Does an NEX by another name still shoot as sweet? First Shots with the Sony A5000
posted Saturday, March 15, 2014 at 12:26 PM EDT
The confusion caused by Sony's dropping of the "NEX" branding from their popular mirrorless APS-C lineup has apparently done little to quell the photo community's enthusiasm about the line itself, as the Sony A6000 has been one of the most read-about cameras on our site since it was announced last month.
Those of you interested in the A6000 have but a few more weeks to wait, as we expect the highly awaited follow-up to the Sony NEX-6 to arrive at our lab shortly, but in the meantime its little brother the Sony A5000 has just made its initial round through our lab and now has First Shots posted.
A blend of the price-friendly NEX-3N and the middle-of-the-line NEX-5T, the A5000 nevertheless sports a new 20.1 megapixel sensor and the same renowned BIONZ-X image processor housed within the Sony A7, A7R and RX10. With this inner pedigree, it would be logical to assume better image quality is possible than achieved by its forebears, but lab test comparisons are the only way to know for certain, so make sure and visit our Comparometer to compare the A5000 to its NEX predecessors, or any other camera we've ever tested.
Below is a quick look at the A5000 compared to the NEX-5T at ISO 3200 to whet your appetite. Feel free to jump back to this page after making your comparisons and let us know what you found in the comments section below.
The Comparometer uses straight-from-the-camera JPEGs at default noise reduction settings to give you the most objective and standardized view from camera to camera, but you can also access many of the raw files from the samples page as well for any of these cameras. Feel free to download these for your own testing and comparison purposes (but no commercial use please without our written consent).