Micro Four Third cameras have been garnering a lot of attention of late, especially from the digital camera manufacturers. These cameras boast of DSLR-like features and image quality, and come with interchangeable lenses, but are lightweight. They share image sensor size and specifications with Four Third system DSLRs, but do not employ pentaprisms for the sake of compactness, thus sacrificing flange focal distance.
The Sony NEX-3 is one such camera. Boasting of promising features and performance, this 14 MP camera with large barrel removable lens, with manual zoom and focus rings, can also capture images in RAW format. Thanks to support up to ISO 128000 due to its large Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor, low-light photography is very much possible. And it also supports 720p HD video capture at 29.97 fps with stereo sound. Read on to find more.
The Sony NEX-3 is one such camera. Boasting of promising features and performance, this 14 MP camera with large barrel removable lens, with manual zoom and focus rings, can also capture images in RAW format. Thanks to support up to ISO 128000 due to its large Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor, low-light photography is very much possible. And it also supports 720p HD video capture at 29.97 fps with stereo sound. Read on to find more.
Bundle
- Sony NEX-3
- Removable Lens (18-55mm zoom)
- Removable flash
- 4GB Sony SDHC Class-4 memory card
- Wrist strap
- USB cable
- Battery charger with power cord
- A/V cable
- User manual
- Sony PMB software disc
While the bundle is good, it would have been better to include an HDMI cable to connect to an HDTV. Also, you may find yourself running out of space with the 4GB card, especially while recording HD videos.
Design and build
The Sony NEX-3 is a stylish camera with a compact polycarbonate body 33mm thick and weighing just 297g. The piece we received has a cherry red non-glossy finish that looks really nice. Clench it in your fist and you will feel that the overall build is quite rugged.
The camera comes with a removable lens with specifications E 3.5-5.6/29-55 and it features Optical Steady Shot, which is Sony's image stabilization by means of displacing the lens elements to compensate for camera shake while shooting. The lens barrel is rather large and features a zoom ring near the middle, and a focus ring towards the front to use during manual focus mode. The focus ring and zoom ring seem to be very smooth to operate. It also has a lens shade to protect from glare and a cover to protect the lens when not in use. The autofocus beam window is present on one side of the lens.
This is how the CMOS sensor appears after you take away the lens. This sensor is actually larger than the Micro Four Thirds standard, thus giving you larger image size of 4592x3056, but also reducing the depth of field.
Very few controls are present on the top. On the right, there is a largish shutter button surrounded by a ring switch for power. Just beside it is the play button to play back recorded contents from the camera. Three small holes besides this button are the speakers, while there are two separate openings on the left and right for stereo microphones to record stereo sound. Just below and a little towards the right of the shutter button is the button to record movie. The external flash comes separately and needs to be attached by a screw mechanism, which is exposed when you open the flap on the top.
The back portion is almost entirely dominated by the large 3.0-inch LCD that can be tilted up to 80 degrees up and 45 degrees down to shoot in awkward angles. Being such a large screen, we expected it to be touchscreen, but it is not. It produces quite bright and sharp images with vivid color. The screen gathers fingerprints very easily and can be a problem when using outdoors, due to poor visibility. Also, the camera will probably end up losing a lot of battery to continuously drive such a large screen as there is no optical viewfinder.
Again, very few controls can be seen at the back. There is a jog dial to select different settings with an OK button at the center to select a setting. This dial can also click in four directions: up, down, left, right to select different functions. Two other buttons near the top and bottom on the right of the screen are useful for different functions as and when it is displayed besides them on the screen. The top button is for the Menu, which lets you control all the different aspects of the NEX-3. The UI displayed on the screen features large colorful icons with proper explanations, so that you will know exactly what you are doing. There is also a nifty Photography Tips option in here, which can be useful for budding shutterbugs.
At the bottom of the camera, a flap with a latch houses the battery compartment and the memory card slot. This camera supports Sony's MS Pro Duo as well as SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards. Lastly, there is a threaded tripod mount socket too, and this is made of metal rather than plastic, thus ensuring durability.
The slim Lithium ion battery is a proprietary 7.2V Sony N-type NP-FW50 with a typical rating of 1080mAh. The battery cannot be charged in the camera and has to be charged in a separately provided charger.
The camera has a standard mini-USB port to connect to the PC, while a mini-HDMI port lets you connect it to any HDTV, although you will require to purchase a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable separately.
Features and Performance
The Sony NEX-3 comes with the lens featuring 4x optical zoom, which is not really much to write home about.
The Sony NEX-3 comes with the lens featuring 4x optical zoom, which is not really much to write home about.
This is not really much, but is better than nothing.
There are several scene modes to choose from, such as Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports Action, Sunset, Night View/Portrait, and Hand-Held Night Shot. Notable is the Hand-Held Night Shot mode, which tries to balance the ISO setting with shutter speed, using OSS to reduce camera shake even in low light condition. The camera takes six successive shots in the Hand Held Night Shot mode to get better image in low light and in Anti-Motion Blur mode to get sharper images without a tripod.
5-Rupees coin shot from a distance of 10 cm with an exposure of 1/30 sec at ISO 800 in fluorescent light.
Subjects have to be placed at least 10 cm away from the lens to be able to get a good focus. This means that the macro capabilities of the lens are limited, but not of the camera. You can always use another lens for macro shooting.
Twilight mode was used to snap this shot under sodium street lights. The shutter speed was slowed down to 1/8 seconds at ISO 1600. Even though the ISO value is high, the shot is noisy as the camera keeps the noise level down even in low light conditions. This proves that the back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS does seem to work very well with pictures taken in low light environments.
ISO sensitivity modes of 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400 and 12800 can be selected in Programmable mode in addition to the Auto ISO mode. In general, you get good results up to ISO 1600, but noise increases noticeably with anything above that, especially in dark shooting conditions. For practical purposes though, even ISO 3200 is fairly usable on this camera, with noise levels considerably lower than most other cameras we have recently tested.
You can see that the sharpness decreases and noise increases as the ISO value is increased.
The NEX-3 is literally crammed with features that you may find useful.
Intelligent Auto Adjustment mode is one feature we liked the most. It essentially puts the camera in autopilot mode in which the camera decides what parameters to use for getting the best shot. It is very interesting to see how the camera changes the scene modes from Backlight to Twilight as you move the camera to point a subject in brightness shifting to an area of darkness.
Intelligent Auto Adjustment mode is one feature we liked the most. It essentially puts the camera in autopilot mode in which the camera decides what parameters to use for getting the best shot. It is very interesting to see how the camera changes the scene modes from Backlight to Twilight as you move the camera to point a subject in brightness shifting to an area of darkness.
One of the features that we liked is the Background Defocus feature which can blur out the background and focus on the subject. It does work, but occasionally ends up blurring some part of the subject itself.
Sony has managed to keep fringing and chromatic aberration at a minimum. You can see almost no fringing in this photograph, which has been cropped at 100% size.
Here are a few more shots.
ISO 200 was used at different shutter speeds in broad daylight
This camera has a panorama feature which can be used either vertically or horizontally and the camera clicks away at a high burst rate. It also allows you to capture panorama images in 3D. To clear the confusion, we must tell you that it is not as simple as point and click to capture a 3D image. That would have been possible if there would have been two separate lenses for left and right. In this case, there is a single lens to rely on for capturing what is supposed to be seen with the left and right eye, therefore "technically", a still stereoscopic image cannot be captured simply by pointing and shooting.
3D image capture is achieved using two different 3D panorama modes in the camera, each involving moving the camera in a horizontal or vertical direction. The first mode is called 3D Sweep Panorama, in which you can click the button and move the camera in the direction indicated on the screen. If you move too fast or too slow, you will be prompted to take the shot again. The camera captures up to 100 images in this mode and creates a panorama. Once you get it right, the resultant 3D panorama image is not only saved as a long JPEG file, but also as a MPO 3D image format, which can be played back on a 3DTV or even using the NVIDIA 3D Vision Photo Viewer, through which you can either view it on a 3D monitor or in anaglyph 3D if you have a normal monitor.
As noted earlier, the camera supports recording 720p HD video at 29.97 fps with stereo sound. Movies are recorded in 1280x720 MP4 format. Video quality is good with natural colors and crisp picture quality and sounds. The zooming is possible while shooting videos and it is silent.
The accompanying lens features Optical SteadyShot image stabilization using a built-in gyro sensor, which detects camera shake and compensates by automatically shifting the lens to prevent blur and preserve image quality. Optical SteadyShot is especially useful while using zoom and while shooting videos.
There are other notable features such as Smile Shutter, which detects the subject's smile and clicks photo automatically at the right moment. Face Detection can distinguish between adult and children and can detect up to eight individual faces in a scene and make appropriate settings to get the best shot. There is even an Anti-Blink Function that detects if the subject blinked when the shot was taken and sounds a warning so that you can take one more shot.
Overall, the image quality is very good, and the colors were found to be natural. The automatic focusing is pretty fast, but the best way to focus is using the manual focus. On the ease-of-use front, the camera may not be easy for beginners as most of the controls are placed inside the menu system, and very little is available on the outside. Beginners may often tend to mistakenly think that the power switch is the zoom button because this is the norm in most other cameras. But after using it for some time, it is not really hard to use this camera. The battery is supposed to last for around 330 images.
Verdict
The Sony NEX-3 is an excellent performer, though the image quality cannot be compared with a DSLR. It gives you complete control over the camera and the manual focus along with the manual zoom allows you to achieve some amazing results not possible with ordinary digicams. While it is advertised as a compact camera, the lens is so large that we cannot consider it compact even though the camera body without the lens is compact. The lens is interchangeable and you can use third-party DSLR lenses with proper adapters. The build quality is very rugged and the polycarbonate body seems to be able to weather some rough usage.
Image quality is good even in low light conditions. Photos are sharp and colors look natural. The Macro mode is a bit of a let down with the lens that comes with the camera because the subject cannot be closer than 10 cm from the lens. Video shooting at 720p results in very good movies, the quality of which is comparable with digital camcorders.
One of the major cons of the camera is that most of the controls are hidden inside the menu and you need to dig in there every time to adjust anything. More shortcut buttons should have been provided to make the job easier. The LCD gathers fingerprints easily and as a result, is poorly visible outdoors. It may not be easy for beginners, but it includes tips for photography, which make up for that con. This camera tries to bring DSLR image quality in a compact body, and almost achieves it.
The Sony Cyber-shot NEX-3 is available for an MRP of Rs. 29,990, which is similar or even more than some entry-level DSLR cameras, making it less desirable in spite of its tremendous performance and features. Interestingly, a better model Sony NEX-5 sells for Rs. 34,990 and features full HD movie recording and comes in a lighter magnesium alloy body.
The Sony NEX-3 is an excellent performer, though the image quality cannot be compared with a DSLR. It gives you complete control over the camera and the manual focus along with the manual zoom allows you to achieve some amazing results not possible with ordinary digicams. While it is advertised as a compact camera, the lens is so large that we cannot consider it compact even though the camera body without the lens is compact. The lens is interchangeable and you can use third-party DSLR lenses with proper adapters. The build quality is very rugged and the polycarbonate body seems to be able to weather some rough usage.
Image quality is good even in low light conditions. Photos are sharp and colors look natural. The Macro mode is a bit of a let down with the lens that comes with the camera because the subject cannot be closer than 10 cm from the lens. Video shooting at 720p results in very good movies, the quality of which is comparable with digital camcorders.
One of the major cons of the camera is that most of the controls are hidden inside the menu and you need to dig in there every time to adjust anything. More shortcut buttons should have been provided to make the job easier. The LCD gathers fingerprints easily and as a result, is poorly visible outdoors. It may not be easy for beginners, but it includes tips for photography, which make up for that con. This camera tries to bring DSLR image quality in a compact body, and almost achieves it.
The Sony Cyber-shot NEX-3 is available for an MRP of Rs. 29,990, which is similar or even more than some entry-level DSLR cameras, making it less desirable in spite of its tremendous performance and features. Interestingly, a better model Sony NEX-5 sells for Rs. 34,990 and features full HD movie recording and comes in a lighter magnesium alloy body.
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