Monday, January 07, 2008

New Sony camera


This is a very interesting new compact aggressively priced exchangable-lens* camera from Sony.
Compared to the otherwise excellent alternatives from Nikon or Canon, this one has built-in image stabilization which works with any lens. A great advantage in many situations.
Also the price with two complementary zooms is impressive.

* I suspect this is a more transparent term than "DSLR", the latter which takes some explanation**.
Some will object that there are cameras with exchangable lenses which are not (D)SLRs, such as the Leica M8, but those are rare and expensive.

** "Digital Single-Lens Reflex". "Reflex" because the light is coming through the lens and bouncing off a mirror inside the camera to give you the finder picture. (This then shows you exactly what the lens sees.) "Single-lens" because there also used to be such cameras with a separate lens for the finder (rather defeating the advantage of the reflex principle).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"... exchangable-lens camera. I suspect this is a more transparent term than "DSLR", the latter of which takes some explanation."

I quite like the new term introduced in a recent Pogue video: Big black camera. Even more transparent, I think.

The other type of camera is called little silver camera.

Alex said...

TLR had their place. Okay, the lenses typically weren't interchangable (in my experience) and you still had the paralax error between the viewfinder and the film plane. BUT they did track the focus, and without the mirror to kick out the way, surely the shutter would be quieter.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Big black camera" is cute, except you can misunderstand it to include the super-zoom ("bridge") cameras.

Alex, you have a point.
I think one camera, a Mamiya 330 I believe, did actually have exchangeable lenses, came in neat and expensive siamese pairs!

Oh yes, the Mamiya C330.

Anonymous said...

Now that's what I'm talking about! Big rubbery one coming up!