Sony Alpha 6000 Review

The Sony Alpha 6000 was announced earlier at the start of the year 2014 and I shared about the Alpha 6000 in a post here! From the information and technical specifications inside the press release, it was a pretty impressive mirror-less camera and around the second quarter of 2014, I went down for short hands on photography and handling experience with the Sony Alpha 6000 during an evening session. Thereafter, I shared some initial thoughts here during my short hands on experience with the Sony Alpha 6000.

An opportunity came up to review the Sony Alpha 6000 and I welcomed it with open arms to play, review and add more camera reviews to my photography sharing/social media influencer portfolio. While the review period was a bit shorter than the usual norm, I managed to play, test and review the Sony Alpha 6000 in a few different possible settings and surroundings.

I brought the Sony Alpha 6000 out for daily leisure use, street photography, food and cafes hopping, and also my own personal fun photography project with my recent Star Wars Lego AT-RT exploring different locations in Singapore and Bare Your Sole 2014!

Let me share with you my thoughts on the pros and cons of the Sony Alpha 6000 during my 10 days review –

Pros

• The Sony Alpha 6000 hybrid autofocus is fast and impressive for a mirror-less interchangeable lens camera.
• Tested Sony Alpha 6000 with their 11fps capability on a bartender juggling his mixer and alcohol bottle during earlier hands on event prior to the review.
• Nice Titanium colour giving it a retro feel.
• Clear and bright electronic viewfinder that is sensitive and changes quickly when changing from LCD view to OLED Tru-Finder view.
• NFC and Wi-Fi capabilities.
• 179 Phase-detection AF points / 25 points Contrast-detection AF
• Fast Hybrid AF (Phase-detection AF/Contrast-detection AF)
• Not heavy and compact in size.
• Nice grip at the side.
• Intuitively placed mode and control dials on top and side of the camera, giving it a DSLR control feel.
• LCD Screen can tilt up by approximate 90 degrees and tilt down by approximate 45 degrees.
• The Black and White of the Creative Style is nice and fun to use. The photographers can switch to it and use it for street photography.

Cons

• Battery life is not ideal; the Sony Alpha 6000 camera body can drain it quite fast.
• At ISO 25,600, the noise level can be grainy and challenging for photography usage.
• The Sony Alpha 6000 auto crop some of my photographs that I shot to produce an additional portrait photograph, some were hits while some were misses.
• While it is a Fast Hybrid AF (phase-detection AF/contrast-detection AF) with 179 points (phase-detection AF) / 25 points (contrast-detection AF), there were a few times when the AF failed me.

Overall, the Sony Alpha 6000 is a lightweight and pretty powerful interchangeable lens mirror-less digital camera. It’s ideal for travel and leisure photographers. With the fast AF for the Sony Alpha 6000 mirror-less camera, it might suit event photographers too. For the purist photographer, the OLED Tru-Finder view is really nice, fast and the rangefinder photographer fan would love it. Since I only got the SELP1650 lens for the review, I wasn’t able to have a feel of the other Sony lenses that could be mounted on the Sony Alpha 6000, the weight factor and output from them. I wished I had more lenses to try out with the Sony Alpha 6000!

The Sony Alpha 6000 might attract photographers who are looking for a mirror-less interchangeable lens camera as their second camera, back up camera or daily leisure camera. Photographers friends that I know who own Sony system are wishing and waiting for more Sony lenses for their E-Mount system and I am looking forward to Sony announcements for their lenses in the near future and I can share with my readers!

If you are considering owning the Sony Alpha 6000, it is now available in Singapore at all Sony stores, Sony Centres and selected authorized dealers at the following prices:

– ILCE-6000 (Body only) SGD $849 (Black only)

– ILCE-6000L (Body + SELP1650 Lens) SGD $1,099 (Black & Titanium)

The photographs that I took with the Sony Alpha 6000 during the review period can be found here on 500px and Flickr, do visit and have an experience/feel on the Sony Alpha 6000 output, performance and quality.

I would like to thank Sony Electronics Asia Pacific and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide for the Sony Alpha 6000 review opportunity.