Sony NEX 5N, My noobish thoughts

Posted March 4, 2012
Written By Ken Stark
2 Comments
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Sony NEX 5N

Photography’s always been something that I’ve had a mild interest in. I never could actually do anything about that interest, due to my lack of a real camera.

Well lately I’ve decided it was time to correct that situation, so I am now the owner of a Sony NEX 5N mirrorless camera. And let me tell you, this thing is well worth the cash I dropped for it.

Seeing that the only thing I’ve had to take pictures with up till now is my cameraphone, the word upgrade seems a bit of an understatement.

So, how about getting some specs out there.

This camera is rocking a 16.1 megapixel APS-C sensor, 10 fps continuous shooting mode, up to 1080 / 60p AVCHD video capture, a touch-enabled 3-inch LCD, and a maximum ISO of 25,600.

I first saw this camera on Tekzilla, where they raved about the low light performance, mostly due to the large sensor. Packing an APS-C sensor into this small body instead of the usual Micro Four-Thirds couldn’t have been easy, but Sony did it, and it’s freaking awesome.

I haven’t really had a chance to take this outside a lot, so most of the pictures i’ve been taking are indoors, and I don’t have the brightest house. But the pictures have been coming out great with this camera. You can set the ISO to 3200 with no grain easily.

I will say that I wish it didn’t rely on the touchscreen quite so much, and that there were more physical controls. But, I suppose that’s the price you pay for the smaller body size. Speaking of the small size, I have fairly large hands, so that can sometimes be a bit of an issue for me. I find that pulling the screen out, gives me a better place to put my thumb and keep the camera steady.

I find the NEX 5N a bit easier to hold like this.

One of my first attempts at light painting.

I’ve found myself doing a lot of experimenting. One of the first things I did was buy a tripod and start playing with long-exposure images. I haven’t really done much, but I can’t wait to play more and learn as I go.

I also bought a couple adapters, so that I could play with some astrophotography. My telescope isn’t exactly very powerful, but I was able to get some nice shots of the moon on a recent clear night.

I’ve only played with video just a little bit, but I have to say it just looks great. Also, you may have heard about a clicking sound that occurs during video taking. Sony said they had that issue fixed, and so far it looks like they have. I haven’t heard any clicks on any of the videos i’ve taken, even when I’ve been moving around a bit.

All in all, I have to say I’m very happy with buying this camera, and really can’t wait to play with it more. I want to do more video stuff with it, because really it can pretty much be used as a full video camera as well as still camera.