G a f f e r
Prominent Member
OK, so after looking and looking for about a year, I finally stopped procrastinating and plumped for an upgrade to my trusty old p&s Panny DMC-FX7.
The problem I had with that camera was:
So I shortlisted a few and plumped for the NEX-C3. I wanted pocketability so was eyeing up the new canon S100, but thank God I didn't, because comparing the photo's from that (available in the US for a few months now so user reviews are coming through) and the NEX blows it out of the water....and it's cheaper too
.
I was looking at the Panny DMC-LX5 too, but then thought that if I can't pocket it, I might as well go for a micro 4/3 size with a sensor over 8 times bigger.
Anyway, so I bought the NEX with a view to initially use it as a p&s (because I know next to nothing about photography) but that has the potential at least to let me experiment if I want to learn more in the future.
I ended up buying the camera for £358 (with the Sony smart offer £30 cashback) + 16Gb class 10 SDHC for £15 + screen protector for £12 + lowepro case for £15.
The only thing I had trouble with was getting a spare battery - I had to be careful to get a compatible 3rd party one (many will not work) but ebay came to the rescue for a tenner.
I also grabbed some cheap polaroid lenses (uv/cpl/fl as well as 1/2/4/10 macro sets) from amazon.
Overall? Look and feel is one of quality. The thing looks ungainly because of the massive looking lens but it's actually quite light and I've gotten use to holding it now.
More importantly, it allows me manual focus and has an excellent "peaking" feature that highlights the in-focus areas meaning that I don't miss a viewfinder, the LCD screen is good enough (plus, if I wanted to buy a different companies manual focus lens in the future, using it will be a doddle with this).
Here are some of my first attempts using it (the bokeh is brilliant and I find I'm actually having fun mucking around with aperture settings and seeing the different results, but bare in mind I come from point and shoot world so these are probably not indicative of what it's REALLY capable of):
...and I love the high contrast B&w filter too.
The menus themselves can be a bit confusing but you can manually program 4 of the buttons yourself to whatever you want so it's not too bad, but I can see that if you're coming from the opposite direction (downgrading fom SLR rather than upgrading from P&S) it will be frustrating because some options appear to be in bizarre submenus imo.
Low light capability is absolutely brilliant and I'm amazed at how dark it can get before the camera starts "begging" for a flash - so much so that I'm contemplating leaving the flash in the bag in future simply because most of the time it does a fine "noiseless" job without it.
Overall this fulfils everything I wanted in a camera. I may end up learning more and using fully manual mode and working with RAW files as I figure out what's what - then again I may find it simply isn't for me and keep it in iAuto mode forever, always using JPGs...but even then, it has one of the best auto modes I've ever seen in that it always seems to get things spot on so even that isn't too much of a worry.
Would I recommend it? Yes. If you're after a micro 4/3, this has the same form factor, but a sensor 50% bigger (full APS-C like an alpha SLR) and is capable of great shots. Also, I was worried about 3rd party lenses but a quick hunt around ebay shows that you can pretty much obtain an adapter for ANY 3rd party SLR lens out there and add it on no problem (so even though the 18-55mm lens it ships with is OK, it can be upgraded if I wanted to in the future).
It's also worth noting that the new C3 and 5N are significant upgrades to the older 3 and 5 models (DP Review even suggest the new C3 trumps the older 5), so despite the last remaining stocks of the old 5 being a similar price, I would still opt for the newer C3.
The problem I had with that camera was:
- Many photo's would appear to be sharp when on holiday, then I'd get home and about ¼ of them would be blurred when expanded up onto my tv/laptop ….. VERY annoying
- It's a true point and shoot so I couldn't really fiddle with many settings at all
- VERY noisy in low light conditions
So I shortlisted a few and plumped for the NEX-C3. I wanted pocketability so was eyeing up the new canon S100, but thank God I didn't, because comparing the photo's from that (available in the US for a few months now so user reviews are coming through) and the NEX blows it out of the water....and it's cheaper too
.I was looking at the Panny DMC-LX5 too, but then thought that if I can't pocket it, I might as well go for a micro 4/3 size with a sensor over 8 times bigger.
Anyway, so I bought the NEX with a view to initially use it as a p&s (because I know next to nothing about photography) but that has the potential at least to let me experiment if I want to learn more in the future.
I ended up buying the camera for £358 (with the Sony smart offer £30 cashback) + 16Gb class 10 SDHC for £15 + screen protector for £12 + lowepro case for £15.
The only thing I had trouble with was getting a spare battery - I had to be careful to get a compatible 3rd party one (many will not work) but ebay came to the rescue for a tenner.
I also grabbed some cheap polaroid lenses (uv/cpl/fl as well as 1/2/4/10 macro sets) from amazon.
Overall? Look and feel is one of quality. The thing looks ungainly because of the massive looking lens but it's actually quite light and I've gotten use to holding it now.
More importantly, it allows me manual focus and has an excellent "peaking" feature that highlights the in-focus areas meaning that I don't miss a viewfinder, the LCD screen is good enough (plus, if I wanted to buy a different companies manual focus lens in the future, using it will be a doddle with this
).Here are some of my first attempts using it (the bokeh is brilliant and I find I'm actually having fun mucking around with aperture settings and seeing the different results, but bare in mind I come from point and shoot world so these are probably not indicative of what it's REALLY capable of):
...and I love the high contrast B&w filter too.
The menus themselves can be a bit confusing but you can manually program 4 of the buttons yourself to whatever you want so it's not too bad, but I can see that if you're coming from the opposite direction (downgrading fom SLR rather than upgrading from P&S) it will be frustrating because some options appear to be in bizarre submenus imo.
Low light capability is absolutely brilliant and I'm amazed at how dark it can get before the camera starts "begging" for a flash - so much so that I'm contemplating leaving the flash in the bag in future simply because most of the time it does a fine "noiseless" job without it.
Overall this fulfils everything I wanted in a camera. I may end up learning more and using fully manual mode and working with RAW files as I figure out what's what - then again I may find it simply isn't for me and keep it in iAuto mode forever, always using JPGs...but even then, it has one of the best auto modes I've ever seen in that it always seems to get things spot on so even that isn't too much of a worry.
Would I recommend it? Yes. If you're after a micro 4/3, this has the same form factor, but a sensor 50% bigger (full APS-C like an alpha SLR) and is capable of great shots. Also, I was worried about 3rd party lenses but a quick hunt around ebay shows that you can pretty much obtain an adapter for ANY 3rd party SLR lens out there and add it on no problem (so even though the 18-55mm lens it ships with is OK, it can be upgraded if I wanted to in the future).
It's also worth noting that the new C3 and 5N are significant upgrades to the older 3 and 5 models (DP Review even suggest the new C3 trumps the older 5), so despite the last remaining stocks of the old 5 being a similar price, I would still opt for the newer C3.
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