Sony a6100 review: Should this be your next family camera?

The cheapest option would be reusing the A5100 body.

Have you looked into such an EVF and compare with higher res EVFs?

"EXkurogane That pathetic 1.44m dot EVF is enough of a reason not to buy one"

I disagree, even in my mid 30s I still have 20/15 vision and I have found no issues with the EVF in my A6000 also at 1.44m dots. Frankly, the EVF for my Panasonic GX1 from 2011ish is adequate. Past 2 million dots, there isn't much meaningful improvement. Sure there is a noticeable increase in resolution but at the cost of decreased battery life and higher costs. EVFs are mostly used for framing and previewing settings, if it were the only screen on the camera then I might agree with you more.

Meanwhile I'm having issues with 2 million dot + EVFs. At point blank distance, I can tell the difference. It's just not good, the resolution is too low.

Those 3.7m EVFs in higher end cameras are the bare minimum for me.

High res EVF are necessary when your camera can't focus well, for ex the S1, because then you really need the resolution to see what's in focus and adjust it manually. But when the AF is as good as it is on the A6000, the EVF resolution is less of a concern because you know you're going to nail the focus, so you just need the EVF not for seeing small details, but for framing, adjusting exposure, seeing which object is being with the white focus box. Sure, seeing extra details is nice and more comfortable, but what this EVF offers is enough to get the job done and capture great photos.

It's quite safe to assume that 99% of photos in 2019 were shot without viewfinder at all. Sony's aiming at amateurs with this camera, and they won't be using EVF anyway, except for certain situations with bright sun etc.

Anyway it's a pity that Sony didn't include 3.7M EVF into A6600, which is aimed at advanced photographers.

The EVF dots race is running parallel to the sensor megapixels races now. Often no need for a definable reason we just have to have more and more of everything. The idea in the comments that with 1.44 dots you might as well not have an EVf is laughable. In particular using long focal lengths on a rear screen is just something I never do and resolution is a minor matter in relation to the other benefits.

Here in Germany (Amazon) the a6400 clearly sits above the a6100 by €7. Makes no sense at all.

Problem is that the A6400 is selling for a discounted price (from €1100 at launch, to €882 (with cash back). And the A6100 is still at its launch price of €999 (€849 after cashback). So in Holland it makes no sense to go for the A6100price differences are very small indeed. Sony should drop the A6100 price in Europe quickly to €750 and it will start to sell (all prices including the kit lens)

16-50 has IS.

A few Olympus, Pentax and Panasonic cameras have IBIS under the $1000 price point.

The type of person Sony wants to target this lens to isnt going to buy additional lenses, except maybe the 55-210. Both have IS.

The Sony 16-50 kit zoom is wider than Nikon, Plus Sony 16-50 is "is cheap, small and performs well" in the real world.

Take a look:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/sony/lenses/16-50mm-pz.htm

16-50's were not all made equal.

No level gauge? What a silly omission. Hopefully the Nikon Z50 has one.

I think the 16-50 is a maligned gem. No other zoom lens I know offers this much image quality in such a small form factor.

lumix 12-32 is smaller and probably sharper

You can get a brand new X-T2 for $799. And an X-H1 with brilliant IBIS and Fuji colors plus it's *sturdy* for $999 on sale.

When the above two cameras were twice the price they now are, Sony made a lot of sense, esp. with lots of 3rd party E mount glass, but.. now, not so much.

Fuji ergos, Fuji colors, Fuji wins.

I have the x-t3 (shoudl be similar autofocus) and i think autofocus is fine/good but its not comparable to sony AF

I didn't know the X-H1 was $999. Now I am having 2nd thoughts on the x-t30.
Way to go.
After I bought the x-t30 I read about the EM5 too, but it is out of my price range. That X-H1 isn't and it also has internal stabilization.

For Wanderer23, my experience is the Sony AF isn't as useful as it looks. It is great at sticking to something and is quick and accurate. But if there is more than 1 thing in the frame, too often it sticks to the wrong subject. Then it is very difficult to change to what you want. The X-t30 might be a little slower picking the subject, but better at picking the right one. So at first glance the Sony appears better, but after real world use, it is not. At least in my experience.

@Photo Liz The camera chooses the subject based off the focus mode that you. the photographer, picks. What focus mode were you using? Did you use the touchscreen to move the AF point?

StevoPhilo

You know and I know the touchscreen is mostly useless. If you've ever used a smartphone or other camera with a touchscreen you would be baffled by Sony's crippling of their touchscreen, Sony makes smartphones, so they have the know-how. Their mostly useless touchscreen is a real head scratcher.
Switching to the X-T30 was a revelation. There is so much more you can do. my favorite is, one tap on the screen focuses on the subject and takes the picture instantly.
That alone makes the Fujifilm focusing superior to Sony's implementation. Any camera with this would be superior to what Sony does.

@Photo Liz

Yeah, but I'm asking you if you've used it in regards to controling the focus points. I didn't ask if it was better than any other system. If it doesn't have a joystick what other method were you using to move focusing since you seem to claim there wasn't a way to control the AF.

I think the X-T30 is a great camera, but I think you're over-exaggerating some of it's capabilities in comparison. The Sony also has touch shutter that you claim makes the X-T30 "superior".

I'm glad you're happy with your camera, but I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that the Sony AF isn't accurate based off, what I would assume, is the small time frame that you've used your friends a6400. That it's hard to move the focus points or that you can't use a touch shutter. All of these are false statements. Now if you don't like their implementation of moving focus then I understand.

I never said "Sony AF isn't accurate". You are putting words in people's mouths.
Talk about false statements!
The truth is all cameras in the past 5 years have fast accurate AF. You need to stop making such false statements because you are no longer credible.

"Autofocus was fast and stuck to the subject, but it was usually the wrong subject and it was difficult to change to the right one. "

Is that not what this means? Or are you saying that this was user error? If so, then I'll retract that statement and apologize. What about the other statements? Was I wrong there too?

""Autofocus was fast and stuck to the subject..."
"is that not what this ((Sony AF isn't accurate) means? "
No. It looks like you are only trolling, so Bye!

@Richard Butler
So, how does a "non-identifier" even think about camera purchase beyond their phone ? Not, real, likely.
This is just Sony muddying the market prior to Black Friday.

Care to explain in marketing and pricing strategy terms how you justify the A6100 being only 22 euros cheaper than the A6400 (899 vs 921 euros) in the European Union please?
https://imgur.com/a/AF6W4tn

Regardless, he has a point, the 6100 seems to be priced in a way that will hinder sales for that market.

750USD at current official rates is about 675 euros. Add Vat (23% in Ireland) brings it to about 830. Factor in allowance for exchange rate risk and 899 is not too much higher than the US price.

@Vanitas Photo a6400 is an older model

Simple the a6400 is on sale.
If you don't want to pay the early adopter fee on the 6100, wait 6 months.

https://www.sony.de/electronics/produkte-wechselobjektivkameras/t/wechselobjektivkameras?cameramount=e-mount&sensor=aps-c

Sony have done the math. Companies need to make money.
Perhaps a A6300 will be more in your price range.

this, why would anybody buy the a6100? it has less features, lower build quality, worse evf... the a6400 is the same price now

European early adopter prices on Sony have been shockingly high in last years. I confirm that A6100 kit in Russia is more expensive than A6400 body, and price difference between A6100 and A6400 kits is equal to fair UV filter. So there's absolutely zero sense in buying the A6100.

A6100 and a6600 are a generation after a6400. Sony intentionally chose to cripple the lower body. All tech depreciates in value. How was the a6400 cheaper upon release?

@critical thinker the a6400 is the SAME generation and there isn‘t a single thing that the a6100 does better.

My favorite example was when a car mag took a bunch of sports cars like Porsches, Lotuses, Nissans, and Beemers to the track and one was the fastest through the corners and one had the highest top speed on the straights, and one had the best acceleration, and so forth, but at the end of the story it turned out the Corvette destroyed them all despite being somewhat unrefined because it had the best brakes and the most power so its lap times were several seconds faster than any of the other cars.

When was DPR ever "journalism".......nothing new here

@phouphou: Why? A smartphone does a lot of other things besides taking photos for that price, and this is not how one sets prices, anyway.

The prices A6000 sells right now are great for the entry level, and will make people buy real cameras and experiment what real photography means. People that otherwise would prefer buy a new phone instead of entering this field.

i just think the days of cheap dedicated cameras are over.
The digital camera market is still shrinking (worldwide sales 20M units in 2018, dropped by 25% from 2017) , while sales volumes of smartphones are in the hundreds of millions (Samsung+Apple alone 500M units in 2018).

So the "few" people left that are still interested in cameras will have to pay more, thats just how it is (not that i like it...).

If they went back to their smartphone over the a6000 or any decent MILC, they don't care about photography - they just want snapshots. They should be using a smartphone.

The move from 2.36M dots in the NEX-6 down to 1.44M in the a6000 looked like a but of corner cutting back in early 2014.

Yes Richard, it was a cost-cutting issue. Further, the NEX-6 does have partially a Alu-Magnesium built quality, whereas the A6000 is plasticky only, same goes for the A6100 nowadays.

The A6000 vs NEX-6 scored the same virtually (DxO Mark), the NEX-6 is 16 MP, whereas the A6000 is 24 MP, but with a mediocre 1.44 MP EVF. And i've said this onto the forums more then once: The A6000 EVF is inferior to my Nikon 1 V1 EVF (1.44 MP, too), which is a CX (1 inch Sensor) DSLM from 2011! ;-)

If the 16-55/2.8 G would only being ~500 bucks, it would sit someday onto my NEX-6. Maybe into a couple years... ;-)

Good Light

Ironically, phones are not suited to many family events with kids running or pets running. A sports camera gets the job done, or at least a camera with a great AF.

Tend to agree, the new and even the pretty old digital cameras are pretty good at focusing. On the other hand, I have been able to save a lot of images with poor WB, exposure, tilted horizons, poor framing, etc., but a blurry/out of focus image can't be fixed (yet).

For most things you will be fine for years with that camera. Not only churches as someone commented above but actio also. Until the point you want to quickly snap a photo of a kid running in your backyard and you have to move focus points quickly from one side of the screen to the other because zone focus just cant handle it :D

In general, I take photos of buildings, nature, animals, humans and even an eagle here and there. So far 99% of the time my pictures have been in focus. Sure, maybe I will face more complex situations in the future, however AF isn't everything. :)

Agreed, I use both mirrorless and DSLR bodies, never miss a shot either.
Some one wants our money and needs us to believe we need the best AF Eye AF and (trying not to laugh) animal AF.

Those things are nice but they have never made the real world difference to photography . Especially when you consider the wild life winning image with great focus was shot on a Canon DSLR.

@Piotr W

Oh how we ever make photographs without auto focus?

@four under: by missing tons of shots, that's how we had been taking photos without AF.

You don't miss shots because:
1) you're using an APS-C camera with a 18-105 f3.5-5.6, so equivalent to a 27-157 f5.2-8.4 ... it means that you're very rarely getting any background separation, your depth of field is huge, so even if the AF completely fails, your subject will still probably be in focus.
2) you shoot buildings, nature ... no AF needed, and sometimes people, animals, well I'm guessing that you're telling those people to stop moving, but even if you didn't, look at #1
3) you're not picky.

So, you think AF is unimportant and that your camera is doing fine simply because you haven't experienced a fast lens yet, once you do you will understand that it was not the case. There's a reason why so many people want a great AF system, those people want to shoot with a shallow DOF and want to shoot erratic moving subjects. Both combined.

Yes, they are talking about perfect color, with out calibration the color argument is even stupider.

You are incorrect. They are talking about pleasing color and skin tones.

Also, let's not pretend that most monitors are so far off that relative color comparisons cannot be made.

Such a stupid post. Every brand has a signature profile. Canon has distinct look with it's deep reds and skin tones. Fuji is well respected for it's beautiful film simulations. People care about manufacture color because it's a real thing and a starting point even if you shoot raw. Who wants a camera that produces sh$$ty color unless you just love editing every single image all day long. Get a camera that produces beautiful JPEGs and you are making a smart decision that saves time and money.

Wats0n gets it.

Some experienced photographers can distinguish a brand's color character in some cases up to a point. But claiming that you can judge color in a gallery of a cam's model it's at least hilarious...

"If you really cared about color, then you are shooting RAW and adjusting the color to your liking. If you argue that you are only taking about JPEG, then did you use a card to set your white balance? I bet not. Are you adjusting your color output of that JPEG to match the viewing device, printer/paper?"

Imagine buying a camera where you HAVE to do all that just to get pleasing colors.

Ah, I'd forgotten to include that widget.

Who needs anything else than 24-70mm? According to my statistics app, I shoot 99% of published images within this focal range.

Because it doesn’t stick out all of the time so it’s easier to carry around. The LCD is also fully articulating.

It's got significantly better with a7 III, a6400 and newer cameras.

I used the a6000 in the past and hated the colours. I thought tha Sony has improved them since.

dpfan32, there are complaints about any camera :) It's just some kind of a "tradition" to blame Sony for "bad colors" even if colors are good.

Who said that Canon's colors are more natural? It's nothing but a marketing myth. Besides, each Canon camera has it's own color, they're not the same.
And, come one, analyze color on youtube video with all that compression and other stuff. That makes no sense. There are tests that measure color reproduction and color shift. Look for Imaging Resource and PDN Online tests. They clearly show that Sony did a great job with it's color science last years (same as Fuji), while others are more or less the same and mediocre.

I imagine because it isn't even out yet.

Richard, Z50 is $850, a6100 is $750, the Olympus is $650, the Canon M50 is $630, the X-A7 is $700. You chose to compare the Sony at $750 with a model at $630 but refused to do so with a model at $850. Fine with me.

Ah, but if you're willing to spend an extra $150 for a better camera, you might appreciate some of the things that cameras like the X-T30, Z50 or M6 II offer. Suddenly the scope of the review becomes impossibly broad.

Canon seems to have finished recycling, they even had to make a new sensor. :o

Old Body + Old Sensor + Best in Industry AF. Sony knows how to monetize...

Forgive me, but they are comments about two different cameras in different sectors of the market. Do you think @richardbutler is lying? Or, taking some kind of commission for questioning the difficult market that the Z50 is entering?

@richard: sure, but when one does read the article, what sticks is family camera, best AF, great IQ, good value. In the end, the shortcomings can be forgotten and are only relevant for enthusiasts...

I think the comparison with other systems should not be based only on the marketing segment, but should include all the cameras at this price point currently and/or similar specs (even if the prices don't match).

PS: maybe the problem is also more complex with different pricing depending on markets. Here A6100 is only 100€ less expensive than A6400, which makes it very expensive and on the same turf as X-T30 for instance, not really entry-level

I own Nikon pro gear and a few Sony cameras for messing around. Nikon ABSOLUTELY gets a tougher critique here than Sony. Even the titles of the articles seem to bear that out.
Now it may not be intentional. DPR may expect MORE from Nikon as they are a dedicated camera maker with a legendary reputation. Sony is the new kid on the block, so they may cut them more slack.
But if I worked for Sony, I'd LOVE the way DPR reviews the gear. If I worked for Nikon (and I have a family member who does work for them), I'd often be annoyed at how DPR reviews the gear.
Again, the bias may not be intentional.

MrHollywood - That's an interesting perspective. Any bias is certainly not intentional (we all come from different systems and try to make sure we're aware if anyone seems too positive or negative about a particular camera). We do our best to review cameras, not brands.

Larkhon - I'll be covering my thoughts about the a6100 (and a6400) as an enthusiast camera in a separate article. Because my criticisms relate to both cameras, and because it's not exactly what the a6100 is trying to be (I'd see it as more of an X-T100-level camera), it's not included in the review, but should be published soon.

it could be as easy as selecting a profile and saving the picture, nothing fancy

This is a feature almost 0.00% of family shooters would use. That it’s missing in the A9 and A9II is a reasonable challenge. It should be there.

But for the target market, there is basically no use for this.

I wonder how many people actually use in camera raw conversion...?

Larkhon. They are not withholding this feature. They don’t have it on any of their cameras. My statement still stands.

It's a feature that a ton of people already use; they just call it "filters" or something else, but its the same thing in principle. You're altering the picture on the device after the fact. You can do it when you're waiting for something, or on a bus/train/car or before you post it online..

@tonywong: anyone who's shooting jpeg is doing it

Larkhon... nice pivot. You’re being ridiculous.
We are talking about manual raw conversions to JPG in camera.
Come on. Try to keep up.

Haha. Most family shooters would say "what's Raw?" And what do you mean I can't just upload this file to Instagram? Oh, I have to shoot RAW and JPG at the same time? But I won't have as much space on my memory card... Wait, I can't even open these RAW files on my phone? What good is a RAW file??

That's what most family shooters would say. they want to do their filters in instagram. not in camera.

By that logic Sony should remove the ability to even save RAW files at all with this camera, or even remove any functionality that a phone doesn't have.

Personally I'm hoping for an updated X-T100 with the improved speed of the X-A7.