Sony Alpha NEX-5

Shooting Modes (11.25)

There is no mode dial on the NEX-5. Instead, a picture of a mode dial is shown on screen, and you turn the control wheel to choose a shooting mode.

The camera offers a single, scene-recognition-based full auto mode, along with the PASM controls we expect on an SLR and a few special-purpose options, as outlined below and in the Scene Modes section. There is no separate mode for video recording; you can press the dedicated movie button at any time and start shooting, which is convenient.

Unlike most SLRs, the NEX-5 does not have a program shift option that lets you adjust the shutter speed and aperture together, maintaining the same overall exposure. Program shift is very useful when you want to quickly adjust for fast action or get a deeper focus area; its absence here is surprising.

Sony’s sweep panorama lets you easily and automatically create impressive panoramic images. You hold down the shutter button and pan the camera horizontally or vertically to cover the desired area. The camera shoots dozens of images as you move, then automatically combines them into a single panoramic photo when you release the shutter.

There are two size settings, standard and wide, with different resolutions depending on whether you’re shooting a horizontal or vertical panorama:

Horizontal panorama: standard size 8192 × 1856, wide 12416 × 1856
Vertical panorama: standard size 8192 × 1856, wide 2160 × 5536

The most notable flaw in the sweep panorama system is dealing with movement in the frame. Sony offers a more advanced system, called Intelligent Sweep Panorama, in some of its CMOS-based compact cameras (such as the DSC-TX7), which cope better with moving subjects. The NEX-5, though, relies on the original click, pan, click, pan, etc technology.

One late addition here is a 3D Panorama mode that is added by updating the firmware to the version 2 that is available from Sony. This requires a 3D HDTV to view, though, so we were unable to test it at the time this review was written.

Focus

A key concern when evaluating mirrorless cameras versus SLRs is autofocus speed. A key reason to include a mirror in an SLR is to bounce light to a dedicated autofocus sensor that uses fast phase detect technology. Without a mirror, autofocus is based on data taken directly from the image sensor itself, evaluating different lens positions to figure out which setting offers the highest contrast (which equals the sharpest focus).

We have yet to find a mirrorless model that can match the autofocus performance of even an inexpensive SLR. The Sony NEX cameras come surprisingly close, though, and that’s a key competitive advantage, particularly against the Olympus Micro Four Thirds cameras, which even after a recent firmware upgrade are the slowest of the bunch.

The NEX-5 offers two focus modes: Single shot, where the camera focuses and maintains focus while shutter is half-way pressed, and continuous autofocus, where the camera continues to adjust focus as long as the shutter is pressed half-way.

The camera can be set to autofocus, manual focus or what’s called ‘direct manual focus,’ which uses autofocus and then allows manual adjustment while the shutter button is depressed halfway.

There are three focus area options:

• Multi – Camera chooses from 25 AF areas.
• Center – Only the center focus point is used.
• Flexible Spot – User selects the AF point to be used by moving the four-way controller.

When shooting in Intelligent Auto mode, apertures can be adjusted without dealing with that messy technical term. The ‘background defocus’ screen is accessed by pushing the middle control wheel button. Turning the wheel in this mode lets the user adjust background sharpness, on a scale from Crisp to Defocus. There’s no information presented to help users learn the aperture control concept, but the on-screen display does offer live depth of field preview, so you can see the effect as you turn the wheel.

The front lamp next to the hand grip functions as a self-timer indicator, and also as a bright, effective autofocus illuminator.

The face detect capability, which recognizes up to eight individuals, is based on the Sony point-and-shoot system. In addition to standard face detect, you get child-priority and adult-priority modes, which are self-explanatory. There’s also a Smile Shutter function; after pushing the shutter, the camera waits until it detects a smiling face before taking the picture (if everyone’s feeling morose that day, you can just press the shutter a second time to take a shot). And depending on the level of jolly you desire, there are three sensitivity settings for the smile shutter feature; Big Smile, Normal Smile and Slight Smile.

The manual focus assist works beautifully. When you turn the focus ring, the on-screen image is automatically magnified to allow critical focusing precision. Touching the shutter button returns the display to standard view. Of course, if you prefer, you can turn off the manual assist function. Unfortunately, the manual focus assist isn’t available for movie recording.

A quick word of praise for the manual focus control on the kit 18-55mm lens is called for here. Unlike so many kit lenses, which have loose, sloppy manual control, the ring here is silky smooth, with just the right amount of tension to allow careful movement.

Recording Options

The NEX-5 has a maximum resolution of 14 megapixels and a minimum of 2.9 megapixels — if you’re thinking about emailing images to friends and family, you’ll need to resize using your computer first. There are two aspect ratio choices, 3:2 and widescreen 16:9, each with three size options as listed below.

There are two JPEG compression settings, Fine and Standard. RAW and RAW+JPEG are also supported. When shooting RAW+JPEG, the file size is set to Large, compression to Fine.