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4 reviews
Perfect camera.
Perfect camera. Lightweight, compact, and the quality is not inferior shooting SLR. An indispensable travel companion. Do not part with it.
Sony NEX5N: Compact beauty, but not for video!
My purchase of the Sony NEX5N was prompted by a desire to learn more about making videos with DSLRs. The Sony was far cheaper, second hand, than an equivelant Canon, and I since already have Sony video cameras, I bought it.
It's very compact and has a nice zoom lens with a fast auto focus that's supposed to follow faces and moving figures. It seems to work ok. It has a very nice tilt-able screen to take photos from above or below your eye level. The battery lasts well but I bought a cheap unbranded one to make sure I never ran out of power. It feels solid too with a metallic feel to the body and it will just about fit in your coat pocket.
My first experience is that the NEX5N is very complicated to use. Any touch of the central control wheel brings up a menu selection that's a chore to cancel. If you deliberately press the wheel, there are five different ways to press it (I kid you not) and, depending on the program setting, each press gives a different result. Even if you have a good memory, it's a nightmare. This is typical of Sony products though and I should have anticipated it.
My other disappointment was the slow lens. It's only rated at F3.5-5.6 and I'd hoped to get some super-cool narrow depth of field shots. Unfortunately it's difficult to do in video mode with this lens. I expect I need a much faster lens to achieve this but they are VERRRRY expensive!. Added to this, the lack of microphone and headphone sockets, making serious sound recording impossible, and I regretfully have to say that this should not be top of your list if you're primarily looking for a video camera. As an inexpensive experimental camera though, it was very useful. I've been able to find out what I really need for video without investing a small fortune, and I can easily get my money back on eBay! But I'm not going to do that yet: I'm going to use it to experiment with, buy a lens adapter and try a few different lenses to see if I can nail that illusive bokeh!
As for photos, well, it does take them, and they look very good. I left the camera in "full auto" for those and they look very nice. But then, photos from any camera costing more than a few pounds ought to look good! Maybe if it had a viewfinder it would be easier to take good photos but without it, and despite the amount of technology squeezed into the tiny body, I felt it seemed more like a snap shot camera.
Update: January 2013. Using this camera in automatic, or program mode has yielded very good video results. The image stabilisation was very good on a heaving boat in choppy seas, and the image colours were beautiful. So while it's too complex to be a useful manual camera, in auto mode, it's a breeze!Read full review...
A good camera with a GRIP!!
This compared to a lot of compact system cameras has a GRIP, take note Olympus and Panasonic - people do need to hold a camera without fear of dropping it!!
The only gripes I had whilst owning it is that you do seem to accidently change settings without realising it, the touch screen can be more annoying than help but generally its a good camera, with good picture quality. I think the NEX6 is better in many respects as the controls are better placed but its SOO much more expensive.Read full review...
very good camera to replace a DSLR
I was already happy owner of the NEX 5. The new 5N seems much better in low light and the autofocus faster and probably more acute.