably last ever made Sony DSRL with optical viewfinder…the A580. He posted many interesting detailed test about the lens. I am not going to disclose here all his findings but in short he writes: “Probably the best quality of this lens is the nice contrast and resolution at F/2.8-4.  In fact, there isn’t a reason to stop it down further if sharpness is your main concern, depth of field of course is another matter.  Low-light hand-held shooters will love this lens.  Other nice optical qualities include low light fall-off, no coma, and manageable distortion at longer focal lengths“.

Good work Sony….we now need more of these kind of new high quality lenses!

While Sony has hard times to ship the A77+16-50mm lens kit it’s a bit easier to find the A77 body and lens in Stock as separate items. The lens is in Stock almost everywhere:
In USA-Canada at Amazon, Sonystore, Adorama, BHphoto, and Sony CA (Click on shop names to visit the lens search page)
In Europe at Amazon DE, Sony DE, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Sony FR, Sony NL and Sony IT.
In Asia at Digitalrev and Amazon JP.

Of course this is a limited list of stores I check almost daily. Can’t really check every little store of the world :) Feel free to complete the list by adding your links to the comment section!

[shoplink 8454][/shoplink]

One of my favorite websites Photographyblog (Click here) reviewed the NEX-7. Is it a surprise that they like they camera? Certainly not but you don’t see often a camera getting the “Essential” mark like it happened today with the NEX-7: “The combination of an excellent built-in viewfinder, handy pop-up flash, tiltable LCD screen and a high-resolution APS-C sensor, all in a light and compact body, simply can’t be beaten“. And I agree with them when they say that the real only flaw of the NEX-7 are the….missing good quality NEX lenses :)

More testes:
Soundimagesplus (Click here) red-did the NEX-7 vs A77 comparison using exactly the same lens on both cameras. The: “NEX-7 files are slightly softer, slightly less noisy and also slightly darker.”
Some field test images by Outbackphoto (Click here).
And the German magazine Colorfoto (Click here) compared the NEX-7 with the GX1 and NX200. Easy to guess who won :)

In Stock….sorry…out of Stock status :)
I think most of you are now almost tired to read all those fantastic (for Sony) reviews. Most of you will still have to wait a couple of weeks or even months until you can get your NEX-7 camera. I am working behind the scenes to convince different online shops in Europe and USA to notify me in advance when they will receive the a stock of new cameras. As I said a couple of days ago preorder the body only and buy the lens separately to have more chances to grab one. The only problem is that if you want the all Black 18-55mm lens ships with the NEX-7 kit only (you cannot buy it separately).
Right now I didn’t find any store having the camera in Stock. There are some auctions on ebay but you have to perform two different kind of searches to find them all:
[shoplink 8454 ebay]Ebay search for “NEX-7” (Click here)[/shoplink]
[shoplink 10976 ebay]Ebay search for “Sony α (alpha) NEX-7” (Click here)[/shoplink]. Yeah you will find more cameras here :)
Preorder search links: [shopcountry 8454].

I finally got a Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 lens for testing purpose only (don’t know if I will buy it at the end). I will soon post my first impression review on SAR. Meanwhile check these other news to learn more about the NEX-7:

Echenique (Click here) posted a NEX-7 first impression: “The Sony NEX-7 is a strange beast. As a Percy Jackson fan (and general mythology buff), I would call this a chimera rather than a camera. Its image size, image qualities, and file malleability encroach well into the low-end of medium format. Its sensor size, interchangeable lenses and bokeh characteristics plant it squarely in DSLR territory. Its body size and handling is definitely in the compact camera arena. So what is it? Well like the mythical chimera, its all of the above.”

Canadianreviewer (Click here) also tested the NEX-7: “A true object of desire for photographers and the pinnacle of camera technology today, the NEX-7 is simply a game changer and the one device that might entice DLSR users to consider smaller bodies with similar features.”

Really Right Stuff (Click here) announced new plates for the A77, NEX-5N, NEX-7.

NEX-7 in Stock status:
As I already told you it’s better to preorder the NEX-7 body only and by the Zeiss lens separately. The NEX-7+18-55mm or Zeiss kit will be shipped in late February only.
The NEX-7 is in Stock at Parkcameras UK (Click here) and on eBay sold by owners from [shoplink 10974 ebay]Sweden (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 10973 ebay]England (Click here)[/shoplink] and [shoplink 10976 ebay]Germany (Click here)[/shoplink].
In USA you can find three cameras for sale on eBay (Click here). And that’s it :) Preorder the NEX-7 body at Adorama (Click here) and Bhphoto (Click here) if you want to get the camera as soon as possible (Amazon doesn’t accept preorders).

The Zeiss 24mm lens is in Stock in some stores. Click these search links to check for yourself: [shopcountry 8450].