Things are moving along and small cameras are looking more and more attractive as viable alternatives to DSLR’s.
The latest offering (June 2014) is from SONY - the A6000. It’s a 24MPix APS-C camera with interchangeable lenses and fast auto focus. The other nice thing is the availability of high quality lenses (Zeiss Touit for example) which yield spectacular image quality.
This section presents a tutorial on using the A6000 and getting the most out of it.
Overall pros and cons.
In thinking about the A6000 as a DSLR replacement, there are a number of considerations, both positive and negative:
Positive:
1. Small size, light weight
2. Good sensor, 24MPixels
3. Fast Ch - 10fps
4. Plenty of customization options - can be set-up like a DSLR
5. High quality lenses, especially from Zeiss
6. Hardware ergonomics good - tilt screen, EVF, etc
Negative:
1. Limited lenses but not too big a concern
2. Overly-complex UI with too many “consumer” options - picture modes, etc.
3. Good sensor but marginal high ISO performance - probably up to 1600 OK
4. Limited dynamic range (wrt D8XX) limits flexibility in post
5. Not sure about the fast AF. Some lenses need a firmware update to be compatible with PDAF. Lots of “hunting” at narrower apertures (F/10 and above).
6. Tantalizing posibility with downloadable apps but exceptionall difficult to download - possibly the worst implementation of an app store, ever.
7. Short battery life (~ 2hrs of intermittent shooting) - Make sure to turn Airplane Mode to “ON” unless needing a wifi connection
8. Slow startup time (seconds)
I will have the opportunity to do more testing on a trip over the next couple of week (Sep 2014, Netherlands, Belgium) but, so far, the “feel” of the camera is not that good and the default image rendering is a bit “sharp” for me. More to come on this but I miss the D800E already.
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Set-up.
Let’s start with the basics - set-up. To avoid confusion, let’s set up the camera with the following:
Aperture Priority mode
Image quality RAW
Drive Mode Single
ISO 100
Metering mode Multi
White balance Auto
DRO/HDR off
Creative style Standard
Color Space Adobe RGB
AF w/ Shutter On
e-Front curtain Shutter on
Lens Comp all off
These initial settings represent the basic settings common to most cameras and are typical for a high quality, RAW workflow. No surprises here.
Next, let’s look at focus settings. This is more complicated.
1. Setup 1. Simple, static focus.
Set focus mode to AF-S
Set focus area to Flex Spot (note. even simpler would be center focus but I found this is less precise than flex spot, plus, is center only)
With this setting, you can set the focus point manually. Half press on the shutter sets the focus. You can then recompose if you want and take the shot
2. Setup 2. Continuous focus
Set focus mode to AF-C
With this setting, you can set the focus point manually as before. Half press the shutter and while the shutter is half pressed, the camera will adjust focus so that anything within the focus target will stay in focus, even if it (or you) is moving. The trick is to keep the target on the moving object otherwise the camera will move focus to whatever else is in the target. This is nice for tracking but eliminates the ability to focus and recompose. Rumor has it that the A6000 is really fast at changing focus to track the target but I haven’t had much of a chance to test this in real life. It doesn’t seem so fast in low light.
There is also and AF-A setting which, apparently can tell if you're focussing on a static or dynamic object and switch between AF-S and AF-C accordingly. In my initial tests, this didn’t work predictably so, for now, I’m ignoring this setting.
3. Setup 3. Continuous & Static focus
This is a setup which gives the best of 1 & 2 - continuous tracking but with the ability to freeze focus and recompose. The “DSLR” method for this is to set up the “AF-on” button and disable focussing when the shutter is half pressed. We could do the same here by assigning a button to AF-on (AEL would be an obvious choice). However, there’s a potentially better method.
Assign custom button C1 to AF/MF toggle.
Set focus mode to AF-C, focus area to flexible spot.
Focus on the flexible spot by half-pressing the shutter.
Press the C1 button to toggle to MF. You should see the focus peaking
Recompose and take the shot. The focus will not change while in MF
Press C1 again to go back to AF mode.
Note: I need to try this a few times to make sure it’s better than the AF-on method.
4. Lock-on AF. This is another (final) setting where you are in charge of the focus point. I have assigned Lock-on AF to custom button C2 and will press that any time I want to use this function. With Lock-on AF you can point to a particular subject, enable Lock-on AF and the camera will track this subject as it moves. Unlike AF-C, you don’t need to keep the subject in the focus point, the camera will do this for you. When you are ready to shoot, press the shutter release, focus should be captured and take the shot. Again, I’m not sure how fast this is at tracking movement, I’ll test and report back.
Note: In testing I found that the camera had difficulty tracking the subject if it was moving fast. Also, it had difficulty when the contrast difference between the main subject and background was low. While it could use more testing, I decided that this feature is not worth much and subsequently decide to assign C2 to “Eye-AF”. This is an intriguing feature, enabled with “Face Detect” - ON. When a face is detected, and C2 is pressed while the shutter is half pressed, the camera finds the nearest eye and locks focus on that. Interesting for portraits. I’ll experiment. Note this does not work with AF-C so I set the camera to AF-S. I put these settings into “M2” along with setting the scene mode to “Portrait”.
The next set of options is where the camera chooses the focus points for you. I’m always nervous about this but here goes.
5. The default setting is Focus mode AF-A and Focus area Wide. In this mode the camera will focus on the nearest subject(s). You’ll see a number of focus points as it tries to find these objects. This is fine if you just want to point & shoot and get the best chance of finding focus. You can also select AF-C and the camera will focus over a narrower area and track this area as it moves. This is potentially really useful if you want to track a moving object over a (slightly) wider area than flexible spot / AF-C can do. However, it is only centered on the viewfinder.
6. Smile/Face detection. With this option turned on, the camera will look for a face and insert a rectangle around the identified face. This then becomes the focus area. Beware because this over-rides any other focus mode or area. Better to turn this off unless you really want to track faces and can’t be bothered doing it manually.
Here’s a more conventional way to achieve the “AF-on” function:
1. Shooting Menu (2) Focus Mode - AF-C
2. Shooting Menu (3) Focus Area - Flex Spot
Note: I found I needed Flex Spot in order to get accurate auto-focus at wide open apertures. The Center Focus setting was just too course. Also Flex Spot lets me adjust the focus point instead of needing to focus then re-compose.
3. Shooting Menu (5) Lock-on AF - ON
Note: this setting enables the ability to lock-on to selected subjects and track them while moving
4. Settings Menu (3) AF w/Shutter - OFF
5. Custom Key settings (1) AEL Button - AF-ON
Note: (4) & (5) configure the camera to disable focussing on the shutter button and enable it on the AEL button thus assigning the “AF-ON” function to AEL. Not ideal but OK.
6. Custom Key settings (1) Custom Button 2 - Lock-on AF
Note: Pressing this button enables the Lock-on AF tracking function
Here’s the workflow:
Normal shooting.
1. Press the center button on the rotating dial and adjust the focus point, if necessary, to align with the desired focus area. Press the button again to return to the normal display.
2. Compose the picture and press the AEL button to focus at the designated point. If you want continuous focus, keep pressing, otherwise let it go.
3. Take the shot.
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Other apps and extras.
RemoteCameraControl app.
This app, available from the Apple App store for OSX (Mac) allows you to tether the A6000 to the Mac for remote control. Works well enough and includes a simple time-lapse feature as well as allowing fro uopload from the camera to the Mac.
Smart Remote Control / Playmemories app (iOS)
The A6000 has an app called Smart Remote control which, with a p-p wifi connection, allows the Play memories app on the iphone to be a remote control.
Procedure:
1. Make sure “Airplane Mode" is Off
2. Start the smart remote app on the A6000
3. Start the play Memories app on the iPhone
4. On settings on the iPhone, select the wifi connection listed on th A6000 LCD, enter password if needed(first time)
5. The devices should be connected.
6. When finished, put Airplane mode back to “on”. This saves battery power.
Downloading apps to the camera.
There are a number of apps available for the A6000 (https://www.playmemoriescameraapps.com/portal/). I tried downloading a Timelapse app. It was excrutiatingly difficult. Despite the fact that I had already registered and entered my credit card information, somehow it ignored that and just got stuck in the “confirm purchase” page. After much searching on the web, I finally found a way to download the app.
1. Purchase a PSN pre-paid card for the amount of the app cost (you can get them from Amazon)
2. Use Safari and log in to your account on the playmemories site (see link above). Note: it only works with Safari.
3. Select the app and proceed to purchase it.
4. You go through a bunch of pages and (hopefully) land on the “confirm purchase” page.
5. Click on the “Redeem Codes" button and enter the code you got from Amazon.
6. With a bit of luck, it will acknowledge the payment and begin download to the camera.
7. Once finished, remove the USB cable, turn off the camera and remove the battery. Re-insert the battery and power on. Bingo.
Note: make sure the USB connection is set to “Auto” (Toolbox, p4)
Updating lens Firmware.
As noted, SONY has provided firmware updates for it’s lenses to make them compatible with PDAF. You can find the information at:
Most of the SONY lenses are listed and the firmware updates them to version .02
For third party lenses:
Zeiss Touit - only the 50mm f/1.8 has an update as of today (8/27/14)
Sigma - no information available.
Without the update the lenses are slow in low light and tend to “hunt”, even in bright light with small apertures (this latter issue does not seem to go away with the update)
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Field Experience.
Went to Edinburgh and on a tour of The Netherlands and Belgium in August / September 2014. I decided to take ONLY the A6000 to experience what it was like with minimalist kit. I got plenty of pictures and the camera was “fine” with a few pros and cons.
What I took.
A6000 + 3 batteries
Plenty of 32GB memory cards (only used 1)
Lenses:
16-70mm f/4 Zeiss
55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 Telephoto
32mm f/1.8 Zeiss Touit
24mm f/1.8 Zeiss
12mm f/2.8 Zeiss Touit
SONY HVL-F20AM Flash (never used)
SONY Optical remote control (never used)
ThinkTank Hubba Hubba Hiney camera bag + National Geographic backpack
BlackRapid camera strap
SONY RX100 MK II for backup
I shot in Aperture Priority mode and RAW, exclusively
Usage Statistics:
Total Pictures - 741
iPhone 5s - 9 (1.2%)
RX100 MK II - 48 (6.5%)
A6000 / 16-70mm - 504 (68%)
A6000 / 12mm - 20 (2.7%)
A6000 / 24mm f/1.8 - 138 (18.6%)
A6000 / 55-210mm - 22 (3%)
As you can see, the majority of shots were taken using the 16-70mm lens. The 24mm lens was the second most common, mostly for indoor shots where the f/1.8 aperture was handy. The 32mm f/1.8 lens was never used (pity, because it has a polarizer and I wanted to try it)
Pros:
1. Small & light weight. Easy to carry w/ BlackRapid strap.
No question, the small size is a real benefit for walk-around travel photography. Coupled with the 16-70mm lens, it’s a great combination for a wide variety of shots. There were a lot of other “tourists” lugging large DSLR’s and clearly not getting the benefit.
2. Very good picture quality and resolution.
While not close to the D800E, the picture quality was very good. The 24MPixel resolution left plenty of room for cropping. Dynamic range was good enough to allow for highlight/shadow adjustments in Lightroom without too much noise creeping in.
3. Tilt LCD was handy for low angle shots and when I needed to see over the crowd.
4. Using C1 for AF/MF toggling worked out quite well for off-center focussing (see above for description - #3 under set-up).
I liked the focus peaking. However, it was a bit of an inconvenience to need to remember to toggle C1 after each shot to return back to AF.
5. Lens combinations gave flexibility.
The 16-70mm was good for almost everything. The 24mm f/1.8 was good for indoors. When needing telephoto, the 55-210mm had good enough reach. The 12mm Touit was great when I needed very wide angle. On the other hand, it was a bit inconvenient to carry all the lenses and I tended to keep a selected lens on the camera and only change if I was certain I needed to.
6. High quality lenses.
The Zeiss Touit lenses, in particular, were very high quality and rendered a characteristic "look" which was quite pleasing. I don’t think this camera is “lens limited”.
Cons:
1. Start-up time on the camera was slow. Also, after it went to sleep, there was a lag in activating the EVF.
2. Battery life was short. I needed 2 batteries/day
3. I found the EVF uncomfortable.
Not bright enough. Colors weren’t accurate. Light crept in from outside requiring me to hold the camera tight to may face. However, focus peaking in the EVF was handy. Overall, much prefer the optical viewfinder of DSLR’s
4. While AF, in general was fast, low light AF was slow and some lenses (24mm) “hunted" a lot in low light and apertures ~f/8 or narrower. This camera is defiitely not the “fastest AF in the World” as advertised. I suspect the V1 is much faster.
5. While picture quality is very good, rendering lacks the contrast/saturation of my D800E.
Hard to pin this down but the “look” was just not as good as I wanted. This could be partly due to auto WB not being accurate but I think there are also limitations in the rendering algoritms that give the pictures a harsher, flatter look than I like. More like a P&S than a DSLR. I may be a bit unfair here since I didn’t try to calibrate colors or WB. On the other hand, it’s easy to forget this step when you’re dashing around taking in the sights. This area needs some testing.
Most pictures needed some amount of WB adjustment and saturation increase.
6. Noise performance was below my expectations.
Base ISO looked great but everything above that showed some graininess at 100% viewing. I was OK up to ISO 800, 1600 at a pinch, but not above. My guess is that 1600, downsized to 8X10” @ 300dpi, would print just fine.
Example @ 1600, underexposed, some motion blur, 100% crop:
7. The UI was problematic.
I’m used to most controls, like ISO, Ch, Exposure comp., etc. being easily located with dedicated buttons. So, digging into the menus when trying to take a picture quickly felt awkward. This was aggrivated by the fact that I needed to put my glasses on to do just about any adjustment which also lost time. I did discover that many adjustments could be made while looking through the EVF which helped. Also, the “Fn” button was quite handy. Overall, it was not as “pleasurable” experience as using the D800E.