Sony NEX-C3 hands-on (video)

Sony announced the successor to its NEX-3 camera earlier this week , so we decided to take a post-E3 road trip all the way down to the electronics maker’s US headquarters in San Diego to take a look at the NEX-C3 for ourselves. We’ll analyze image quality in a whole review before the camera hits stores later this summer, but from our initial impressions, the hot cam appears to give fairly minor tweaks in comparison to its predecessor. It’s incredibly small for a camera with an APS-C sensor — maybe even awkwardly so, when paired with the comparatively massive 18-55mm kit lens or Sony’s enormous 18-200mm optic — but not sufficiently small to be any less functional than the former iteration. Just like the NEX-3, the camera was designed to be held by resting the lens to your left palm, in place of by the grip, so size isn’t prone to be a difficulty. Cosmetic changes include a magnesium alloy top panel, front microphone positioning, and a more efficient display hinge, which helped reduce the camera’s thickness. We’ll be posting an entire review in different weeks, but jump past the break for more observations, and a hands-on video from Sony HQ.

There’s also separate battery and SD card compartments, and Sony claims a 20-percent improvement in battery life, using the similar battery because the previous model. While there aren’t many new features for DSLR vets, mid-range cam newbies will benefit most from the camera’s UI improvements, which contains Sony’s Photo Creativity interface. The brand new tool simplifies advanced settings, labeling aperture adjustments as Background Defocus, let’s say, with “Crisp” representing a smaller aperture, and “Defocus” representing a bigger aperture with shallow depth of field. Advanced users will take advantage of custom key settings (also available with the most recent firmware for NEX-3 and NEX-5 models), which allow you to assign specific functions to four-way buttons at the selection wheel. Overall, the settings menu hasn’t improved, so you’ll still should dig around to format the SD card, among other frequently used options. There’s plenty more to share concerning the NEX-C3, which we’ll be testing over the following few weeks, so check back later this summer for our complete analysis.

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This post is tagged: cosmetic changes, initial impressions, magnesium alloy, shallow depth of field, ui improvements