Despite years of rumour that Sony will release a pro or prosumer APS-C camera body, they still haven't . I took a look at a Nikon Z50 recently and other than the pentaprism-style hump, it's not much bigger than, say an A6500, but has much better ergonomics.
Granted the Z50 doesn't have IBIS but given the promising lens line-up and future lenses, it's tempting to ditch my Sony gear and switch to Nikon mirrorless.
Is anyone else thinking along the same lines?
The a6600 has the best overall 24mp aps-c/crop sensor ever measured for dr and noise, these are indisputable facts. It amounts to around 0.5 to 0.75 ev stops between the worst ie original a6000 to the best ie the a6400 prior to the a6600. It is a "huge" amount in relative terms and opens/narrows the gap between competition/FF options such that the a6600 is placed in a very unique spot, well above any other mirrorless aps-c and just behind the very best FF milc for sensor performance, in a nutshell it has the dr and high iso noise of essentially the previous generation Sony ff the a7ii, this is probably the closest approximation to the sensor performance for dr/noise, in every way it is equivalent to FF and with the correct lens even better than FF imo, some comparisons for perspective;
Below a6600
1inch around 2 full stops less, a lot!
m43 around -1.2(best) to -1.7ev(worst) 20mp sensor c/w a6600
Fuji x-t3(4) -0.66 ev c/w a6600
Fuji x-h1/x-t2 -1.0 ev c/w a6600
Fuji x-pro2 -1.2 ev c/w a6600
Canon m6 ii -1.0ev c/w a6600
and some FF below the a6600
Canon eos R -0.33ev c/w a6600
Leica q2 -0.2 ev c/w a6600
sony a9 -0.5 ev c/w a6600
and parity with a6600
Nikon z6 parity c/w a6600
sony a9 ii parity(just) c/w a6600
sony a7 ii (just)
and a6600 is slightly behind in dr/noise
a7 iii +0.6ev c/w a6600
a7r3/4 +0.6ev c/w a6600
z7 +0.6 ev c/w a6600
a6600 might not tick all of the gadget fans list of must have's but for those of us who approach photography from a more "realistic" and "purist" perspective these are the defining elements that make the a6600 one of if not the best overall compact crop camera available today, some other factors;
Base iso 100.
Sony produce cameras with base iso 100, a low base iso is the most basic feature of all! Can you imagine as a photographer being told you can't use iso 100 film anymore, well if you use Fuji crop or m43 that is the situation! Their top end models have 1/8000 sec shutter speeds but reality is they are only 1/4000 equivalent and even worse the lower end models are 1/2000 equivalent. OK, they added in many cases an e-shutter, but do I trust it, no, do I use it, sometimes but not often, where would I use it, where I need to be quiet? where would that be, generally in doors, do I get high shutter speed in door, no! So e-shutter is useful, but I would not use it if I want maximum dr, many cameras switch to 12 bit in e-shutter too and not to mention apart from the a9 the issues with rolling shutter. So for base iso 100 alone, Sony has a lot of things going for it already and this most basic feature of all isn't even included on many cameras, many rated essential by dpr/ir/etc etc, I find it shocking and almost incredible that they continue to ignore this not to mention 2 historic photographic companies like Fuji and Olympus, can't even provide iso 100, the most basic feature of all!
Noise
Without a shadow of a doubt the a6600 measure as well as the best aps-c sensors ever made for noise, so we are talking clean noise free images upto iso3200, a bit of noise above there making post processing necessary. Now, the a7iii moved this up a notch/stop to iso6400 meanwhile the a7r3 was iso 5700 and a7r4 iso 4700, so the denser the sensor the more noise there is. In crop on the a7r3 and a7r4 they are 2600 and 2300 respectively so a7r3 is definitely the cleaner option and it is less packed.
On aps-c the new m6ii/90d sensor is very poor with noise performance, lenstip observed a 1 stop poorer performance than the a6600 and this is not quite seen in measurement but close to, ie the Canon is good to iso1600 and a bit, whereas the a6600 is pushing iso 3200, 1 stop. But obviously there are even more factors when comparing against the Canon line and other 24mp ff options. In all cases the denser the sensor the poorer the noise performance and the Canon 32mp is a great example of how bad everything can get ie a combination of high noise/poor dr and resolution, not to mention the shortage of native lenses for the format in the m's case.
Resolution
In all of lenstip's measurements they conclude that the a6600 without an aa filter is capable of resolution significantly higher than the new Canon 32mp sensor and in their tests better than the x-t3 at the time of testing. There won't be much between the 24 and 26 in reality but the Canon is a real surprise, well it is and it isn't. Unfortunately its blessed with the same issue as all of the 24mp ff cameras and many other Canon's incl. the eosR, a very destructive aa filter. You need them with larger pixels and low pixel counts but it sort of flips around 24mp, why Canon put an aa on their 32mp sensor, no idea, maybe because they didn't want it to embarrass the eosR, no idea, but they have and it's a detail killer. Now, what this also leads people to assume is the lack of detail is an indication of low noise too, that's how it looks but it means as you attempt to compensate by over-sharpening it all falls apart spectacularly. Sony do some weird stuff under the hood with the a7iii raw files, sharpening and noise reduction too but you can't get away from the fact the images are soft and detail has been rubbed away especially in the vertical plane where the aa is strongest, with the z6 its stronger in the horizontal on the Canon, well it's just strong overall.
Af
Do we really need to go here, the af on the a6600/a6400/a6100 is the state of the art, Sony are a mean bunch though, I know why and they know why, lets hope they are watching what I am saying, as good as it is and it's pretty faultless they know they can make the a6600 even better, Sony you know what I am saying!!!!
ibis
Apart from m43 there are only 3 aps-c ibis mirrorless cameras, until tomorrow lol, a6500, a6600 and x-h1, x-t4, I'd say the a6500 was decent but it was behind the x-h1, the a6600 is definitely better, not infinitely that it surpasses the x-h1 but the x-h1 and 16-55 and a6600 and 16-55 feel similar and probably favour the a6600 due to weight, that and the fact I needed to carry at least 2 spare batteries with the x-h1, and sometime 4 wasn't enough. Maybe the battery is helping the a6600, it would make sense that they can drive it harder with more power on tap for longer.
So, I conclude that the a6600 is one of the greatest compact bodies ever made, it actually is a little less compact than the other a6x series, the grip and battery push it to 500g and boy does it feel nice in hand, 450-500g is again the sweet spot imo, neither too big or too light, for me anyway it's a very comfortable weight, especially with the enlarged grip and incredible battery life, the em1 ii is nearly 600g along with the g9 etc which are even bigger and over 650g, so the a6600 is positively svelte like in comparison to those bodies. But the a6600 is everything and more besides;
corner evf give it that rangefinder esque look and it looks much less dslr than just about everything available today with the level of performance inside. I get that it doesn't have the highest res evf, but my x-h1 did and it was useless in mag mode, useless, I haven't used the 7r3/4 in mag mode so I don't know if they are the same but the x-t3 had the same evf as the x-h1 so I can only conclude it will be just as bad. The a6600 evf is very fluid though and shows no traceable smearing or tearing effects, in many respects its a state of the art evf and I have zero problems with it, I'll take it over the x-h1 every single day of the week.
What does the a6600 lack, well for me it lacks nothing of any consequence, I found the 50 frame raw buffer and 25 sec clearing for 50 raws slightly better than the experience on the x-h1/x-t2 despite the uhs-ii slots, each could do around 30 raws, which can be an issue mid-burst, where 5 secs at 8 fps is quite enough usually with the option to go to 6 or even 7 secs in a single burst with the a6600. X-t2/x-h1 would take around 10-15 seconds to clear from memory, so they seem comparable, ie 60 cleared frames in around 30 seconds and approximately 100 frames per minute including clearing, this is using the lexar gold uhs-ii 2000x, despite the a6600 being uhs-i. I prefer the a6600 to just about anything I have ever used for burst, the g9 could do longer but it topped out at 9fps with af and the em1 ii was 10fps and af/ae. So overall the a6600 is capable and they all have their little quirks, shooting 40 frame bursts seems a none issue and slows you down by around what a few seconds if you fill the buffer and have to wait, big wow!
One final plus for the a6600, the rear lcd, thank goodness they didn't make it look like a camcorder, wow the lcd tilts and pulls out to allow every possible angle including in portrait mode I find the viewing angles and the ability to tilt in multiple ways the best thing ever, the a6600, imo, is one of if not the best camera designs ever;
dr,noise,size,resolution,af,ibis,screen,evf,weather-sealing, buffer, burst, battery, grip, weight,lens options,buttons,touch-pad etc etc., it is simply the best!
