Why nex 7

The shots and crops above were captured with a prototype sample in really dim lighting; It was dark enough that I had to squint a little to read the labels on the wine bottles. The camera actually chose a slightly smaller aperture in the conventional ISO 16,! Handheld Twilight mode is a Sony-specific feature I find myself using very often. The idea is that the camera very rapidly captures 6 shots, and then micro-aligns them and "stacks" them together to produce a single final image with much-improved noise, and much less blur than you'd get trying to hand-hold an exposure as long as the 6 shots combined.

Combine that the very good SteadyShot image stabilization available in some of their lenses the mm kit lens is one of them , and you can shoot handheld down to crazy-low light levels.

Other manufacturers have begun to copy this feature, but so far they haven't seemed to be able to micro-align the shots with each other the way Sony does, so the resulting images are more blurred. Extremely impressive, and very handy whenever you're in a low-light situation.

Anti-Motion Blur does much the same thing as Handheld Twilight, but the aim is more to provide short shutter speeds and somewhat brighter light levels, and it also looks for any motion in the scene. If it finds a part of the subject moving, it uses its image from just one of the frames, boosting the brightness to match the rest. The result is that moving subjects are noisier than their static surroundings, but much less blurred.

Anti-Motion Blur works well for crowd scenes at night: Think rock concerts and the like. Other companies are beginning to experiment with "sweep" panoramas, but in our experience Sony's Sweep Panorama feature works the best.

You do need to watch for moving subjects, though: Note the ghostly, chopped-up image of a person on the right side of this shot. Of course, the big crowd-pleaser is Sweep Panorama: Start at one edge of the very wide or tall subject you want to shoot, hold down the shutter button, and "sweep" the camera across the scene.

The NEX-7 will snap a large number of shots and assemble them into a single panoramic image. The results are quite spectacular: The stitching of the individual frames is generally pretty good you'll occasionally find a few stitch errors, but not too often , and you don't get the perspective distortion that an ultra-wide angle lens would produce. This is probably the special Sony feature I use more than any other: My wife and I enjoy hiking, and Sweep Panorama is great for taking pictures of waterfalls.

Panoramas don't just need to be horizontal! Fancy features are nice, but ultimately a camera's worth comes down to its image quality.

Fortunately this is an area where the Sony NEX-7 excels. We were particularly impressed with its resolution and sharpness; all the more so because it's visibly sharper than the SLT-A77, which uses the same sensor.

While both cameras share the same It's not dramatic, but the difference is clear in the crops above, taken from our Still Life target, shot at ISO with both cameras.

We found this level of difference quite consistently, so it's not a matter of differences in focus. It appears that the Sony NEX-7 uses a weaker low-pass filter in front of its sensor than does the A77, or perhaps it's the lack of a transmissive mirror. Whatever the reason, the result is an amazing level of crispness and detail in its images.

The A77 figuratively knocked our socks off with its resolution and detail, but the NEX-7 kicks it up another notch. The downside of the weaker or absent low-pass filter is that you can get aliasing in subjects with fine repeating patterns. Given the NEX-7's 24 megapixel resolution, though, such repeating detail has to be pretty fine indeed to alias.

The fix, by the way, is to shoot in DMF focus mode, and slightly de focus the subject before snapping the shot. When it came to color accuracy, the Sony NEX-7 was slightly better than average for a compact system camera, but not dramatically so: There were some minor hue shifts in a swatch of colors, ranging from cyans through purples to reds and yellows. For our part, despite the lukewarm-sounding technical observations above, we found the NEX-7's color very appealing.

The Sony NEX-7 also does very well in the area of image noise: We expected to see a noticeable jump in image noise, what with the tiny pixels of its 24 megapixel sensor, but it's really quite well-behaved, to the point that we'd put it in the top tier of APS-C SLRs, even those with somewhat lower sensor resolutions megapixels, for instance.

It doesn't do quite as good as the NEX-5N at very high ISOs, so there's some cost to the smaller pixels, but the difference isn't large, and overall we approve of Sony's decision to go with the megapixel sensor in the NEX In case you hadn't noticed, I really liked the NEX-7 shooting experience.

The Tri-Navi user interface literally was a revelation: The true measure of its game-changing nature is how hard I now find it to shoot with cameras having conventional control arrangements. In a very real sense, the Sony NEX-7 has spoiled me for other cameras. The new TruFinder EVF is another breakthrough in terms of resolution and improved tonal gradation, even if there are still some areas for future improvement. And then, of course, there's the photos themselves: The resolution, low noise, and appealing color left me very pleased with pretty much everything I shot.

Well, at least everything that was a decent picture to begin with: Let's just say that none of the non-keepers were the camera's fault. Though we normally start with ISO 1, here, we thought we'd start with the base ISO to show the best each camera can do.

All cameras in this comparison were shot with our very sharp reference lenses. Both look great, but the Sony resolves noticeably more. The Sony's noise is a little higher as is default sharpening, but both resolve tons of detail. In terms of fine detail, the D3X suppresses the slight colors found between the dark tiles, but the NEX-7 preserves them see the Pentax D images to see what we're talking about; the offset printing process leaves some bright colors between the tiles, something we had to verify when the D picked them up and the D3X did not.

The pink swatch below the red swatch is rendered more accurately in the D3X image, while the NEX-7 is too purple. We give the edge to the D3X, but it's pretty close. The Sony's color is just a little more accurate, too. Both struggle with the pink swatch, however. The However the Samsung's JPEG engine isn't as refined when it comes to noise reduction, especially in the red channel.

Default sharpening is also on the high side. This is a very poor performance on the otherwise excellent NX, rendering the red swatch this soft, while the pink swatch below it shows fine thread.

Here, you can see that NEX-7 produces slightly sharper and more detailed images than the A77, despite theoretically using the same sensor. It's also using the same lens for these shots.

In a recent interview, a Sony executive couldn't characterize a probable cause for this, suggesting that it might just be that both cameras were developed by different teams.

Recent advances in sensor technology have made ISO 1, look a lot more like ISO , but there are still cameras whose quality starts to fall apart at this setting.

We also choose 1, because we like to be able to shoot at least at this level when indoors and at night. ISO 1, confirms the reason we do these crops, as the Sony NEX-7 starts to struggle with detail at this setting thanks to aggressive noise suppression, particularly in the mosaic crop. Still, the NEX-7 maintains more high-contrast detail than the 60D, but not a lot.

Both struggle with the red leaf swatch. The Sony NEX-7 really struggles to keep up with the Nikon D3X here, with aggressive noise reduction blurring away more fine detail than the D3X, particularly in the red leaf fabric. Remember that the D3X, though, is a full-frame sensor. Here again, the Samsung NX's sensor is let down by its JPEG engine, leaving more luminance noise and much more chrominance noise behind, while blurring the red leaf fabric more than the Sony.

Both maintain reasonably good high-contrast detail, though the NX shows more sharpening halos. Both are APS-C sensors. Except for color, it seems both cameras render similar levels of detail at ISO 3,, though the NEX-7 does a better job with the red swatch. The Canon retains a little bit more subtle color, if it's a little pumped by comparison. Fairly close. The Nikon D3X's lower noise and less aggressive noise reduction leaves more fine detail and subtle color variations intact than the NEX-7, and as usual the Nikon does a much better job at rendering the red leaf pattern, a Nikon specialty.

Here, we can see the Panasonic G3 can't keep up with the NEX-7 in terms of detail or color, though its high contrast detail is still pretty good. Astonishing print quality, with surprisingly good prints as large as 30 x 40 inches. ISO shots also look good at 30 x 40, with only a slight bit of softening here and there that is difficult to see. ISO 3, shots look good at 13 x 19, with only minor softening in the red channel. Noise in the shadows looks overly blurred thanks to the camera's default efforts to reduce noise.

ISO 6, images are a little too soft at 11 x 14, particularly in the red channel, but in enough other areas that they look better printed at 8 x ISO 16, shots are good, but shadow areas look strangely blurry.

Astonishingly good printed performance from the Sony NEX Just amazingly big prints with truly sharp detail. It doesn't quite achieve the heights of the considerably more expensive Nikon D3X, but it does well enough that we're not complaining for less than a third the price. In many cases the NEX-7's prints are slightly sharper than its sibling, the A77's. It is not a big enough difference to bump the NEX-7 higher or the A77 lower in print sizes, but just as we pointed out with the crops above it is still worth noting.

As we noted with the A77, with the Sony NEX-7, if you're in a hurry, just grab a shot at wide angle, and then go back to crop out whatever your subject was later: One way of thinking of it is that you can "digitally zoom" after the fact up to 4x or more, and still have adequate detail to make a nice-looking 8x10 print. Really exceptional. We understand Sony's deciding to wait on the NEX-7, though, until they could ship it with the incredible This same There's a whole lot to the NEX-7 besides a nifty sensor, though, including the best EVF we've seen to date, a hot shoe for the first time on an NEX body, greatly expanded movie recording capabilities, and Sony's breakthrough "Tri-Navi" user interface.

It's hard to overstate just how big a breakthrough the Tri-Navi control system is: The NEX-7 is by far the most fluid camera we've used to date. Perhaps the truest measure of our affection for Tri-Navi is how difficult it's become for us to step back to shooting with any camera with a conventional control design. It's really a night-and-day difference; don't shoot with an NEX-7 unless you're prepared to buy one. The most recent word is that they've converted a mobile audio factory that escaped the flooding to camera production, with first production there already underway.

The net result is there were at least some NEX-7s available to fill preorders in the US during December , but that will probably be followed by a shortage of unknown duration. Accordingly, if you're reading this in January of and decide you want an NEX-7, you'd better run out and grab one as soon as possible. The bottom line: Sony NEX-7 is one of the most exciting cameras of , and a real breakthrough product in a number of key areas.

We predict this will be one of the most popular cameras Sony's ever manufactured. If you've been considering a camera purchase anywhere near its price range, you owe it to yourself to give the Sony NEX-7 a serious look.

A resounding Dave's Pick. NEX-7 vs A NEX-7 vs X-Pro2. NEX-7 vs X-A3. NEX-7 vs X-T NEX-7 vs TL2. NEX-7 vs X-A5. NEX-7 vs CL. NEX-7 vs GX NEX-7 vs GX8. Navigate Review Jump to review page NEX-7 Summary The top of the line Sony NEX-7 is a compact system camera that offers enthusiasts excellent control over camera settings, as well as a built-in high-resolution electronic viewfinder.

Pros Price and availability The Sony NEX-7 compact system camera started shipping in the US market from December , after a short delay caused by widespread flooding in Thailand, though it's difficult to find in stock online as of this writing mid-January Imaging Resource rating 5. Manual-focus assist. The NEX-7 is a great camera to use with manual-focus lenses. Besides the optional high viewfinder magnification, there's a handy feature called "peaking," that shows a colored border around sharply focused edges.

Detail comparison. High-contrast details are often sharper as ISO rises, so they're worth a look as well. Base ISO detail looks pretty good from all six cameras, with all of them easily resolving the lines inside the larger letters, though the NX looks way oversharpened compared to the rest.

In terms of color, the Canon, Nikon, and Samsung maintain the red better than the Sonys and Panasonic. Buy the Sony NEX Similar to the NEX-7 but smaller lighter larger sensor cheaper But Sony A Fujifilm X-Pro2. Fujifilm X-A3. Fujifilm X-T Canon EOS M6. Leica TL2. Canon EOS M5. Olympus E-M5 II. Fujifilm X-A5. Olympus PEN-F. Leica CL. Canon EOS M Panasonic GX Panasonic GX8.

The NEX-7 was great for its day and it is still an excellent camera. However, just so you know, it was released 6 years ago, and so you might find some good deals on used ones, but I don't know if there are any new ones floating around.

Also, some other cameras to keep your eye on would be the slightly lower-level NEX-6 , and the a , which was meant to replace both the NEX-6 and NEX-7, and fits between the two of them.

I'd definitely spend extra to get newer stuff. Whichever you prefer is up to you. Charrick1: Hi, I want to ask you for advice. It looks fairly good, at least for the three pictures that show it.

Charrick1 and Marionez; now this thread is two even older, so I guess it's water under the bridge, but I have used more modern cameras, the OLED viewfinder of the NEX-7 is still unsurpassed and only equaled in terms of resolution the later cameras from A onwards, but the magnification is still higher 0. But the A and NEX-6 with their 1. And regarding to more modern "hotshoe" it's back to the same old shape since , whereas the Minolta hotshoe came with the Minolta i in , personally I have flashes for that hotshoe like the Vectis SF But to reply to you, I think that the NEX 7 is still okay if you have one, but I would not pick one up at this point if I were shopping for a camera.

I do remember, though, that when the A was released, it did have a less capable viewfinder than the NEX 7. Of course, that is more than the A, and I'd perhaps go with the A instead, but the viewfinder is back to 1. NEX-7 was a cool and highly impressive camera when it came out.

I have no need to get a full frame 35mm equivalent. My next move will be to medium format. They really complement each other. The mirrorless gives me none of these problems. Is there a newer version of this camera? I see it was released in , sort of a long time in digicam land. A is similar to NEX-7 but: 1. Are single exposures realistic? Any advice would be much appreciated. Your review is incorrect. The NEX 7 does not have an uncompressed file option.

The manual clearly states that ARW files are compressed and this is born out by the size of the files. This results in artifacts at fairly small enlargement. Whilst most professional reviewers are writing very positive, comprehensive feedback, amateur armchair experts seem to picking holes in everything by writing messages all over the Internet that are littered with non-understandable technical jargon.

I am far from sure anyone without an advanced degree in photography can understand what on earth they are on about. I agree. I came late to the NEX-7 and think it is an exceptional piece of kit that produces superb images, even in my hands I could only criticise the user interface which could be friendlier and which has apparently been improved on later 'Nex' developments.

I have been happy to adapt to it, though. It is one of those classic cameras like my Sony R1 which I will hold on to for life. I have had an NEX-7 for about a year now and like you find it an excellent piece of kit: It far exceeds my abilities. My friend is a Pro in London and uses cameras which are far more expensive said he may get one because the quality is excellent, especially for the quick shots outdoors when setting up his stuff would take too long and the moment lost.

I agree with you and my Canon equipment has been collecting dust since my purchase of the Nex7 and a Both outstanding and so portable. The fact you can shoot video through the viewfinder, is the biggest plus among many for me. The likely negatives come from those who don't own one.

I bought a Nex-7 for pro work when it was first introduced, open minded about it replacing my Nikon SLRs. On the first assignment I discovered that the ergonomics were nowhere near as efficient as a Nikon SLR's, the kit lens was soft in the corners, the jpegs watercoloury at high ISO, and the battery was too small, so it fell into disuse. Then I bought a Nikon adapter and used the Nex-7 for rapid shots through a manual focus tele lens, landscapes with a tilted lens or when I needed to assess depth of field carefully, and close-ups where no mirror slap was an advantage.

I tried using it for video, but found the touchy record button too unreliable. On one remote shoot I took 15 spare batteries, using the camera only for video and panoramas, and used up the last battery on the last day.

It served me well enough, a camera with terrific raw image quality let down by an inefficient, fiddly interface, some poor lenses and jpeg processing, and short battery life. The holidays are a great time to take pictures — and they're a great time to get a camera for yourself or for a loved one.

With more than 50 cameras going through the hands of the DPReview team over the year, we've seen it all or so we think. Based on our collective knowledge we hope this guide will help you make an informed decision on which camera will fit your needs. In part 1, we look at enthusiast interchangeable lens cameras. Sony USA has said the NEX-7 will begin to ship this month to some customers who pre-ordered it, following a halt in production cause by flooding in Thailand in October. Production is still limited but the company says it will 'aggressively pursue all efforts to restore full capacity' for the NEX-7 and other affected models which is thought to include the NEX-5N, A65 and A The company also claims a contrast ratio of 10, - ten times greater than that offered by its latest WhiteMagic rear LCD screens, also detailed in the company's latest semiconductor newsletter.

Their appearance in the newsletter is likely to mean they are available for sale to other manufacturers, raising the prospect of other makers' cameras appearing with high-resolution OLED EVFs. The Sony a7 IV is the fourth generation of the company's core a7 full-frame mirrorless camera model, and it's the most advanced yet. Click through for an in-depth look at Sony's latest full-frame mirrorless ILC.

Nik Silver Efex Pro 3, one of the standout components of Nik Collection 4, is a black-and-white conversion tool that goes far further than the grayscale or black-and-white tools built into all-in-one photo apps. For some users, this app alone might be worth the cost of the whole collection — find out for yourself in our review.

The Nikon Z mm F2. Get all the details in our full review. What tripod can support a mm lens and still go on a long hike into the wilderness? We test out six higher-end, thick-legged, modular tripods that are comfortably tall and capable of supporting tremendous amounts of gear. This group review compares all six models, examining their features, functions and ergonomics in use, both in the studio and out in the field.

The Panasonic GH5M2 is a refresh, rather than complete reworking, of the company's image-stabilized, video focused GH5. We didn't find live streaming as reliable as we'd hoped but we appreciated the improved feature set. These capable cameras should be solid and well-built, have both speed and focus for capturing fast action and offer professional-level image quality.

Although a lot of people only upload images to Instagram from their smartphones, the app is much more than just a mobile photography platform. In this guide we've chosen a selection of cameras that make it easy to shoot compelling lifestyle images, ideal for sharing on social media. If you're looking for the perfect drone for yourself, or to gift someone special, we've gone through all of the options and selected our favorites.

We looked at cameras with selfie-friendly screens, wide-angle lenses, microphone inputs and great video quality, and selected the best.

We've had our hands on the Sony Xperia Pro-I, which sports a massive comparatively 1-inch sensor. Take a look through our preliminary gallery to get a sense for how it handles a variety of situations. This is your chance to ask the experts! But, before heading home, he's taken the time to capture a degree video showing us unique views of the inside of the ISS. The NEX-7 is turned on or off via a flick of a nicely rigid switch surrounding the shutter release button, rather than via the recessed button we usually find on cameras with a smaller form factor.

Do this and it's a wait of less than a second before an image materializes on the LCD allowing the first shot to be framed, a match for most DSLRs proper. Viewed from the rear and starting from the left, there's an Accessory Shoe that supports various accessories including external flashguns and a clip-on LCD monitor, a built-in pop-up flash with a clever hinged design that lifts it high above the lens to help avoid redeye, and two unmarked control dials that are recessed almost completely into the top-plate.

Depending upon which shooting mode you're using, these dials control the aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation. Although we'd prefer the combination of one fore-finger operated dial and one thumb operated dial, which allows you to more easily and quickly set the aperture and shutter speed together in the Manual shooting mode, having two control dials is something that most DSLRs don't offer, never mind a compact system camera, and is just one of the things that marks the NEX-7 out as a serious camera.

While the NEX-7 is quick and reliable in good lighting conditions, in low-light it does take longer to lock onto the subject and sometimes misses altogether of frustratingly hunts around - the Olympus E-P3 and Panasonic DMC-GX1 definitely have the edge in this department. In single shot mode and to the sound of a satisfyingly brief shutter click thanks to a release time lag of just 0.

As you'd expect in this price bracket, there is the option to also shoot Raw files, or even more usefully for those who wish to hedge their bets Raw and JPEG images in tandem. These settings are accessed within the Image Size folder and are found within the Quality sub folder. For example ISO settings are discovered within a Brightness menu option that from the look of the icon that denotes it initially appears to be for adjusting screen brightness only.

One would reasonably expect ISO adjustment to be found within the Camera folder with the other key shooting options. And so there's a fair amount of familiarisation with the NEX-7's quirks required up front.

Even in intelligent auto mode users still have the ability to get hands on to a degree by controlling background defocus, with a half moon shaped indicator appearing on-screen to the side of the scroll wheel, defocus at the bottom of the arc, 'crisp' at the top.

The NEX-7's external backplate is a similarly pared-down affair, the majority of it taken up by the 3-inch widescreen ratio angle-adjustable LCD that stretches from the base to the top plate.

The NEX-7 offers switchable framing lines and a level gauge display in both the LCD screen and the viewfinder, helping you to compose your image and keep horizons straight. The EVF is so good that we used it for the majority of our shooting in both good light and bad, a real testament to its quality. For us the built-in EVF is one of the main attractions of the NEX-7 when judging it against the compact system camera competition. Press this and the user is instantly recording video, whatever alternative shooting mode might previously have been in use; like the same control found on latter Panasonic G-series and Olympus PEN cameras, this proves essential with regard to spur of the moment filming.

To the right of the LCD screen is a trio of controls - the top and bottom buttons are unmarked until the screen is activated, at which point their purpose is detailed alongside it. The top-most control is revealed as the 'menu' button, a press of which brings up the shooting icons - six in total - the contents of we've already briefly touched on.

The user moves through these options and makes selections either via the scroll wheel just below the menu button, which has its own central and again unmarked set button. This wheel is quite responsive to the touch, which, on a positive note, means that tabbing through options is a swift process, but on the other hand it's easy to slip past the setting you actually wanted when hurrying through them as a photo opportunity suddenly presents itself.

The scroll wheel also doubles up by default as the most immediate way to change the ISO speed. Used in conjunction with the two control dials on top of the camera, it's remarkably easy to change the three main exposure controls. By default the central button opens the shooting mode dial, but it can also be reconfigured to access the new Custom screen, which by default contains the ISO, white balance, flash, creative style and image size options.

Once again this button can be customised, just one of 5 external controls that can be configured to your specific needs. There's also options to enable the camera to be utilized with the aid of a remote - sold separately of course - and a bracketing control for exposure.

By default pressing right on the scroll wheel accessed the various flash modes. The flash options more unusually include rear sync as well as slow sync, plus the regulars of auto and fill in.

Somewhat confusingly the NEX-7's red eye reduction setting isn't also found here - instead it has to be first enabled via the aforementioned Setup folder if you're shooting portraits with flash.

The bottom button on the camera back provides by default a means of setting the focus type, with three options on offer - Multi, Center and Flexible Spot - and then setting the actual focus point if the latter option is selected. While the right hand side of the NEX-5N - if viewing it from the back - features a continuation of the ridged grip but is otherwise devoid of ports or controls, the left hand flank is where users will find separate covered ports for HDMI connectivity, external microphone and USB output.

While the user interface is a little confusing by default and the focusing system is a little slow in low-light, the NEX-7 generally gets most things right in the handling department once you've taken time to configure it to suit your way of working. Now let's take a look at the image quality that its 24 megapixel APS-C sensor delivers All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the The Sony NEX-7 produced images of excellent quality during the review period.

Chromatic aberrations are very well controlled, only appearing in areas of high contrast.