Your opinion on the A6x00 bodies?

My APS-C e-mount experience is limited to the NEX-7. the arrangement of dials seems to make more sense on the newer cameras, but the only thing that was ever a barrier ergonomically was the NEX-7 menu - which makes modern Sony menus look terribly straight-forward.

At the end of the day, part of the appeal of these cameras is compactness - given how small they are I thinkn they are very easy to use (but I'll admit some bias :-)

I have a love-hate thing with them; they would really benefit from some simple improvements like a forefinger dial and a decent touchscreen implementation both of which shouldn't be so hard to add!

Also I do agree that the model numbers is all over the place. For someone who doesn't follow sony as closely as we/I do its confusing as hell. Is A6300 better than A6100? is A6500 better than A6400? etc etc
Was recently speaking to someone about it and in the end I just told them go with Fuji as it was too much effort to explain it all over a coffee.
Much like the A7 line they should have gone with Mk1, Mk2 etc.

The A6000 doesn't work well for me. I wonder if people buy it based on appearance, price and specifications without trying it. The viewfinder may work for right eyed people who don't wear glasses. The grip is not comfortable to me. I much prefer the A5000 grip. The top control placement is awkward, and it doesn't feel good.

The A6000 is not very compact. The EVF stacked on top of the 16x9 screen is a poor use of volume. The lens mount is too close to the grip.

The basic controls were fine on the inexpensive A5000. The A5000 is smaller and lighter.

The A6000 does use power quickly--batteries even tend to last longer in the A7II.

Edited by QuietOC - 16 November 2019 at 14:10

nandbytes wrote: Also I do agree that the model numbers is all over the place. For someone who doesn't follow sony as closely as we/I do its confusing as hell. Is A6300 better than A6100? is A6500 better than A6400? etc etc Was recently speaking to someone about it and in the end I just told them go with Fuji as it was too much effort to explain it all over a coffee. Much like the A7 line they should have gone with Mk1, Mk2 etc.

You think the Fuji naming/numbering is easy? Well as someone who doesn't follow Fuji I never know what I'm looking at X-T with one, two or three digits following, X-A, X-pro and IBIS sprinkled at random (so it seems to me) on some bodies but not all.

I agree that A6X00 could better distinguish the lower series without IBIS and the higher series with IBIS but as long as you know everything below 6500 has no IBIS and above 6500 has IBIS and that a higher number is better within those groups I don't think it's hard to explain.


My only APS-C body is the A6000 (and an older NEX6). I really like the A6000 and never felt the need to upgrade, either with or without IBIS. Body ergonomics are fine for me and the grip is large enough. My style of shooting doesn't require fast or tracking AF. I was at a tennis venue yesterday and the A6000 with FE70-300G worked like a charm and I got some real good shots of Nadal and Tsitsipas battling it out on court from about 10 rows up in the general public places. I'll post some shots once I have time to process them.

Edited by pegelli - 16 November 2019 at 15:29

He just throws around the number one and number six tennis players in the world as if he does this thing every week

Let me give my opinion, based on the A6000 and A6400.
The A6400 is better build then the A6000 - better materials, better buttons, everything. With the A6400 I can assign a button to switch between EVF and screen (hurrah ), that was my biggest gripe with the A6000. I do not need a joystick as I set my camera to tracking. I turned of the touch functionality as I kept finding my focus areas somewhere in a corner of the screen.

Being a mainly Aperture Priority shooter, I do not mind having only one real control wheel - when I need two in M-mode the back wheel suffices. I would hate it if the grip would become bigger because of a front wheel that I do not really need. One gripe I have is that with my A7r2 the wheel at the same position as the thumb wheel on the A6x00 cameras is the exposure compensation dial - I would have liked it to be a control wheel as well.....
Being left eye dominant, the viewfinder on the left is really nice. With some other cameras my hand and nose fight for real estate.
I do not find that there is not enough room between mount and grip, it is comfortable with all lenses. But maybe the way you hold the camera makes a different (maybe also for the people who want the grip to be bigger).

What I love about the A6x00 cameras is the fact that they are really easy to carry. They are small and light. With APS-C lenses it is a joy to just have it loosely in your hand until you see a good picture to take.

Sony menus are deep and therefore hard to figure out. But I do find them not less confusing then Canon menus - in fact, I find it easier to set up my Sony cameras then my Canon ones because Sony lets me adjust so much more.

Battery use is fine with the FW battery. The way I use my camera, a single battery will usually be enough. I will bring a spare when possible, but it is seldom needed. I am glad they went with the FW battery for the A6400 - I might not have replaced my A6000 if they had used the FZ battery. I know, I am weird

One of the things raised by Dpreview is that these cameras are somewhat complicated if you hand it to someone who is used to phones. I tend to agree, but I do not know how to avoid that, unless you go the route of the Leica T/TL. And if you just turn the camera to the green auto setting and tell them to only use the shutterbutton - they will be fine. But an A5200 with an easier interface to compete with the Canon M200 might make sense.

Oh, almost forgot: the Fuji naming scheme is also unintelligible, so is Canon's M cameras.

As lenses have been many years mostly made for FE, aps-c bodies have been littlebit undervalued IMO. For now I think most of aps-c users already have what they need and aps-c use is fun enough. Aps-c can easily be only body one has.

Re. batteries, I'm also still a user (and fan) of the smaller batteries. It means currently I use the same battery (and charger) for all my three camreas. And with a bit of planning they hold enough power for me. For instance yesterday, started the day at 80%, took several pictures while walking through London and started shooting (and chimping to check my settings as shooting tennis was a first for me) After the first match the battery still had 19%. To be sure I changed it for the second match to a new one and after another large barrage of shots and lots of chimping (again all shots in the train back) it's now still at 77%.

Yes, if I didn't plan ahead I might have fallen without power during the second match and could have easily blamed the small batteries for that, but that would just have been an easy cop out.