Getting a new camera, in many ways, is like having new eyes…or at least like seeing all the familiar scenes once more as though they were new. (On the other hand, maybe I just buy too many cameras 🙂 I always like to have a new camera several days around home before I take it traveling, because shooting a few of my favorite scenes gives me the measure of the machine much more quickly than shooting thousands of images in less familiar surroundings. I have a few test shots I take with every new camera, and then a set of standard scenics. This week I am getting to know a Sony NEX 3NL-B, one of the compact mirror-less cameras with interchangeable lenses. I have been looking at them for a while, mostly because of the promised improvement in image quality that is supposed to come with the larger sensors…but most of the kit zooms that come with them are just not wide enough to satisfy, and most of the entry level models do not have an articulated LCD. And even the entry level models are just a bit too expensive to justify the experiment. The Sony came with a compact 16-50mm zoom (24-75mm equivalent field of view) and a filp out LCD…and Amazon had really good, one-day-only, deal on it. Like I say, maybe I just buy too many cameras!

This is one of of my standard test scenes…the view from the deck on the back side of the Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters trail, overlooking the final loops of Branch Brook before it joins the Merriland to become the Little River…the scene is never ordinary…and here it is the light that elevates it. The final rays of the low winter sun across the marsh…the contrasting cold shadows of the season and the ice on the brook…it is an ideal HDR subject, and indeed, I used some HDR processing in Snapseed to bring out the character of the scene. Still the Sony had to deliver the raw materials for Snapseed to work on…and it did that very well! I will write more extensively elsewhere on my conclusions as to the promised improvement in image quality…but suffice it to say here that I can see the difference in comparison shots with this camera and my Samsung Smart Camera WB800F…though one thing the exercise has demonstrated is just how well today’s small sensor compacts actually do most of the time (and the Samsung in particular). That said, I will definitely be keeping the Sony NEX, and it stands a good chance of completely displacing the Samsung as my day to day landscape and creative tool 🙂

Sony NEX 3NL-B, 16-50mm zoom at 24mm equivalent field of view. Superior Auto. ISO 200 @ 1/80th @ f13. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.