Sony NEX-5N Operation

Sony NEX-5N Operation

Sony NEX-5N Capture Mode

When powered on, the camera is automatically placed into Record mode. The main shooting mode is selected from the Shoot Mode menu, accessed by pressing the Soft key in the center of the Control wheel, except when in Intelligent Auto mode -- in which case it's accessed from the main menu. The Shoot Mode menu offers the following options:

Movie Record Button: Pressing the dedicated movie record button on the camera's top panel will start and stop movie recording -- even if the NEX-5N is in Playback mode or a menu. Movies are recorded in the currently selected exposure mode, and use multi-segment metering as applicable. Interestingly, if available in the selected exposure mode, it's possible to adjust the shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity and exposure compensation not only before, but also during during movie capture. Stereo audio recording from the built in microphone can also be enabled or disabled.

Playback Mode: The Playback button on the top panel accesses the NEX-5N's Playback mode, which tweaks the already-unusual design from past NEX-series models, and in the process makes it slightly more abstruse than was already the case. In earlier NEX models, playback mode allows you to review either captured still images, or movies, but not both side by side. In the NEX-5N, the playback mode now not only separates stills from movies, but also separates MP4 movies from AVCHD ones, meaning that if you shoot a lot of movie clips and vary your compression type, you'll have to browse through two separate sets of thumbnails in the hunt to find any given movie clip. The reasoning behind this strange design is likely to do with the glacially slow response when switching between movies when viewed fullscreen, which takes over a second per movie. The NEX-5N remembers whether you captured a still image or movie most recently, and defaults to entering the Playback type relevant to the last image or movie capture performed. If you leave the playback mode manually set to review a media type that doesn't exist on the flash card, the NEX-5N does at least override that setting the next time you enter playback mode, and instead reviews the most recently-captured media type.

The left and right arrow keys scroll forward and backward one image or movie at a time, and turning the Control dial has the same effect. The Up arrow key cycles through the various display modes -- image only, image plus basic information, and RGBY histogram with detailed information and blinking highlight / shadow warnings, of which only the first two modes are available in movie playback. Using the control dial and its center soft key, you can enlarge captured still images by as much as 13.6x, while the arrow keys pan around the zoomed image. Panoramic images can be automatically scrolled across the screen by pressing the soft key, and paused with a second press. The same controls are used to play, pause, and cue through movie files. By pressing the down arrow key, the NEX-5N can also display images or movies in an index format for quick viewing, with either six or twelve thumbnails per page. The index includes tabs on the left hand side with which to switch between still image, MP4 movie playback, or AVCHD movie playback, and this can also be done through a Playback menu option.

Sony NEX-5N Menus

Pressing the Menu button provides access to the camera's full menu system. The following options are available in most camera modes, through five submenus accessed from a graphical menu index which also links to the Shoot Mode screen described previously:

Camera Menu 1:

Camera Menu 2:

Camera Menu 3:

Image Size Menu 1:

Image Size Menu 2:

Image Size Menu 3:

Brightness / Color Menu 1:

Brightness / Color Menu 2:

Playback Menu 1:

Playback Menu 2:

Playback Menu 3:

Setup Menu 1:

Setup Menu 2:

Setup Menu 3:

Setup Menu 4:

Setup Menu 5:

Setup Menu 6:

Setup Menu 7:

Setup Menu 8:

Setup Menu 9:

Setup Menu 10:

Setup Menu 11:

Sony NEX-5N Shooting Tips

Like past NEX-series cameras, the Sony NEX-5N includes a comprehensive list of tips for shooting in a variety of situations. There are two ways of accessing shooting tips -- either through a menu item found on page 3 of the Camera menu, or by pressing the lower soft-key when in Record mode. The option in the menu accesses the full list of settings, while the soft-key method pulls up only settings considered to be relevant to the current shooting mode.

While the idea of hiding items completely unrelated to the current mode definitely makes sense, the options considered relevant are sometimes rather curious. For example, the Macro scene mode has entries for shooting both flowers and foods, but the corresponding Macro page in PASM modes drops the flowers tip, while keeping that about foods. Many of the tip pages are very greatly abbreviated, depending on which related mode you access them from. The tips page for the Portrait scene mode includes twelve items, while the page for the PASM modes has seven, and that for the Night Portrait scene mode has but four. If you access the Portrait tips through the Camera menu, however, you'll find no less than 33 tips available. A more extreme example is the "Shooting a subject in motion" page, which contains thirteen entries when accessed through the Camera menu, where the corresponding page accessed from PASM modes has but a single entry.

The following options are available in the Shooting Tips menu when accessed through the Camera menu:

Shooting Tip List:

The following options are available in the Shooting Tips menu when accessed through the lower soft-key, in each exposure mode:

Shooting Tip List: