NEX 6 Hybrid AF speed vs NEX 5n - a comparison

Hi

I just picked up the new NEX 35mm f1.8 lens and gave it a quick try on a NEX 6. The AF speed seemed pleasantly snappy.. and then tried it on my old 5n and noticed it still seemed pleasantly snappy :-)... and that's how I ended up wasting several hours compare all my NEX lenses on both cameras to see if I could see any difference of AF speed (I didn't test for accuracy).

As you can see... the difference wasn't exactly mind blowing... in fact, under the limitations of my admittedly rough and ready testing conditions.. it was pretty much zero. To check I wasn't completely on the wrong track I then dug out my A77 with the 1650 SSM lens - and that definitely was faster than both (bottom graph)!

Still everything is relative - at least the new 35mm f1.8 does fairly well in terms of AF speed on both cameras

Scott

ps

The test itself was fairly basic - I sat in my office and chose 6 different fairly high contrast targets at different distances and cycled through them 3 times, timing myself. I then repeated the test twice more. I then stuck the same lens on the other camera and repeated. I would characterise the lighting conditions as average to poor - the rooms were lit by fluorescent light bulbs during the day. All the lenses were set wide open (and given the camera already does this for focussing that shouldnt make a difference if they weren't ?) but obviously, the max apertures vary quite a lot between the kit lenses and the fast primes. I made no adjustments for the area under the AF spot for different focal lengths (which will also affect AF speed).

I tried to be fairly thorough within the rules of my test but there are MANY caveats to this testing set up which I won't go into here - not least of which is my ability to quickly move from target to target accurately and quickly, particualrly at longer focal lengths. I've posted the full details of the test plus the underlying numbers on my blog for anyone who is interested

http://www.snicolphotos.com/blog/2013/2/is-the-new-hybrid-af-system-on-the-nex-6-actually-any-faster

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