A Correction: Sony A6600

I'd just like to correct a couple of mis-impressions in the Sony A6600 post below, which set a record for traffic in recent days.

First, although it could definitely be improved and in fact is rather crying out for some improvements that would be easy to make, it's also a very fine little camera that is a constant pleasure to use. It's got a great feel in the hand, the battery lasts forever, and the haptics (hand-feel, the feel of the knobs, size, sounds, responsiveness etc.) are excellent, among those indefinable things that make a camera pleasing.

If Sony improves it they'll only double down on making the video features better, and that won't improve the camera as a stills shooter which is all I care about.

A reader admonished me for saying the A6600 has "top-level features," claiming that the camera re-uses the A6500 sensor and allegedly doesn't have Sony's very latest. I don't think he knows that for sure, but maybe he's right. However: doesn't matter. The A6600 sensor is excellent. It's outstanding. It's highly correctable, especially in terms of shadow recovery; has very good DR in practice, great color, and the files are very pleasing. I really hope to put it up against the Leica's full-frame sensor before I send that camera back, because my seat-o'-the-pants sense is that it's going to hold its own even in absolute terms. I don't care if something isn't the absolute latest, which is a constantly diminishing attribute anyway, as long as it's good. I said that A6600 has a very good sensor, and I'll stand by that all day long. It's one of the main reasons I use the camera.

That is all.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Grit and Grace: Women at Work in the Emerging World. Unfortunately, this will be the posthumous swan song of the indefatigable documentarian Alison Wright, whose untimely death at 60 in the Azores this year meant she never got to see it published. Wright's photography was inextricably entwined with her life's dedication to social justice, a sense of acceptance of humanity, and a roving search for beauty and color.

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[jseliger]

"A reader admonished me for saying the A6600 has 'top-level features,' claiming that the camera re-uses the A6500 sensor and allegedly doesn't have Sony's very latest."

I don't think I "admonished" you, but I do think "top-level features" is inconsistent with "aged sensor." It's true that the newer Sony APS-C sensor is most useful for video, but one does get other benefits; for example, DPR says: "be aware that the sensor in the a6600 - though capable of great image quality - isn't the fastest to read out. This means that you may find the E-shutter resulting in banding in artificial light, and if you have a fast-moving subject or are panning, you're likely to see rolling shutter artifacts. Some of the a6600's competitors are using faster, more modern sensors that don't suffer from these problems as severely." The flash shutter speed is also slow, which is important for many of us who work with flash.

That the camera re-uses the sensor is not just a "claim." See, for example, https://www.cameralabs.com/sony-alpha-a6600-review/: "The A6600 employs the 24 Megapixel APSC sensor introduced on the A6300 three and a half years earlier."

If you like the A6600, great, but $1500 for a re-hashed sensor with well-known weaknesses when Sony itself makes the upgraded version of the sensor is a pretty peculiar set of choices on Sony's part.

Precision in language matters.

[James]

Ok, but if it is the same sensor as the 6500, why not buy a used 6500 and keep some money ... for say lenses?

Ok, maybe something else in the camera is better. What is that? Is it better than spending the extra money on a better lens?

Or, for some other folks, is it worth upgrading from the 6500? 6400? That is an even starker choice. My heuristic is to skip at least one generation. What about the camera overcomes that heuristic?

[Yuan]

For still photography, Sony desperately needs a new pancake-ish 35mm (FF equiv.) lens. The Zeiss 24/1.8 is long in the tooth and sticks out too much.

[Ilkka]

Isn’t that a6600 almost identical to the a7c, in size, weight, buttons and wheels, button placement etc. apart from the full frame vs APS sensor (and tilting vs swinging rear screen). Just wondering because the a6600 is great but the a7c is bad with no front wheel making it practically unusable, at least based on what most reviews say. (Not complaining about you).