Sony a6400 review

@dpfan32 not sure if you knew but you can get the Sony 6400 as a kit with the 18-135 zoom instead of the the 16-50. The 18-135 kit also comes with a 100$ lower price than buying the camera and lens separately.

I still use the Sony 6000, perfectly decent camera, but think will move up at some point to the 6400. I am happy with the Sony 20mm 2.8 and the only lenses I vaguely want are the 24mm 1.8, 35mm 1.8 and the 18-135; I don’t feel much limited in the lenses options as I don’t really need to have 20 of them.

Want a decent telephoto? You have to buy a very expensive full frame lenses. Or adapt less expensive Canon lenses which are big as well. The 55-210 I tested was absolute garbage compared to a Canon 55-250mm IS STM.
I read somewhere about black corners of the 18-135mm which can not be corrected in older Lightroom versions like 6. Black corners looks like the same problem on the 16-50, no resolution at all + too much noise from heavy vignette correction when you need to light it up a few stops.

"Sony is still the biggest sponsor of dpreview I see."

Where is this information published? It would be interesting to see exactly how much the different companies sponsor DPReview.

Thanks for the reply but I actually meant "in the real world".. I mean, I was told to expect approx 300 shots per charge with the A6000. In the real world I was scratching to get 100 shots, and even then only if I rattled them off literally one straight after the other. Messing around in the menu system could see from 100% to as low as 55-60% in less than half to 3/4 of an hour. You might ask what the heck was I doing in the menu for so long, but hey, times flies when you're having fun - well in most case it does...
Anyway, that's enough about this from me. I don't want to start anything that causes arguments. I'd love to try the A6400.. Thanks..!!!
Al

I don't know what it is that you can only take about 100 pictures on one charge with your A6000. There are a lot of possibilities that battery drainage is high.
It can be that you keep your camera switched on all the time while hanging on your neck, the eye sensor will keep telling the camera that you are using it and won't switch it to sleep mode. It can be that you are looking at the screen more then normal (I take a picture, look at the screen just to see if it is right and I switch of the camera). It is also possible that your camera or battery is not well. Did you ever tried an other battery?
I manage to get over 500 shots on one charge most of the time, but I switch off camera after the pictures have been taken, and I do not examine the pictures on the screen to much...

There have been many complaints about battery drainage when the A6000 is in storage. The question is: has this issue been addressed now?

Not just with these Sony bodies, but with ALL mirrorless cameras, battery life is more dependent on the total time the camera is powered on and displaying with the EVF or LCD...not the number of shots you take. If you're seeing less than CIPA-reported battery life, that means you have various functions in the camera left on such as wifi, apps, and/or high sleep limits on the EVF or LCD keeping them on a long time...or you are doing a lot of viewing/playback, or taking long to line up and take shots. Battery life has improved from the A6000 to the A6300 and now to the A6400. In real life, on vacation I can see 400-500 shots per charge on my A6300 with walkaround general photography, or up to 1,400 shots per battery when doing heavy burst shooting while out birding or wildlife shooting. I can't recall ever getting less than 400 on any battery.

XH1 is way over the $1000 category, so why even bring it up here?
The A6500 is in the same price range as the XH1, and it is the Sony camera with IBIS.

Not the best IBIS, blown away by M43, especially Olympus.

(concluded)

I write about this utterly cr@ppy state of camera FW/SW every now and then, and one response that I get most of the time is "but these are cameras, their primary function is taking images!" Well, guess what, "primary function of mobile phones" used to be phone calls, until Apple showed everyone how it's done.

So I can only hope that some manufacturer does wake up, smells the coffee, fires their entire SW development dept, and buys a *software* company that knows its stuff. Or maybe it will the other way round -- now that the market is in quite some turmoil... Until then, we'll just keep seeing that constant stream of bad market news, and constant moaning of how mobile phones eat everyone's cake.

As someone who wasted way too much of his youth writing config files by hand for his Unix desktop environment, I feel somewhat qualified in claiming that the last thing we need in a camera is a user-editable config file.

The Sigma trio of 16mm, 30mm and 56mm f/1.4 lenses are stupid sharp and affordable. None are stabilised though. Pick the focal length you need.

What focal length are you looking for? The Sony Zeus’s APC 24 f1.8 is plenty fast and very sharp.

Yes, Marketing departments do whatever they can to obstruct engineering to introduce the perfect camera to the market - this will hurt sales for decades as nobody will be upgrading.

Better sell under-engineered stuff that you will want to replace in couple of months.

This is the same reason why A7siii and A7000 could be the best camera but Sony continues to postpone their release, not because like they say "the engineering is not ready" or they want to "over-accomplish user expectation", but because people will stop buying the already best-selling, market-dominating A7iii and A6400.

If every camera model had everything they would all be equally expensive. The manufacturers need multiple models at different price points to attract as many customers as possible, and that's why every model has its own unique mix of features and capabilities. Sure, they could make the perfect camera, but it would be expensive. That said, I'm sure the a6500 successor will get the faster processor that's required for the improved AF.

For this reason I'm still hanging on to the a6300 as neither the 6500 nor the 6400 offer enough to upgrade. The next generation with IBIS and best in class AF (and maybe a 36MP sensor?) will get my money.

The a6500 has been out for ages, so why just consider Sony now?

For the amazing focus tracking, for the first time in an APS-C camera. I am happy with Olympus for most things. Dynamic range is only a stop or so difference, no big deal. But AF, especially AF-C needs a lot of improvement. Sony is leading the way.

You simple want back button focusing, don’t you? The camera doesn’t seem to be the limitation here...

thanks mgreen, I started with back button focus and it seemed to complicate everything. I'll try it again, but it seems the only way to lock focus (and recompose) while avoiding it automatically changing to tracking (not only people but moving leaves, anything moving) is to toggle back and forth between Single Focus mode and Continuous which is an extra step.

Lots of zoom range is not appealing to most amateurs. If you want lots of zoom look at a Sony r100 or LX1000, etc.

As for format, 4:3 can be very attractive to people who print. It is a perfect match for 5x7", 8x10", 8.5 x 11" 11 x 14" and 16 x 20" with no cropping. To fit those prints, you have to crop a 3:2 format APS to the point where the sensor is the same size as the 4:3 sensor cameras so all the sensor size advantage goes away.

TEdolph

@tedolf - "Lots of zoom range is not appealing to most amateurs."

I don't know what you mean by "lost of zoom range", but I do know that the 18-135 zoom range is quite popular, which is why practically every manufacturer makes that zoom range now. Sony (for their APS-C mirrorless), Fuji (for their APS-C mirrorless), Canon (for their APS-C DSLR), Nikon (for their APS-C DSLR) all have 18-135 APS-C zooms. Canon introduced an 18-150 zoom for their EOS M system a couple years ago. Why the ubiquity of this 18-135/18-150 zoom range? Because zoom range is appealing to most amateurs.

@tedolf
I tend to agree with you. That Sony 16-50mm is a disgrace. Sure, the 18-135mm and 18-105mm are better options, but with M43 you get the very decent 12-60mm cheap as part of a kit. Not quite as much reach, but I prefer the wider angle (24mm vs 27mm equivalent).

The other thing with M43 is you get cheap, fast primes that are stabilised with IBIS on bodies like the G80/85 and G90/95. That more than makes up for a slightly smaller sensor and makes it better for video. Unfortunately though tracking AF can't compete with the A6400.

@tedolf
pfff! You own pentax and leica anything? Why didn't you say that rightaway?
It would have saved everybody the time to read through the rest of your nonsense and statements such as: " (I) have a hard time seeing who these Sony E mount cameras appeal to" and "I couldn't care less about tracking AF", etc.etc.

The full-frame e-mount lenses work beautifully on the A6400 and other APS-C bodies, and some are sufficiently small-sized. Including the FE 28-70 kit lens, which weighs only 295 gm. (DPR have failed to change that spec. although being notified of that several times.)

You’re right that the emount doesn’t have 2,8 zooms for apsc, but a 2.8 zoom on apsc doesn’t makes sense to me, when you could use full frame anyway. Sonys apsc line is all about compactness for now, maybe it will change in the near future. But when people are complaining about the small 16-50 I can only laugh at them, because it’s tiny and totally inexpensive as kit. It may be not a pixelpeepers dream but it gets you going and you could still take great images with it.
The 18-135 is decent too and very compact, but in my opinion I would rather have the 16-70. I had both.
The tamron 28-75 works also very fine with it... as does every other ff lens

@captura
The FE 28-70mm may be small enough, but on APS-C it becomes a 42-105mm, which is not a very useful range.

I am using the a6400 as a second body to my A9 to get even more reach (1200 mm with 100-400 mm + 2x telconverter) So there's that. :)

@photomedium:

Huh?

@toth:

Yes, the Sigma primes are great values and good lenses. Those same lenses are available in m4/3 mount too. I strongly suspect Sigma makes some of the m4/3 lenses, e.g. the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 (it looks like a Sigma cosmetically). It is the Sony lenses that are either cheap and nasty, or expensive and nice.

tEdolph

I’ve had my a6000 for three years now and I am continually finding that any shortcomings in the photos and videos it produces are due to the operator (me). True, the ergonomics could be better, but even then I know my settings and button layout so well that any changes I need to make are relatively fast. In short, the a6000 is still an amazing camera.

Autofocus is not subjective thing though. It either works or it doesn't.

Ergo is subjective.

Just because you can get used to and learn to live with something, doesn't mean that you're comfortable eith it. The user experience of some cameras is a bit like having tinnitus, in that respect.

old school DSLR shooters are the most stubborn people on the planet.

At least it has a grip... can‘t say that about fujis

Personally, I don't have a problem with the menus at all. I use custom Fn settings and reassign buttons too, and "My Menu" for the items that I sometimes use but not enough to put in Fn, and also for the items that are impossible to put in Fn, such as compressed/uncompressed raw.

@Adrian-Van sony jpeg customisation is actually quite extensive through picture profiles each of which also has three adjustments + arbitrary shift in WB. I went for "Clear" jpeg setting, turning up the saturation +2 contrast +1 and sharpness -2 + WB shift of two steps to the right then one down on the auto WB. Close enough to Fuji's classic chrome :) Have seen settings to mimic portra/astria/velvia films via this route too. The problem with sony's jpegs is that the default profile is too neutral and others too funky so people get upset. Even simple tweaking of the default PP makes miracles though :)

are you condemning the fuji for not having a narcissism mode.... ? err screen ?

lets warn all the 12 year old girls out there of fujis selfie defect ! and never ever mention sonys ....ahem...... menus

Bashing Sony menus is such old news.. If you can't figure out their latest menu/configuration implementation, there is something wrong with you... not the menus...

But if a menu system requires you to figure it out, then I'd say there *is* something wrong with it. A clearly and logically organized menu is always preferable.

umm it was dpr in the latest comparison between fuji and sony midsize models where we were reminded of sonyys weaks poorly orginized menu

ok??? flips flippant remark calling fuji"crippled" prompted my remark... reading the whole thread is your friend

since i dont own any sony cameras , i dont need to master their awful menus ,, the ones dpr have been mentioning since the sony Nex 7
many years ago
DPR in 2011:

"The NEX-7's menus are based on the original NEX-5's, just adding more options on top. Which is another way of saying that they haven't had the best start in life, and haven't really got any better. The overall result is a rather confusing mashup of options, with little appreciable semblance of
organization."

8 yrs later, dprs STILL mentioning menu issues in the 6400

so there s that.............

I believe that a year or 5 ago (or longer) the old NEX GUI was replaced for the same kind of GUI as can be found in the A-mount camera's. Should work just fine after a small period of get used to. But I have never used them.

I picked up a Canon 7D MkII and I had to figure out where stuff was.. there is no magic... and honestly the menus looked paged in quite similar fashion to my A9.. (and the a6400 is basically the same).. so.. yeah. I guess Canon menus suck too...

@cosinaphile - "are you condemning the fuji for not having a narcissism mode.... ? err screen ?"

Seriously? You have issues with people wanting to capture memories of themselves in photos? Without this desire to capture oneself in photos, the photo industry would have probably died a long time ago. It would probably be some very small niche hobby, like landscape painting! So don't belittle people's desire to capture themselves in photos. And don't belittle cameras that make this task a little easier, because smartphones have made it easier and smartphones have been able to kill off a lot of the camera market!

The flip-up screen is also desirable for anyone who wants to capture themselves in video, like for vlogging. There are plenty of people out there capturing themselves in video, whether it be for personal use or for creating your own Youtube channel.

The more these cameras appeal to a wide range of users, the more these cameras have a chance of surviving in the market.

Cosinaphile, I hate narcisitic people, I hate this "Genaration Me", but I need a fully articulated LCD to make my own videos, to frame myself in picture, to watch the exposure, etc, and also to protect the LCD from scratches, for instances...

All professional video cameras for video have a fully articulated LCD. Can you explain me why? Is this a professional feature, this so called narcisitic feature? Or are professional videographers more narcisistic than consumers? Camcorders have fully articulated LCD since 2000s... my old handycam has it... and it shoots SD video, on a tape... this is stupid??!!?

@cosinaphile - "i would sensibly use my fujis camera remote to frame and fire, and while connected could instantly transfer said selfie to post to instaface or selfbook"

Sure, the Fuji smartphone camera remote app is great. But can you look at your smartphone while looking directly at the camera, and not have the smartphone in the frame? That's where a fully articulating "selfie" screen is so helpful. Besides, LCD screens are already articulating. What's wrong with having them articulate a little bit more so they can rotate 180 degrees?

i hearby give up , i concede that for blogging etc , such a feature is important ...if a cameras gonnas do good video which many a camera can do now then such a feature is useful and yes , in a professional sense

consider me convinced and converted .. ive seen , so to speak , the light [ of a screen that can do a 180]

I think the OP means successor, not firmware updates, to the a6500.