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 Sony A6700 Initial Reactions | |
Received my A6700 this week and wanted to share my initial thoughts. Been using Sony for 5 years with A7III (2), A7RIII and now A7RIV bodies, this is my first APS-C body. I bought this to mainly be a backup to my A7RIV and use the A6700 26MP, instead of always using the crop mode on the A7RIV. I bought the A6700 specifically (vs the new A7Cx bodies) because it has a full mechanical shutter, and portraits in full sun at higher SS will not have rendering issues due to the ES. Plus it will be my travel camera and I plan on using this with my Sigma I series all metal lenses, they fit and look great on the A6700 body and who doesn’t like a bit more reach.…
I was surprised by how small the A6700 is vs. my A7 bodies, it already fits sideways inside 2 of my smallest camera bags, where my A7 bodies needed to run lengthwise taking up extra space. Also surprised by how well built the A6700 is. The front, lens mount, top, sides and bottom sections are full magnesium alloy and you can feel it, It’s solid and the grip is very comfortable for my (larger) hands. The added eyecup is a nice touch and makes the EVF better for bright outdoors shooting. Very happy with the body comfort and feel.
Far as controls, this body has additional buttons/dials vs. other Sony APS-C bodies. There are 2 C buttons plus the red movie record button can be programed separately for stills shooting, mine switches between ES and MS, and it has a new front control dial to go along with a back control dial, plus there is the standard control wheel, like FF A bodies have, that has ISO, Display and Drive settings (You push the center button to switch from these functions to being a rotating wheel.) So Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO/EC can all be set to these 3 dials. On the top under the Mode dial is a sliding dial for selecting Stills, Movies or S&Q, a nice design that doesn’t need a lever to operate. There is a AF-ON button set to initiate focus, as I like BBF, and the shutter AF can be set to off, it only triggers the shutter. More than enough control buttons/wheels for a workable compact body, if you feel you need more, get a full sized body.
Touch Interface: Whole host of new items here, almost too many when I am used to having almost none on previous Sony bodies. I turned off the 2 side and bottom edge LCD screen controls and exposure triangle Icon interfaces, as I like my screens mainly for viewing the scene without a lot of clutter. But you can almost do everything from the back LCD, including activating the shutter button or starting a movie recording. The FN button (or swiping up on the LCD) brings up the typical 10 user features I would need and I will use this method, which BTW is programmable separately for both still and movies. If I need more features I can do 2 things via the Menus button. Go to the Home Screen and 16 items come up in a grid on-screen, very similar to my Olympus bodies and the Super Control Panel (SCP), that can all be set from here via touch or control wheel. Or go to My Menu Setting, which is now the first screen tab in the Menus, vs the last tab in the old Menu layout, and you can put numerous items there for quick access. Like I said almost too many ways to change things, it takes some time to sort it all out and for now the FN and SCP are things I am used to and that is how I will navigate this new camera for a while.
Now for the Hal 9000 Processing Unit in the A6700, I can see in only a few days that it is simply remarkable for AF detection, Great Job Sony! OK, the setup is a bit clunky as with Sony you need to select the type of Subject Recognition you want in advance (I am sure the next phase or so will be auto detected) but once set, it does a great job in finding the subject, in my short time with it, and much quicker than I could ever do by myself by using the (missing) joystick. Plus there is a good range of sensitivity settings to control how sticky the AF is. Need to spend a lot more time with this on different subjects, but my initial reaction is this will be a excellent tool for establishing accurate AF in a very quick manner. For the few times when I might need to adjust the AF, without the joystick, the Control wheel can do this, but you have to be in the AF mode or else you trigger the ISO, or other printed wheel settings. Or I can just repress the AF-ON button and have Hal try to find Dave again 
Re the missing joystick, I don't feel this will be much of an issue because the AF subject detection is so good the joystick won't be needed as much as before. I can see that it came down to having either the AF-ON button or the joystick, there doesn't seem to be room for both in the current body design. The AF-On is in an an easy to reach place and for me, I will use that every time I focus, so I am happy with Sony's decision to leave the joystick out.
Overall I am extremely happy with this camera and for $1,400 USD I find it a real buy in todays camera market.
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