Sulhan Photography

Sony NEX-5 Hands-on Review - by M Sulhan Juman

I recently had a chance to do a hands-on user evaluation of the newly launched NEX-5 compact interchangeable lens camera from Sony.  Thanks to Sony Australia for giving me an opportunity to try this little very capable camera – with Full HD AVCHD video capture capability.

Key Specs:
- 14.2 mega Pixels (14.6 mega-pixel actual photo sites) APS-C size Sensor
- Interchangeable E-Mount (Sony)
- Tilt Up and Down Wide screen LCD
- ISO Range – Auto, 200 , 400 , 800 , 1600 , 3200, 6400 , 12800
- On Dial Selectable – P-Program, A- Aperture priority, S-Shutter Priority, M- Manual, Sweep Panorama, Anti-Motion Blur, Scene Modes
- LA-EA1 Adapter available for use with Sony Alpha AF Lens
- Video Recording in Full HD: 1920 x 1080i 60/50fps (17Mbps), MP4: 1440 x 1080p 30/25fps (12Mbps)

The package that we received contains the following:

- NEX-5 Standard Kit – 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 OSS (Optically Stabilized Lens)
- External Flash HVL-F7S add-on accessory
- Lens hood for the kit lens
- Lens Cap for Kit lens
- Lithium-Ion Battery – NP-FW50 rechargeable battery + charger
- Soft Touch Camera Strap
- Use Manual and Software CD

Extra In separate Packaging

- 16m f2.8 Wide Angle lens

This 16mm f2.8 lens would come in as part of the twin-lens package offered by Sony for the NEX-5 camera.

1. The NEX-5 Body and design

The NEX-5 as we can see here was designed to achieve optimal compactness  while incorporating the ability to support interchangeable lens.  The Interchangeable lens E-mount as we can see here takes up the most of the front part of the camera.  While offering high end features and functionality like its larger DSLR camera families, we personally felt that the design team managed to keep the camera physically simple with the key buttons at the right places.

A curved in underside design between the large-enough hand grip and the tripod screw mount, positively adds a better grip to comfortably hold this little camera with one hand.  The front face consist of the little window for the IR (Infra red Remote) on the grip area and the focus assist lamp.  On the lower left side of the lens mount is the lens release button.

As you can see here the NEX-5 does not have a flip-up mirror box like the DLSR camera.  However, the camera still uses a Focal plane shutter just like the DSLR cameras.  The shutter in this case is normally “inside” and only gets actuated to shut when a still photo is taken.  As the NEX-5 is designed for full time Live-View, the shutter is normally open.  You must be wondering how much thought the design team has put into their camera real-estate to package all that including the focal plane shutter with the electronics and the large APS-C image sensor into a really compact body.

The rear of the camera is also kept simple with only direct buttons for specific operations.  The key function buttons on the top and rear face are the :

- On/Off Power – rotation lever
- Shutter Button
- Movie Recording Button
- One circular rotating scrolling jog dial
- One large centre button on jog dial (Soft assigned button – Assigned accordingly by different LCD screen Menu) - A
- One small button above – between LCD and jog dial (Assigned accordingly by different LCD screen Menu)
- One small button below – between LCD and jog dial (Assigned accordingly by different LCD screen Menu) – B

Note: Buttons A & B can now be pre-asigned in the latest firmware NEX-5 V03 from Sony. Pre assignment of the two buttons can be made for:

- Shooting Tips, ISO
- White Balance
- Precision Digital Zoom
- Metering Mode,
- Shooting Mode
- Flash Compensation
- DRO,  Auto HDR
- Creative Style
- MF Assist and AF Area

The stereo speakers are located on the top face of the camera on the left and right of the add-on accessory port.  The add-on accessory port is a dedicated new flash format connector for the NEX series camera.  None of the pre-NEX camera series uses this flash and accessory connection port.  A nice little hinged dust cover protects the miniature connector for the flash accessory.

2.  The NEX-5 lens – 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 OSS and the 16mm f2.8

The kit lens that comes with the NEX-5 is a usable lens which matches the size of the camera body.  It is at least 25% smaller than the APS-C sized similar range kit lens for the Alpha DSLR.  The lens utilize internal image stabilizer and silent AF focusing that works really well for fast silent auto focusing in video capture.  The lens does extends itself during zooming.  The grip for the lens zoom and focusing ring is very positive and effective.  The flower-shaped lens hood is easy installed in place and the size and depth allows easy insertion and removal of the lens cap when the hood is on.

The lens spots a 49mm diameter filter ring that allows user to conveniently use add on filters.  The size and weight of the lens is balanced and allows easy handling with one handed usage. The focusing mechanism of the NEX-E mount lens are all focus by wire.  They are linked electronically to to the focus mechanism that focus the lens as the focus ring is turned.

The 16mm f2.8 lens shown here is a great offering by Sony for the NEX-series.  This compact solution provides users to achieve a wide angle of 24mm focal length equivalent (APS-C 1.5 x crop factor) in a very compact package.  The lens provide easy handling and due to its small size, it could also be easily stowed away into a typical baggy jeans, cargo-pants pocket or even a jacket.

The 16mm f2.8 also comes with the 49mm filter ring.  The key advantage is this allows sharing of the lens accessories like filter, lens hood and even the lens cap with the 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 OSS.

3. Add-on Flash accessory for the NEX-5 camera

The NEX series comes with the HVL-F7s add-on flash.  This solution provides an option to the user to use flash where the need arises.  The flash has a guide number of 7 metres (23 feet) at ISO 100.  The flash draws its power from the camera.

This flash accessory fits itself easily into the accessory port on top of the camera and securing it is easy with the built in screw head that screws itself into the screw hole on the accessory port of the camera body.

Once the flash is secured, the flap out lid can now be closed and it function as a cosmetic cover to hide the screw knob head.

The screw head cover and the accessory port cover of the camera closes itself up nicely to form a seamless cover that make the whole setup looking as one.

The flash is activated by just flipping up the flash head upwards as shown below.  Similarly, to turn off the flash, the flash is pushed downwards (below).  The size of the flash matches nicely without any protrusion even with the 16mm f2.8 lens.

The flash could have been made better to allow for bouncing capability like the Alpha’s HVL-F20AM.  Well I personally believe there will be a new flash coming in the near future as part of the NEX-Series accessories expansion.

For those interested in knowing how the flash performs can visit Imaging-Resources’s NEX-5 HVL-F7S flash review where they have done a good job characterizing the flash performance in detail.

4.  The Battery, Battery compartment and the Memory Card Slot

While keeping the camera design clean and simple, Sony have utilised the thickest part of the camera (hand-grip) to house the battery and the memory card slot.  Using the larger thicker portion of the camera means having the ability to optimize and maximize the capacity of the battery to fit into this available volume.   As we can see here (bottom), the battery/card compartment door takes up the whole bottom foot print of the grip region of the camera.  The battery compartment  is secured with a slide type locking mechanism that has a positive locking feel to it that allows a good differentiation between lock and unlock.

Once unlocked, the spring loaded battery door opens up to the Lithium-Ion battery pack and the memory card slot.  The battery pack has its own locking mechanism secondary to the battery door.  The secondary lock is positioned nicely with an outwards unlock position that will then allow the battery to pop-outwards by means of the  battery compartment spring.

In-spite of the small narrow area, memory card removal is still good and easy without the door getting into the way, thanks to the implementation of the push- eject type memory card.  There is also a small but clear diagram guide on the inner surface of the battery – showing how the battery and card should be inserted.

Battery removal is also easy as you can see here.  There is sufficient room for the fingers to comfortably pull the battery out with the fingers in this position. The Lithium-Ion battery pack used in the NEX-5 is the same battery pack used in all the current NEX series cameras and also the newly released Sony Alpha SLT cameras like the A33 and the A55.  Overall, Sony have made the right choice having the battery on the opposite end of the lens mount which give a good balance on the overall camera handling.  This also give the camera that “solid” feel with the battery weight sitting right on the hand grip.

Next, we’ll look at the LCD display and the user interface in general.

5.  The User interface of the NEX-5  camera

The availability of a large LCD real estate allows the use of the LCD display to include more information.  However,  Sony has kept the display to be clean with well spaced out menu icons.  Here we can see the screen that comes up when the “Menu” button is pressed. The first layer menu icons lists the following:

- Shoot Mode
- Camera (Settings)
- Image Size
- Brightness/Colour
- Playback
- Setup

Selecting any of the menu items and hitting “OK” – centre button on the jog dial, will bring you into the menu item list.

The image below shows the “Shoot Mode” menu that bring us to the jog-dial driven menu to choose the camera shooting modes.  The menu also comes with a short concise explanation of the individual modes as the mode is selected.  All selection of items in the camera is basically confirmed by pressing the centre button on the jog-dial – “OK” button.

The image review mode is well laid out with the display showing the main image information like the Shutter speed , Aperture value and also the ISO speed.  Date and time information is also displayed.  Other information like the Battery life, folder info and the Image size /resolution is also included.  In the image review mode, the image can be enlarged and also deleted by means of the “soft-assign”(Assigned accordingly by different LCD screen Menu)  buttons.  I personally like this approach as it reuse the buttons and clearly indicated whats available on the display as one moves from one menu/screen to another.

The display mode can also be changed by means of pressing the “DISP” – upwards direction button on the dial.  This allows you to toggle the display to the Histogram review mode – to check the Overall histogram and the R,G,B channel histogram.  Also in this display mode, other information like the white balance info, metering mode and Exposure compensation info are displayed. One implementation that i personally like is the use of the dial for changing the Exposure compensation (EV-value).  The use of the simple rounded up and down arrow in relation to the dial position makes the whole display looks simple and clean.  The same rounded arrow indication is also used in other modes or option screen-display where the dial is used – e.g change of aperture fore depth of field defocusing  in video.

The assistance pop-up guides is also a great feature for those new in photography.  It gives very concise description of the modes or function of each feature on screen as the modes are being selected.  In this case for example in the AWB selection – the pop up screen reads – “Automatically adjusts white balance for natural-looking color tones.”  It would also be nice to have the pop-up guides to have its background opacity to be adjustable for slight transparency so as to allow checking of actual scenes in front as the camera is being adjusted – e.g while on a tripod.

The live view histogram(when activated) is also nicely sized and placed on the top right side of the screen hence not blocking the main display area.  The high resolution “TruBlack” LCD display is really a great part of this camera as it allows better judgement of exposures on shadows and the dark areas.

5.  Focusing & Picture taking

The overall photo taking feel of this camera is really good for a non-DSLR camera.  The auto focus is very positive and locks really well.  Its focusing speed is also fast and the ability to move and select the different focus points during picture taking is a welcoming feature.  In the in the example below, the centre focusing point is chosen.   The four arrow head indicators on the screen shows the positioning arrows to indicate that the focus points can be moved to other locations.

Here in the picture below, the focusing point selected is on the left side.  The flexibility to change the focus points is a great feature which will help to reduce the need to pre-focus on the centre and reframe as its been done on cameras that does not allow focus point selection.

A feature that I personally like is the display grids for aid in composition.  This is a very god tool for those getting use to using the rule of the thirds during the process of composing their photo.  The grid lines are nicely implemented and not intrusive to the overall view of the LCD.

6. Some Basic Tests 1 – Auto Exposure & Auto White Balance

I personally did a simple test to see the consistency of the camera’s Auto Exposure (AE) and Auto White Balance (AWB).  Some of the first things I would do on a camera that is to see how well the Auto Exposure performance of the camera in tricky scenes.  Here is a short video made up of a series of about 300 still images taken in the morning.  As the sunrises and the clouds move, the scene is changing from frame to frame.  The Auto Exposure & Auto White Balance is able to get a good balanced image throughout.

7.  Some Basic Tests 1 – Sweep Panorama Shooting Mode

One of the great new feature that I personally welcome is the Sweep Panorama shooting Mode. Taking quick panorama shots can now be accomplished with an easy sweep of the camera.  Best result is achieved by means of a tripod.  However, with this little camera, hand-held panoramic stitched photos turned out very well stitched with an outstanding result.  Just by a single press of a button coupled with  a sweeping action – this camera surely keeps up to its promises in allowing users to capture great panorama photos without much effort – or even setup.

Click on the image above to see the perfectly stitched image taken with the NEX-5.

8.  Video Capability of the NEX-5 – HD video

The NEX-5 video capture capability is on eof the best out there from a compact camera.  The Large APS-C sized sensor captures true vivid high definition videos that can be mistakenly taken with a high end device.

Video is taken swiftly with a dedicated video capture button on the top rear edge of the camera.  Here are some examples on the NEX-5 video captures.  Take not of the quick and smooth auto-focus of the video capture.  The in lens motor silently provides great swift auto-focus during video capture.

The other great strength of the video capture is the stereo audio capture that playback really well.  The sensitivity of the stereo microphones is able to pick up voices well with low distortion.

Overall video HD quality can be used in making short professional looking movies.

9.  Something worth mentioning

The accessory external flash comes with a nice storage case.  The design of this little flash storage case includes slots for securing the flash case on to the camera strap.  This is a nice implementation as a carry around storage solution reducing the need to carry the storage case separately.

The flash case swaps around the flash nicely and keeps its size to the minimum.  Here in the picture below is the flash accessory tucked in nicely in the storage case.  The locking mechanism on this little case is a double split secure clip-type lock that reduces the risk of the case splitting open when tugged during normal handling.

One other thing that I would like to mention is the tripod mounting. The implementation of a metal type tripod mounting screw hole normally found on larger DSLR camera is a good choice.  The centrally positioned tripod mount complements the “Sweep Panorama” capability of this camera. The little “hump” created by positioning of the tripod mount hole where it is – doubles up to be a base that matches the size of the lens diameter.

10. Conclusion

The NEX-5 camera is a god send for those who are looking for a really compact companion for their travels – with the option of interchangeable lens.  The twin lens kit really offers a great coverage for your normal day to day needs.  The pancake 16mm lens is surely a great lightweight solution that offers a great wide angle coverage of a 24mm field of view equivalent to a 35mm full frame camera.

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