Photography post: a new camera surprises & musings on product reviews & reviewing

Familiarity breeds acceptance. At least with cameras and me. They may not work as well as I’d like but I adapt and learn to put up with their idiosyncrasies. Annoyance fades away. This is just how they are. There may be better alternatives but the hassle of a whole new system is just too much so I don’t change.

Then the system is altered and suddenly improves, and I wonder why I didn’t realise how bad the old one was and why it’s taken this long for it to change. That’s happened with the Sony a6700 camera, which I have just bought, having persuaded myself to do so in this post from the 5^th August. My reasons for doing so was because it uses the same battery as my Sony a6600 (which I only bought in May this year because my a6000 was failing) and like that camera is weather-sealed and has stabilisation so when I carry both on a long walk (I always take two cameras in case of failure – it has happened) they are interchangeable.

I did note in the August 5 post that the a6700 “has a few advantages over the a6600 - the controls look easier to use, the screen flips out to the side, the eye tracking focus sounds astonishing - but nothing like those of the latter over the a6000”. I was completely wrong. The advantages over the a6600 are vastly greater than the latter over the a6000, so great in fact that they’ve opened my eyes to how poor much of the design of the a6000 and a6600 actually is.

The a6000 dates from 2014. I bought mine in 2016 to go with the Sony NEX 7 I bought in 2012 (NEX being the original name of Sony’s APS-C camera line) as both had the same 24mp sensors and I wanted to use them on a long walk with different lenses on each without the image quality being different. I really like the NEX 7 and think its controls are better than the very similar ones on the a6000 and a6600 (though nowhere near as good as the a6700). The menu system is also better than those of the later a6000 series cameras though still clumsy and not very intuitive.

I stuck with the NEX/a6000 cameras because I became familiar with them and found them reliable if somewhat quirky and awkward. I started with them when mirrorless cameras were new and there were only a few models. Of those I thought the NEX 5 the best, as explained in this post, so I bought it. I then started buying lenses and learning how the system worked. I had and have no intention of changing. Once I had the NEX 5 I never considered any other range. I’d found a system that worked for me and that was fine.

Menus: a6700 left, a6600 right

Until the a6700. Now I wonder how I put up with the earlier cameras! The a6700 has much better controls (even better than the NEX 7) and a much easier to use and more intuitive menu system. It’s been easy to set it up so I can access everything I want very quickly. I admit that a touchscreen, which wasn’t around for the NEX and a6000, also makes a difference (the a6600 has one that doesn’t do much), but it’s the overall layout of the menus that’s the real improvement.

Top plates: a6600 top, a6700 bottom

With the controls it’s the addition of a scroll wheel in front of the on/off switch that I really like. I can alter aperture and shutter speed easily with this and the top dial without taking my eye from the viewfinder. A simple positive change is the movement of the video button from the side to the top of the camera, where it can’t be inadvertently switched on, as it can with the NEX and earlier a6000 cameras. Not a big deal but part of the overall improvement in design.

Great spotted woodpecker. Sony a 6700, Sony E 70-350 lens, f8 at 1/400, ISO 500. Cropped

I don’t know yet if the recognition auto-focus is better than on the a6600. It’s certainly easier to use and has many more options – seven instead of two, including insects, which I almost certainly will use, and cars, trains, and planes, which I probably won’t.

Screens: a6700 top, a6600 bottom

The screen is another big improvement. On the NEX 7 and the a6000 it just angles up and down. On the a6600 it can be flipped up so you can see yourself for selfies and videos. On the a6700 it can be opened to the side and angled up and down and front and back facing. It’s bigger and brighter too.

I am delighted with the a6700. It is so easy to use compared with the earlier cameras. But why has it taken Sony so long to do this? And why have I put up with the earlier designs?

The answer to the last is because I didn’t know any better and realising this started me thinking about the difference between being a reviewer and a user. I’ve been testing hiking and backpacking gear for over forty years. When I try a new item I can compare it to alternatives old and new. I know which features work well and I know which features I like (they’re not necessarily the same). I can see how well an item fits into the whole range of similar products. I can’t do that with cameras. I’m a user not a reviewer. I’ve never used a mirrorless camera not in the Sony APS-C line. I don’t know how much better other brands may be, if at all. I’m not in a position to try many different cameras to see which one works best for me (and I mean really try them not just play with them briefly in a store). Maybe if I was I’d have changed from Sony long ago. As it is I’m glad Sony has changed. I haven’t felt as excited about a camera since the NEX 7.

I rely on reviewers who know camera gear like I know backpacking gear. But I only read reviews of Sony APS-C cameras and compatible lenses in detail. The rest I just glance at. I have no idea how other brands compare. It doesn’t mean the camera reviews aren’t important though. They’re the reason I never considered the a6100, a6300, a6400 or a6500 cameras – none seemed to offer any significant advantage over the a6000 – and only considered the a6600 when the a6000 began to fail. Lenses were a different matter and good reports by reviewers I trust has convinced me to buy several of them, and they’ve all been worthwhile purchases.

The reasons I decided on the a6700 – the battery compatibility with the a6600, the weather-sealing, the stabilisation – are still important but they’re overshadowed by the changes to the menus and the controls.

Rainbow at dusk. Sony a6700, Sony E 18-135 at 37mm, F8 at 1/25, ISO 100

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned image quality once. That’s because I doubt it will be much different to the a6600 or the a6000 or even the NEX 7. The a6700 does have a 26mp sensor rather than the 24mp one of the other three cameras but I don’t expect that to make a significant difference. So far I’ve only taken 30 photos and haven’t yet done a direct comparison using the same lens and settings. Maybe low light high ISO performance will be a little better, but I think the improvements in processing software, especially DxO PhotoLab, are far more significant. And of course lenses matter too when it comes to image quality.

Photography Thoughts: New cameras lead to new lenses lead to new cameras lead to .... a cascade!

View from Braeriach in the Cairngorms, June 2023. Sony a6600 & Sony E 11mm f1.8

There's a cascade of tech that often follows the purchase of just one item. Suddenly previous items don't work so well with it as they did with the item it replaced so it seems a good idea to replace them, which triggers more of the same until a whole system has been replaced even though the original intention was for just one item.

This has happened with my camera gear. Back in May I replaced my seven-year old Sony a6000 with the Sony a6600 as the former was developing some irritating quirks and the old batteries faded very quickly. The a6600 has a much bigger battery that lasts much longer along with some other appealing features the a6000 lacks. 

Sony a6600 & Sony 11mm lens

At the same time I replaced my old Samyang 12mm lens with the Sony E 11mm f1.8 because the latter has electronic connections and so its details are in the DxO Photolab 6 database, which I now use for processing raw files. At least that's what I told myself and wrote in this post. I suspect though the desire for a new lens to go with the new camera also played a part.

That I thought was it. My other lenses were all in the DxO database and all still worked fine. However some rainy weather changed my mind. The a6000 isn't a weather-sealed camera. The a6600 is but the only weather-sealed lenses I have are the 11mm and the big Sony 70-350 zoom, which I don't use that often and never take on multi-day walks. I did use the non-weather-sealed Sony 10-18mm f4 zoom a fair bit and always took that on long walks. Now I found that having weather-sealing on the camera but not the lens was frustrating when it was raining, especially when there was an alternative in the weather-sealed Sony 10-20mm f4 lens, which is also smaller and lighter. So I traded in the 10-18. The 10-20mm doesn't have image stabilisation, unlike the 10-18mm, but the a6600 does, unlike the a6000. 

With the Sony a6600 & 18-135mm lens in Knoydart, May 2023

My most-used lens however is the Sony E 18-135mm zoom. This doesn't have weather-sealing. At present there is no weather-sealed alternative to this, which is probably good for my wallet. I both want and don't want Sony to bring out a new weather-sealed 18-135mm!

So, long-windedly, this brings me to the new Sony a6700, the replacement for the a6600 that was launched recently. This has a few advantages over the a6600 - the controls look easier to use, the screen flips out to the side, the eye tracking focus sounds astonishing - but nothing like those of the latter over the a6000. So why am I considering (and so far resisting) buying one?

Because I now have a system whose components aren't as compatible as I'd like them to be. On long walks I usually carry two cameras, both in case one fails (it has happened) and so that I don't have to keep changing lenses and risking dust and dirt on the sensor. Along with the a6000 I carried the older Sony Nex 7. Both cameras take the same battery. Neither is weather-sealed or image stabilisation. Essentially they are interchangeable. 

Now I have a camera that takes a different battery and that has weather-sealing and image stabilisation plus two lenses that have the former but not the latter. If I take the a6000 as my other camera that means carrying different batteries and remembering which body and which lenses are weather-sealed or stabilised. Not a big hassle but I'd rather have two bodies that work the same way with all my lenses and take the same battery, hence my interest in the a6700. I've probably persuaded myself to buy one in writing this post!

Now I just need that weather-sealed 18-135mm!

So deciding to replace a camera body has ended up with me also buying two new lenses and likely to buy another new camera. I didn't intend this!

I haven't mentiond image quality. That's because I don't expect the a6700 to take noticeably higher quality ones than the a6000. The a6600 certainly doesn't, In fact the images from it are indistinguishable from those from the NEX 7. The new lenses are more likely to make a little difference but probably not much. 

What does make a difference, and with some images a big one, is DxO Photolab 6, which I wrote about last month.