Home » Gear »News » Currently Reading:

Sony Launches Alpha NEX-5

May 11, 2010 by Gear, News

The web is buzzing today with news and reviews of Sony’s new Alpha NEX-5 and NEX-3. The NEX-5 shoots full 1080 video in a small form factor that seems to emphasize what Shane Hurlbut ASC said last year at the Collision Conference about cameras becoming little black boxes holding the chip and nothing more because it’s all about the glass.

These cameras are Sony’s answer to the Micro Four Thirds systems (which I am a fan of) that can accept almost any brand of lens with readily available adapters. This category removes the optical viewfinder and mirror box (the LR part of SLR) and rely on electronic viewfinders. These systems are commonly referred to as EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder with Interchangable Lens). Sony tagged these cameras with the Alpha moniker along with their new line of DSLRs but they don’t share a lens mount with this system. They created a new mount (E for electronic) and released the first batch of lenses that have left reviewers non-plussed mostly due to distortion and pincushioning.

Sony has had an uphill battle entering into the DSLR market against Canon and Nikon this late in the game. Their expertise is in electronics and they say that they are after the 10 million people who want something in between a point and shoot and a DSLR, not DSLR shooters who want a companion camera. We will see how this works out for them as we remember that the market will determine how cameras are used, ask Canon. Eventually the shallow mounts on these cameras will lend themselves to adapters for a multitude of lenses and the smart move of metal construction on the NEX-5 should pay off.

Addendum: Michael Reichmann discusses the Sony EVIL platform in detail over at Luminous-Landscape.

Related Posts