Sony A6100/A6600/E16-55F2.8/70-350F4.5-F6.3 Initial Thoughts

The Trade War

It should be noted that the price of the two new lenses in US is clearly affected by the trade war. 135GM also got a 10% price bump recently. This is a very serious issue for Sony since this trade war is not going to end as Sony may have expected.

So what happens next? The depreciation of CNY will continue because of the outflow of China’s foreign exchange reserves. And then Trump will increase the tariff furthermore as a countermeasure to complete the so-called “decoupling”. This is a double kill to Sony or any other foreign company in China. First it makes Sony’s oversea business more and more difficult. And second their assets in China will quickly lose their value. The only thing Sony should do is to escape China immediately and accept the huge loss. Otherwise they just get stuck there and eventually become part of the collateral damages. The longer they wait the more painful it gets.

E16-55 F2.8 G

Specs look good but the $1400 price is outrageous. The more versatile FE24-105 is $1200 and not to mention Tamron 28-75 which is a whole stop faster.

If you are a A6100 or entry camera user then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy a $1400 APS-C lens which is not even stabilized. If you are rich enough to afford A6600 then why don’t you just spend the same amount of money on A7III + Tamron 28-75?

E70-350 F4.5-F6.3 G

This one is not as bad as E16-55 but still faces a lot of internal competition. The first obvious opponent is FE70-300, which is 200+ gram heavier and a bit more expensive even though E70-350 is affected by the tariff. The pros here is that FE70-300 works on full-frame which means you get a brighter aperture at 300mm (equivalent). Also the magnification ratio is 0.31x, larger than E70-350’s 0.23x. If you own a FF camera or planning to, FE70-300 just makes more sense.

The other opponent is RX10IV. The equivalent parameters are pretty close (525mmF9.45 vs 600mmF10.8) but RX10IV comes with a body that shoots 24FPS, much better than the lame A6X00 series. 8FPS just hurts my eyes. It’s also obvious that RX10V in the near future will be a real mini A9 and the price is still probably $1700. Also the 24-600mm focal range is a great convenience. The cons here is that RX10IV uses electronic zoom but I can bear with it. Also it’s interchangeable lens versus fixed lens, so really depends on your use case. I prefer to not change lens at all and that’s why I love my RX10IV.

That said, there is a big BUT here: if E70-350 is significantly sharper than FE70-300 or RX10IV, I can totally see myself buying one. Also, it’s very often that the image circle of an APS-C telephoto lens’s long end can cover most of the area of a FF sensor. That would be very interesting.

Alpha 6600

A huge failure. It seems like this camera is not made in China so the $1400 price tag is just ridiculous. Essentially you’re paying extra $500 to get a bigger battery, IBIS, headphone jack and movie eye-AF. I’m pretty sure most people can live without the movie eye-AF,  and Sony’s IBIS is pretty much useless for video so you will need a gimbal anyway.

Also A6600’s buffer size is only 46 shots which is 50+% less than A6500! And we see the same old UHS-I single card slot which shouldn’t belong to a $1400 camera (probably still 36MB/s, the same as A6400, while FF Sony cameras get 66MB/s UHS-I slot). And the nasty rolling shutter is still there. Sony doesn’t even bother to increase the fastest shutter speed which is just few extra lines of codes for them. In short: it lacks any innovation and doesn’t feel like a premium camera at all.

Will it sell? Probably. M43 is dying so the closest competition is Fuji’s XT3 which has much better video specs and a lot of other nice things to offer. Sony still has some edges about AF capability and a nice flip screen but that’s basically it. If you are aiming for video then XT3 is a no-brainer. Otherwise just milk out more money from your pocket and get an A7III. It’s totally worth it.

Alpha 6100

We are finally getting to the interesting part: A6100.

It’s the rightful successor of A6000 which is long overdue for an update, even though it’s still hot on the market. The price is a bit higher than A6000’s price at announcement ($750 vs $650) and it certainly won’t copy the glorious success of A6000, but it’s still the best non-FF system camera at this price point in my not so humble opinion. You get some really useful updates: a 180 degrees flip touchscreen, the best-on-the-market AF system and even 4K videos. The video specs also suggest that it’s using IMX284 (A6300-A6600) instead of IMX210 (A5100/A6000) which is a nice surprise.

In general it’s an extremely capable entry-level camera for amateurs and video makers who don’t need log profiles. It got most of the things that people actually want stripped down from A6400 at a lower price point, and is significantly more capable/user-friendly than A6000/A6300. It certainly beats EOS M5 ($670) to the ground, meanwhile Fuji XT30 is a $900 camera for dumb wannabe hipsters (check the tripod socket design if you disagree). M6II has a very impressive 32.5MP pixels counts and is A6100’s main competitor here, but my gut feeling is that there may be some traps behind the beautiful spec sheet and people will get disappointed at the end , and my gut feeling is usually correct.

But the cropped video is sharper. #canon90d

— Jordan Drake (@thatJordanDrake) August 29, 2019

This also applies to EOS M6II

Anyway more tests are required to evaluate M6II’s true performance so let’s talk about it later when I get more information. But in the best scenario it’s still a $850 camera without an EVF so I don’t really see its appeal except the pixel counts.

In China the price at announcement is rather high (5700 CNY) due to the exchange rate but given the street price of A6400 this certainly can’t be maintained for a long time. So it will quickly drop to around 5000 CNY and it will sell like hot cakes, just like A6400.