Eco-Travel Gear of the Year 2013 ~ Photography Nominee

The Sony NEX-7 ~ A First Look

Please note: I have only had the camera a short time and have much more to learn about it and its potential. This is merely a basic and brief introduction and in no way meant to be a complete review if the camera. In fact, due to my inexperience with the camera some downsides listed below may have an easy remedy that I have not come across yet.

I was curious when learning that travel photographers that I highly regard, intrepidly declared they were leaving the two-horse race of Canon and Nikon. After INVESTING thousands of dollars in lenses and equipment over the years, needless to say, I was dubious. A firm believer that any ‘choice’ limited to just two options is a broken system (see US politics); the notion of a third, and hopefully more, parties is an easily embraced hypothesis. Intrigued.

I learned the new mirrorless systems were not only equivalent in picture quality (if not superior) to many full framed DSLRs, they were less expensive and less that half of the weight and bulk. Even more intrigued.

Eco-Travel Gear of the Year ~ Photography Nominee

The model being championed was the Sony NEX-7 ($1250). Sony graciously agreed to provide me with a new NEX-7 and a couple high quality lenses. In short, I am thoroughly impressed (and grateful). I have only had it a short time and have come nowhere close to running it through its paces but I might be in love.

Think of it as a slightly fatter iPhone with all the computing power focused on photography, plus the ability to attach high quality lenses to it. This camera is highly intelligent. So smart that I don’t feel humiliated to leave it in auto-mode a bit more than I normally might. One of my first subjects was our six-month old boy. Somehow, and I’m still bewildered by this, the camera automatically switched to a mode called “baby”. Well-played Sony.

Super Smart Cameras

It has all kinds of uber-intelligent features. Not only does it have face recognition, but you can program in faces and it will give them focal priority. Perhaps my favorite is the detail focusing mode. Press a button, begin to move the focus ring and the brilliant screen zooms to 100% so you can easily focus on that stray nose hair sticking out of your subjects nostril. It’s easy and quick and guarantees tack sharp focusing. Easily the best focus system I have encountered.

I have been a proponent of this camera and want people to understand that bigger, heavier, more complicated looking gear, does not make you look cooler, more professional, or a better photographer. Save your back and give these little guys a shot.

Bali Photo Tours

During our photo tours in Bali and Indonesia and I have been telling our guests about the new mirrorless cameras. We just wrapped a tour with photographers from National Geographic and The Smithsonian. I don’t think they were convinced, but I can’t really blame them as they have so much invested in their current livelihood. Other participants embraced the new technology straight away and never looked back. Personally, I dread to put my, now behemoth feeling, Canon back in my camera bag as I am loving the new found freedom the NEX-7 provides.

I still have a great deal to learn about this camera. I have only experimented with about 20% of what the camera can do. It does have a steep learning curve and the complex deep menus are less than intuitive, but I look forward to becoming increasingly fluent with it.

The Future of Photography?

Well, the NEX-7 is a taste of where the camera industry is going. The behemoth DSLRs will give way to the sleeker, smaller and smarter mirrorless cameras. It will take a while and there will be detractors like those luddites who fought the progression from film to digital. The real sea-change will occur when one of these companies can make a great mirrorless camera and leave it open source to allow developers to create apps for the cameras. Apps to help with time-lapse, long exposure, astral photography, tilt-shift and the like, similar to, but much better than the current apps available for the iPhone, will allow giant leaps forward and unprecedented freedom (and fun) for the photographer.

Most of the photographs for the last couple months of blog posts were taken with the NEX-7. To see some examples, please click here.

Pros-

• Outstanding tools to get tack sharp focus
• Size and weight (a fraction of the larger DSLRs)
• Excellent video quality- full manual controls- much better than the Canon 7D, 5D
• Panorama mode does a great job and can be used in portrait and landscape mode for different, and very handy, proportions
• OLED EVF and swivel LCD are outstanding
• The APS-C class sensor is huge, advanced and awesome
• Tri-Nav controls take some getting used to but quick, precise and well designed
•  24.3 megapixel with exceptional high ISO performance
• Cost- drastically less than Nikon and Canons higher-end DSLRs and picture quality is just as good

Cons:

(admittedly nit picky as I love the camera overall, but had to come up with some cons)

• Just about the only time I will choose my Canon 7D over the Sony NEX-7 is for action or animal shots. Swift moving subjects at changing focal lengths are a weakness. But if subjects are moving perpendicular and not changing focal length, the super fast shots per second of the NEX-7 can capture the action quite well.
• Auto shut off seldom works and with an already short battery capacity, this can drain the battery and kill a day’s shoot.
• Extra nitpicky, but door to battery and memory card should snap shut automatically. For now, one has to slide a plastic switch, which makes it impossible to do one handed. The extra bumbling makes it feel like I’ll break my memory card.
• Shade/protector Eye cup falls off- light graze by a monkey and mine plummeted 100 feet of the sacred dragon bridge to its untimely demise.
• Short battery life

For past travel gear reviews please check our essential travel packing list and here is a great list of gear for photographers.

Full disclosure: As mentioned above Sony sent me some of their products to test free of charge and with no stipulations. Financial compensation was not received for this post, sales of products or anything else. Opinions expressed here are my own. Read our full disclosure policy.   

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