Sony Alpha NEX Launch in KL

I went for the Sony Alpha NEX launch event in Lot 10, KL today. It was nicely organised. Started right on time too. Only thing I didn't like was that only Sony cameras were allowed inside. I sneaked my little Leica point & shoot inside though. Hehe. The only Sony camera I have right now is a museum piece and cannot possibly handle the low light event.

Front entrance and registration counter.

Showing off and explaining the features of the NEX.

Blasting away at 7fps!

Fun and games for the guests

Crowded stage area.

Let's get on to the camera itself.

Insane Alpha NEX with the Sony 70-400G lens on it!!!! Just imagine the focal length. It's a mind boggling 105-600mm f4-5.6 lens on the NEX.

The Alpha NEX Gallery.

My thoughts on the Sony Alpha NEX

This little wonder lives up to every expectation and more. Sony has taken the big, bold step of being the 1st to market an affordable APS-C sensor compact camera and they deserve all the praises the NEX is getting now. I played around with it for about 45 minutes and loved every minute of it. This camera is just superb.

1st thing I tried out was the user interface. It's nice and simple. Just activate the Menu with a single button. You then navigate the menu with a dial which has a button in the middle of it. It's very much like the system on my Canon Pro SLR bodies. I got used to it in about 2 minutes and got down to snapping lots and lots of pictures to try out the image quality.

Once I started snapping pictures with it, I was totally blown away. It is simply the nicest little compact camera I've tried. The image quality was fantastic in the dark testing conditions there and the high ISO looked pretty good from what I could see on the LCD display itself. I will reserve final judgement on that until I get to see full size pictures on my LCD monitor at home though.

This lil fella does HD video too. The NEX5 does 1080i and the NEX3 does 720p. I had no interest in trying out the video modes though. I already have the best 1080p, 24fps capable SLR in the form of my EOS 5D MarkII. I'll just take Sony's word in this case. It should handle video nicely considering the vast experience Sony has with the Handycam video cameras.

The thing that blew me away was the bokeh. I have not seen any other compact camera delivering this level of bokeh. That APS-C sensor sure is paying dividends here. I only tested with the 18-55mm kitlens on it. Just imagine a fast lens on the NEX, the bokeh would be even more creamy then.

I was really interested to try the NEX with the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens but the lady who was in charge of it had seemingly disappeared. Haha. In my opinion, this is the perfect combination for the NEX. The pancake lens is a 24mm f2.8 lens in 35mm terms. That is just such a lovely range and speed on a small compact camera. This is the combo that I'm personally interested in. If I were to buy the NEX, this is it. I'd buy the NEX3 with the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens on it. It would be the ultimate vacation camera for me. Compact, light, wide, fast and amazingly cheap. Perfect, just absolutely perfect.

If I owned shares in Panasonic and Olympus, I'd start selling them soon. The Sony NEX is gonna kick some major m43 butt!!!!!