Lean on Me

Round and Round │ NEX-7 + Carl Zeiss Biogon T* 35mm F2.0 ZM │ 35mm F2.0 1/13s ISO3200

Alone

Mirror, Mirror │ NEX-5N + Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* E24mm F1.8 ZA │ 24mm F1.8 1/500s ISO1600This is an indoor “street photograph” taken during the Christmas holidays in Bari, Italy. Don't ask me why I shot at ISO 1600; maybe it was the wine clouding my judgment.

I'm enjoying shooting at a 36mm (FF equivalent). If I could only have one prime lens, this would be the focal length. It's a very versatile; neither too wide nor too long. Taking photos on the street, it captures enough context with your subject to tell a story. Just imagine this photo in a cramped bar, without the surrounding paraphernalia or the reflection of her face.

Lecce Lovers' Locks

Lovers Locks │ NEX-5N + Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* E24mm F1.8 ZA │ 24mm F1.8 1/400s ISO100

I took this one in Lecce, Italy over Christmas. It's another example of how close you can get to your subjects with an unobtrusive camera. The first photo I took was focused on the boy, but I quickly took another one after deciding that the locks were the subject of the image. These are left as a symbol of an eternal bond between two lovers, usually with their initials or names inscribed on them. The practice has become quite a fad, not only in Italy.

Twisted

Tangled │ NEX-7 + Carl Zeiss Biogon T* 35mm F2.0 ZM │ 35mm F5.6 1/80s ISO100The weather was pretty good today and I stopped in a park to take photos of some spring flowers that had caught my attention. Now I wouldn't normally admit to taking kitschy photos of little flowers and I certainly won't post them here. Neither the flowers nor the photos of them were all that remarkable anyway. But what is remarkable is the fact that there are flowers in what's still January! For those of you not familiar with this part of the world, that's pretty unusual. You can see that the tree growing above the flowers had no illusions as to what time of the year it was.

Entangled │ NEX-7 + Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* E24mm F1.8 ZA │ 24mm F4.0 1/100s ISO100

NEX-7 Part 4: 10 Firmware Update Suggestions

Dematerialized │ NEX-7 + Carl Zeiss Biogon T* 35mm F2.0 ZM │ 35mm F5.6 1/250s ISO100Despite a rather cheesy name, the NEX-7's Tri-Navi control scheme is the best of any compact system camera I've used. It puts all the exposure parameters under your thumb; aperture, shutter speed, or exposure compensation (depending in what mode you're in) and ISO. You don't have to lift your eye from the viewfinder or call up a menu, it's all right there and immediately accessible. Most of the other major settings are a navigation button press away from also being accessible by the same 3 control wheels. What those are, you decide yourself. The remaining buttons are just as configurable. It's pretty much perfect.

By not physically and permanently assigning functions to the NEX-7's buttons and wheels, Sony was able to create a user interface which benefits from being context driven (different functions assigned according to the task at hand) as well as being more customizable than most. That not only gives the photographer the ability to tailor the camera to his/her needs but also allows Sony to improve the user interface - via firmware updates - without violating the original control concept. There is definitely still room for improvement. Sometimes the camera's controls and features feel like they fall just short of what they should be able to do.

Two out of ThreeThe NEX-7 targets the enthusiast who, in my opinion, won't tolerate a camera that stands in the way of getting the the next photo. Digging around for a setting interrupts the shooting process and could even cause you to miss a decisive moment. Given the flexible design of the user interface, there's no reason why the settings you need frequently shouldn't be readily accessible. That's the beauty of the system.

Using the NEX-7 fairly regularly for almost 3 weeks, I've come up with a wish list of improvements that could all be implemented via a firmware update. These would give me more efficient access to a few frequently used settings that I still have to delve into the menus for, add some features that I think every enthusiast camera should have and resolve a few quirks in the NEX-7's behavior. I'll start my list with the suggestions for optimizing the user interface.

Distracting Peaking1) Add peaking level and peaking color to the list of options for the Tri-Navi controls
This would be a quick way to turn peaking on/off as well as adjusting the intensity and color without a long trip through the setup menu.

2) Turn focus peaking off with shutter half press
When what you've framed contains a lot of fine detail, the false color outlines overwhelm the image, making it difficult to fine tune the framing. Depressing the shutter half way should clear the preview to give you an unobstructed view for composing the photo. It's really very simple: manually focus with the aid of the peaking function, then clear the screen by half pressing the shutter in order to concentrate on final framing adjustments.

The Offending Button3) Allow the movie button to be turned off or reassigned to a custom function
Others have complained about how easy it is to inadvertently start recording movies on the NEX-7. While so far that hasn't happened too often, I don't shoot video regularly and would rather have the button serve as an additional, user definable, custom function. Even just having the ability to turn it off would be better than nothing.

4) Expand the list of functions that can be assigned to the function keys
While this list could be quite long depending on your needs, I'd really like to see at least two added:
- One shot spot metering; the camera reverts to set metering mode after the shutter is released once. This is a quick way to toggle back and forth between spot and either center weighted or multi metering.
- Toggle focus peaking on/off; a quick way to dismiss the colored outlines in photos where they're not needed to achieve focus.

Small Aperture & High ISO5) Shutter speed priority with fast lens bug
In shutter speed priority the camera inexplicably cranks the sensitivity right up the limit before beginning to open the aperture. This kind of behavior is usually counterproductive when shooting with a fast lens. In the example above, the NEX-7 has chosen to shoot at ISO1600 and F4 rather than an equivalent F2 and ISO400 or a happy medium of F2.8 and ISO800. That doesn't exploit the light gathering potential of the Zeiss 24mm F1.8 which is very sharp wide open.

6) Configurable ISO
Enthusiasts are able to make their own trade-off between appropriate shutter speeds and image quality. A camera in this category should therefore offer configurable automatic ISO. You should be able to select the minimum shutter speed as well as the maximum sensitivity. The current minimum shutter speed of 1/60s second and maximum ISO of 1600 are much too limiting. Sony doesn't have to offer every shutter speed, but a few choices from 1/30s to the maximum flash sync speed of 1/160s would be helpful.

7) Option to set spot meter to follow single focus point
I don't know about others, but usually when I take time to laboriously move the focus point,  the area that I end up focusing on is also the area that I want to meter on. The way it is now, the spot meter stubbornly clings to the middle of the screen while the focus point departs for the periphery.

8) Custom Modes
This is something else that's pretty much mandatory on an enthusiast level camera: a way of saving and recalling groups of settings that are normally used together. User definable custom modes are the fastest way of preparing a camera for different shooting conditions and I miss them a lot on the NEX-7. Luckily, it should be easier to add custom C1, C2 and C3 positions on Sony's virtual mode dial than it would be on a physical one.

Annoying!9) HDR not available when camera set to shoot RAW
The NEX-7 has an excellent in-camera HDR function. I shoot RAW though and the camera refuses to give me access to HDR shooting until I manually change the image quality to JPEG. After I've finished taking HDR photos, I have to remember to return the camera to RAW shooting. This is absurd; the NEX-7 should immediately and automatically switch over to shooting JPEGs when I select HDR. When I'm finished, it should automatically reset the image quality to what is was before I took my first HDR photo. That would be logical.

10) Menus
Finally, the main menu screen seems amateurish and not nearly enthusiast enough. Two of the groups are labeled “Brightness and Color” and with the ambiguous term “Camera.” While I can understand Sony's desire to keep the menu structure consistent with other NEX bodies, I still think the more professional menu structure used on cameras like Sony's A77 would be more appropriate for the NEX-7.

Wow, that list turned out to be longer and more in depth than I had planned. Still, it's in no way complete, concentrating instead on the refinements and feature improvements that would be most useful for my particular style of shooting. You may be looking for other improvements or features in a firmware update. I'd love to hear about those.

This long list of things that could be improved doesn't mean the camera has a poor user interface. On the contrary, I still think it's the best that I've used. But I get more critical when I pay a lot of money for an enthusiast level camera. The good thing is that there isn't anything on my list that looks like it couldn't be implemented with a firmware update. Addressing some of these issues would push the NEX-7 still closer to being my ideal camera. Let's see if Sony is listening and are motivated enough to respond, not just to my needs but to NEX-7 users as a whole.