Received my new A6300...First hands-on report

zackiedawg

zackiedawg

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Staff member
Well, my Sony A6300 mirrorless camera arrived last night, which will be replacing my A6000. I haven't yet had the chance to test out the performance or shoot anything - mostly just opened the box, and worked on setting up all the custom buttons and quick menu selections. I started by putting the A6000 and A6300 side-by-side, and setting up all the controls in exactly the same place to make it easy to adapt to...and then the new stuff that the A6300 has that the A6000 didn't, I added to the Fn menu. Notable differences of the A6300 so far, compared to the A6000:

- It's heavier, and a tiny bit thicker...the build has clearly been upgraded - very solid, no flex, mostly metal feeling in all places you handle, lens mount looks fortified and lenses attach extremely tightly,
- Weather-sealing clues around buttons and lens mount. Not fully waterproof, but should withstand showers and occasional rain
- Wide focus grid has crazy number of PDAF focus points - 425, covering about 90% of the frame.
- More focus area selections included, with expanded zone, expanded flex spot, added to the usuals.
- Auto ISO now has a shutter speed tie-in - you can specify a shutter speed number, or you can choose 'standard, fast, faster, slow, slower...for more auto ISO control.
- Silent shutter mode available - I tested it, and it is that - silent. Barely can even tell anything has occurred in a silent room with my ear up to the camera body.
- Compatibility with other mounts using native AF system - notably I tried the LA-EA3 adapter for Alpha lenses and the focus was pretty much exactly native speed - near-instant...supposedly does the same with Canon EF autofocus adapters. Nikon AF adapters not fully tested out yet.
- Multiframe ISO noise reduction mode now has two settings - the standard 4-frame stack, and a new 12 frame stack.
- ISO performance looks better so far - I only took a few snaps in the house at ISO12,800 and viewed them on screen zoomed in - they looked to maintain slightly better detail and had less chroma noise than A6000. Looking forward to checking out the shots on my computer.

That's it so far. Next is to actually take some test snaps with it hopefully over the next few evenings - I only have a small window of light between getting home and sunset...so I won't have any real-world full shoot opportunities until this weekend.
 
I posted several threads with a lot of initial tests of the A6300 on 'that photo forum'...not sure if there are any taboos linking to it here, but figured just in case anyone was curious...I'll try.

Here was an initial series of high-ISO tests around my house - from ISO 12,800 to ISO 51,200:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57565992

Here were my first shots out in the wetlands using the LA-EA3 adapter and my Alpha-mount Tamron 150-600mm lens:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57589228

And here are a series of bird-in-flight tracking tests and samples with the FE70-200mm F4 G OSS lens in the wetlands:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57589228

Lots O' Fun!
 
hey, i checked out that other site, where does one get that pistol grip, that is an elegant solution
 
I get them off of Amazon - the brand is 'Barska' and it's a video pistol grip - but I love it for longer lenses handheld. I've been using those for almost 10 years now...work great.
 
Well i just did it, ordered the A6300, completely based on everyone's reviews of the improved autofocus. I have another baseball trip in june, to toronto, to capture the rogers center, astros vs jays, sat afternoon game, and this may very well improve my action keepers rate.
 
I think you'll find the focus coverage in wide to be pretty solid - so many points that tracking almost anything is pretty easy - plus the addition of the zones and the expandable flex spot mode which really helps when you're trying to continuous focus on a small subject with the spot focus but can't always keep the spot right on the target. The build is notable as well - it will feel much more like your A7 series in the hand - very solid magnesium build, very tight lens mounting with no play, much more rigid, and stronger mount for heavier lenses. And the control improvements are very nice - higher-res EVF plus higher frame-rate playback options really helps when panning and tracking too. And high ISO does really seem to have been improved over the A6000, which was already pretty good for APS-C...even the JPGs are quite usable right out of the camera in the 12,800 ISO setting if you expose well.
 
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