Sony NEX 7 Mirrorless camera

Hello POTN,I came across this you tube video on what will c. says is the the new way to go-- mirrorless cameras.Its a very interesting watch an made me think about the future of cameras in general.Having almost figured out my 7D,i am completely happy with all my Canon gear.I couldnt -wouldt change out everything i own just because some says this is the best.

Main question is does anyone have any real life experience with any mirrorless cameras.Good-bad-whatever.Will kinda hints that our DSLRs will be a thing of the past in the near future.7D does fine for my style.There are better cameras out there,but do we really need the latest greatest.I say enjoy what youve got,and just go shoot.

Im not trying to start any BS Sony ver Canon thread,just looking for any thoughts.Thanks

http://www.youtube.com …4yNpDeXRg&featu​re=g-all-c

Mirrorless cameras been out for a long time now, nothing new there. If you want to see how one works rent yourself a Leica M9 and play with it for a couple of days. Personally I wouldn't even bother trying the new P&S mirrorless cameras out or coming out soon. Looks like a big waste of time and money to me.

Take Care,
Cheers, Patrick

Different tools for different jobs. I've used an NEX-5 for two years and it's an enjoyable experience. It feels like a real camera, it takes great pictures - up to, say, 50D quality (the NEX-7 has more megla-pixies) and it's superb for video. But the lenses and accessories are expensive and above all, it's not an SLR, doesn't pretend to be one and only gets used about 5% of the time.

The SLR is, IMO, just about the best format for most photographers' needs.

More and more people are starting to overcome preconceived notions and give mirrorless an honest try/look, which is good for the whole business. The "see what you get" aspect of EVF/mirrorless appeals to people. I see the advantage of it.
I looked hard at the NEX 7 and was impressed enough to accept the proprietary stuff that annoyed me but the lens selection just turned my stomach, especially considering how often they put out a new NEX body. Backwards thinking about how to do an interchangable lens system IMHO.
Fuji was really interesting but $2000 for a body and one lens with poor AF in lower light even with amazing IQ and ISO? The new lenses should be better since they use a different drive, and the X-E1 should sell better with its lower price point.
EVFs and mirrorless cameras have come blazingly far in the past couple of years and I appreciate having choices and different formats to choose and try out.

ReDDoG wrote in post #14942420
Hello POTN,I came across this you tube video on what will c. says is the the new way to go-- mirrorless cameras.Its a very interesting watch an made me think about the future of cameras in general.Having almost figured out my 7D,i am completely happy with all my Canon gear.I couldnt -wouldt change out everything i own just because some says this is the best.

Main question is does anyone have any real life experience with any mirrorless cameras.Good-bad-whatever.Will kinda hints that our DSLRs will be a thing of the past in the near future.7D does fine for my style.There are better cameras out there,but do we really need the latest greatest.I say enjoy what youve got,and just go shoot.

Im not trying to start any BS Sony ver Canon thread,just looking for any thoughts.Thanks

http://www.youtube.com …4yNpDeXRg&featu​re=g-all-c

Yeah I have real life experience of a Sony A77. Ok it's not per say Mirrorless but has a semi translucent mirror and an EVF. I was expecting the EVF to be pants, as its slated by many [mostly those who have never tried it]. Well I thought it was jolly good.
As far as the A77 went, it has blazingly quick AF, and deadly accurate. As this was my first digital camera other than a 7 MPS Cybershot [which was an OK beach point and shoot] I just assumed all new top of the range DSLRs were like this. The Sony manual is crap, Sony support was fabulous then overnight it moved to Cairo! It is now the Worst call centre on the planet, eg after going thro' Product > Model Type > Model and Serial No I expected a 'Hello Mr X how is your new [registered] flagship A77' - Instead I was asked if it was a Blu Ray Player! Next day the guy did not know what a 'focus ring on a lens' did!
Although my G [= L series in Canon terms] lens was quick and very good IQ and colour rendition it was not dust/moisture proof and plastic. Seeing my current 70-300L IS USM I decided to jump ship, I also prefered the 7D's stronger bigger body - altogether better built plus it had rave reviews about the AF system [pause while I pick myself off the floor crying with laughter about the AF bit].
So having invested in Canon for the long run, how do I say it, without 25 Canon Fan Boys attacking me, well WTF lets get real, IMO technology wise the Sony Sensor and AF system blow Canon out of the water. As for features like in Camera HDR in the SOny its awesome, pan shots, and 'focus peaking' magic stuff, magnify and fine focus, all just works perfectly in the Sony. 100% the way to go. If Canon do not adopt this withing 2 years Sony will outsell them 5:1. We haven't even touched video! The difference between a Honda Lawnmover and an AMG 6.3 SL! Well I said it! Sorry but it is the truth.

Being old fashioned I say it as it is! Strangely instead of truly hating my 7D I choose to look at the good points - fabulous Canon support, lovererly.........L lenses and great build quality. The 7D has oodles of settings [potentially very powerful - but as the Sony delivers a pretty much perfect picture just by pushing the shutter button!!!!!]
So I just got into these settings, to learn, and to make the best of it, and am perverely actually enjoying the challenge and boy is it a challenge!
Weird I'm now like 99.9% Manual everything, including flash the lot!

I guess with 30x the effort/work I'll end up with about the same IQ. but many more spoiled pictures. So I just put 32% extra work into it and end up with a slightly better image than with the Sony.
Long term I'm praying Canon come out with a FF , Mag bodied, feature rich, 24 MPS, Translucent mirror 7D look alike. BUT with equal or better Sensors and AF than the A77 and similar Features and SDXC Cards 95 Mbs minimum, in built wi-fi tethering and an EVF. Then my long term investment will pay off. If they don't do it within 18 months all my Canon gear will be sold and I'll crawl back to Sony [totally humiliated].

So there you have it - 100's will tell me it's because I don't know what I'm doing - strange it's always someone who hasn't got an A77. SO OK you think I'm mad but here is the test £ for £ in September Sony will Launch a A99 - go and check it out, make a video, take some pictures, find a difficult scene like a vaulted ceiling put it on HDR, and focus peaking [So you can colour highlight the parts in focus] press the button, Then try and equal that on a 7D! Er please don't scurry off to DPP or LR4 - were talking like for like straight out of the camera - just blow them both to 50% and 100% MY CASE RESTS!

Autoexposure bracketing still not done right (Re: Sony NEX 7 Mirrorless camera)

The NEX-7 with the new firmware still can not have autoexposure bracketing (AEB) active and be put in a "drive" mode where the shutter release is on a self-timer delay of a few seconds or the shutter release is via an infrared (IR or "wireless") remote shutter release.

Evidently Sony still does not understand that often the whole point of AEB is to have the camera motionless on a tripod so that the three bracketed images align perfectly for high dynamic range (HDR) processing. Yes, Photoshop CS6 has an alignment option, but ideally the camera has no movement. Even on a tripod, pressing the shutter release can result in a small movement. That is why DSLR's have mirror lockup and why Canon DSLR's will AEB all exposures following one shutter release with the two second self-timer or wireless shutter release.

You would think that after Sony bought Minolta's camera business in 2006 they would have learned something about what enthusiast/serious amateur/professional users need in a camera. Nope.

A friend of mine has a Sony NEX-5N and I've been going on photo trips with her for the past couple of weeks, teaching her how to use the camera and about photography in general.

I have to say I'm impressed with the little guy!!! It has a big sensor (currently Sony's rocking the biggest sensors in the mirrorless world short of the Leicas)...APS-C in a tiny body! Resolution is very nice and high-ISO noise is very well controlled...it's nowhere near my 5D2, but it blows most small cameras out of the water.

She has a few lenses she's not using that I might be able to buy off her for next to nothing, so I'm thinking of picking up a NEX to play around with for a bit...just for kicks.

Though my dream mirrorless is the Olympus OM-D. Smaller sensor, but great image quality and absolutely awesome body (not just the looks, which are the best on the market), but the controls are the best I've seen in a small camera.

By the way, my big issue with Sony is the proprietary E-mount. With M4/3 bodies, you can mix and match lenses between manufacturers, as multiple companies make M4/3 mount lenses.

With Sony, however, you're stuck with Sony lenses which aren't all that great (I've yet to see a positive review on the 16mm pancake, for example).

Jim60D: While you have a very valid point, it seems like a tiny detail to base your opinion of a company on...

Submariner wrote in post #14943937
Yeah I have real life experience of a Sony A77. Ok it's not per say Mirrorless but has a semi translucent mirror and an EVF. I was expecting the EVF to be pants, as its slated by many [mostly those who have never tried it]. Well I thought it was jolly good.
As far as the A77 went, it has blazingly quick AF, and deadly accurate. As this was my first digital camera other than a 7 MPS Cybershot [which was an OK beach point and shoot] I just assumed all new top of the range DSLRs were like this. The Sony manual is crap, Sony support was fabulous then overnight it moved to Cairo! It is now the Worst call centre on the planet, eg after going thro' Product > Model Type > Model and Serial No I expected a 'Hello Mr X how is your new [registered] flagship A77' - Instead I was asked if it was a Blu Ray Player! Next day the guy did not know what a 'focus ring on a lens' did!
Although my G [= L series in Canon terms] lens was quick and very good IQ and colour rendition it was not dust/moisture proof and plastic. Seeing my current 70-300L IS USM I decided to jump ship, I also prefered the 7D's stronger bigger body - altogether better built plus it had rave reviews about the AF system [pause while I pick myself off the floor crying with laughter about the AF bit].
So having invested in Canon for the long run, how do I say it, without 25 Canon Fan Boys attacking me, well WTF lets get real, IMO technology wise the Sony Sensor and AF system blow Canon out of the water. As for features like in Camera HDR in the SOny its awesome, pan shots, and 'focus peaking' magic stuff, magnify and fine focus, all just works perfectly in the Sony. 100% the way to go. If Canon do not adopt this withing 2 years Sony will outsell them 5:1. We haven't even touched video! The difference between a Honda Lawnmover and an AMG 6.3 SL! Well I said it! Sorry but it is the truth.

Being old fashioned I say it as it is! Strangely instead of truly hating my 7D I choose to look at the good points - fabulous Canon support, lovererly.........L lenses and great build quality. The 7D has oodles of settings [potentially very powerful - but as the Sony delivers a pretty much perfect picture just by pushing the shutter button!!!!!]
So I just got into these settings, to learn, and to make the best of it, and am perverely actually enjoying the challenge and boy is it a challenge!
Weird I'm now like 99.9% Manual everything, including flash the lot!

I guess with 30x the effort/work I'll end up with about the same IQ. but many more spoiled pictures. So I just put 32% extra work into it and end up with a slightly better image than with the Sony.
Long term I'm praying Canon come out with a FF , Mag bodied, feature rich, 24 MPS, Translucent mirror 7D look alike. BUT with equal or better Sensors and AF than the A77 and similar Features and SDXC Cards 95 Mbs minimum, in built wi-fi tethering and an EVF. Then my long term investment will pay off. If they don't do it within 18 months all my Canon gear will be sold and I'll crawl back to Sony [totally humiliated].

So there you have it - 100's will tell me it's because I don't know what I'm doing - strange it's always someone who hasn't got an A77. SO OK you think I'm mad but here is the test £ for £ in September Sony will Launch a A99 - go and check it out, make a video, take some pictures, find a difficult scene like a vaulted ceiling put it on HDR, and focus peaking [So you can colour highlight the parts in focus] press the button, Then try and equal that on a 7D! Er please don't scurry off to DPP or LR4 - were talking like for like straight out of the camera - just blow them both to 50% and 100% MY CASE RESTS!

I tried my brother in laws A57 the other day. It focused in very low light on a dark subject with virtually zero noise. This was with a kit 18-70 ( I think it was those focal lengths ). His origional A500 made me switch out my 450d/XSi for my 7d after seeing it perform.
The new A99 looks really nice. It is up for £2500 at the moment on launch. I can get it with a staff discount for £1650 through said bro in law. I am agonising over this camera at the moment. At that price I could get really nice Zeiss glass to compliment it
The NEX 7 also looks a serious contender for new 7d/d7000 buyers I think, especially green box shooters. The new full frame P&S from Sony is pushing the bounderies too. Sony seems to be wrong footing Canon and Nikon at the moment. They need to spend time now on a lens line up.

LowriderS10 wrote in post #15151243
... Jim60D: While you have a very valid point, it seems like a tiny detail to base your opinion of a company on...

Point taken. It is just I so much want to get a second body with all the features the NEX-7 offers for landscape photography. Autoexposure bracketing is very useful for landscape photography as it can ensure both shadow detail and highlights not overexposed at essentially no extra cost or time when using a digital camera (unlike when using film!). When I learned of the recent firmware upgrade allowed +/- 3 EV autoexposure bracketing, I was about to purchase both a NEX-7 plus the Metabones version 2 adapter. I did a little more checking on the features and was so disappointed there was still this "gotcha" for AEB. So many other cameras avoid this problem (e.g. our Canon DSLR's, Pansonic's LX-5, etc.).

The NEX-7 plus the rather pricey Metabones adapter (electronically coupled for all EOS lens functions except autofocusing) would meet so many of my needs as a landscape digital back. It would take all my EOS lenses, it has good focus peaking (which for my purposes is better than autofocus), a good sensor (dynamic range and resolution) at lower ISO, relatively compact body, a tilt up and down LCD (very useful on a tripod, particularly for framing when low to the ground), fast 10 fps bracketing (allows less time for the wind to move objects during AEB) and when not being used for landscape shooting, it could be a very nice almost-always-with-you camera.

Sony's RX-100 was another one I was about to buy as a new really-always-with-me camera, replacing a Panasonic LX-5. I was willing to reluctantly give up the LX-5's 24mm equivalent wide for the RX-100's 28mm and there was going to be (it is now available) an aftermarket solution to magnetically mount a circular polarizer on the RX-100 (the LX-5 will take filters with an somewhat bulky adapter). Then I found out that this was yet another Sony camera for the enthusiast/advanced amateur/professional market that had a maximum AEB of only +/- 0.7 EV.

I so much want Sony to get it right since Canon (and Nikon) are reluctant to really innovate for fear of cannibalizing their DSLR products. Sony, as Luminous Landscape once stated, seems to have decided that if anyone is going to eat their lunch, it might as well be them. In a recent DP Review interview, Phil Molyneux (President Sony Electronics) says exactly that:

... if you talk about self-cannibalization, ... that's not a negative. We're growing new fans of photography who could buy more versatile products from Sony in the future. ... We're being disruptive. Part of the appeal of being disruptive is that pros see that we're being innovative and want to explore what Sony has to offer. ... There are companies like Canon and Nikon that have been in this marketplace 60+ years. And the market has traditionally been very slow to change, diversify or innovate. We're relatively new to it, but boy have we been disruptive. Sony is changing the market through innovation and giving consumers more choice.

Oh well. At least with several current Canon DSLR's we can run Magic Lantern to circumvent the artificial limits Canon imposes on us (Magic Lantern provides focus peaking, exposure zebras, AEB up to 9 images, intervalometer, focus stepping, etc. etc.).

I bought a NEX 7 about a month ago. I have nothing but good thing to say about it. Is it perfect? No it isn't. Will it replace my DSLR? No it won't but for travel or walking around with a camera all day you can't beat it. Shooting RAW this camera gives me all the image quality of my 7D and then some.

Larry Weinman wrote in post #15153311
Shooting RAW this camera gives me all the image quality of my 7D and then some.

I'd love to see some side by side results using similar shooting conditions.

I've used an NEX 5N for a couple of years and although I love it, results have been comparable only to my 50D in sharpness, nowhere near my 7D. Also, the lens' limitations are a bit frustrating. Excellent for video though.

Another tool in the box, but not one that will replace the SLR, in my opinion at least.

JohnB57 wrote in post #15153479
I'd love to see some side by side results using similar shooting conditions.

I've used an NEX 5N for a couple of years and although I love it, results have been comparable only to my 50D in sharpness, nowhere near my 7D. Also, the lens' limitations are a bit frustrating. Excellent for video though.

Another tool in the box, but not one that will replace the SLR, in my opinion at least.

Yeah the lens lineup is far from adequate but I didn't buy it with the idea of building a total system. That's what my DSLR is for. I just think the NEX 7 is a great camera for walking around all day when you don't want to haul a heavy load of camera stuff. You can do allot with it and I did say in my post that it wouldn't replace a DSLR.

Recently got a Nex-5N for my upcoming India trip. The biggest limitation is lens choice. I intend to use my MF lenses on it, so no cribbing about AF and all those advanced features. Whether someone will be satisfied or not depends on reference point and expectation.
With my vintage MF lenses, IQ is great, but not as magical as my old 5Dc, Images are not as sharp as from 5Dc (with same lens), probably due to AA filter. High-ISO is great even at ISO 6400. Overall its a keeper.

Interesting coincidence. I was reading about NEX7 last night. Sounds promising a t first. But then I saw price tag and crap kit lens it is coming with. It just like my Rebel, boosted to higher ISO, more pixels and smaller size. But lens selection and price... Smaller size for huge price difference...