Sony Alpha NEX-5 review

Once you venture out of the NEX-5’s iAuto mode, the ISO speed, white balance and focus area are now much quicker to access, and this makes it much nicer to use than the original menus, which spread the settings across six different sub-menus.

Performance depends entirely on whether you can live without reviewing photos straight after capture. With Auto Review enabled in the menu, it behaved like a compact – and a slow one at that – taking 1.4 seconds for the image to appear and taking 2.8 seconds between shots. Disabling Auto Review slashed the time to 0.8 seconds for both JPEGs and RAW capture. Flash photography was quick at 2.6 seconds between shots, and the fastest continuous mode hurtled along at 6.3fps, slowing to 1.7fps after 20 frames.

Despite using a contrast detection auto-focus system instead of the faster and more reliable phase-detect auto-focus systems employed by DSLR cameras, the NEX-5 performs remarkably well for its size. In well-lit scenarios, the NEX-5’s system performed at least as well as the one employed by Panasonic’s G2 but it’s no match for a DSLR with a good lens. This became even more apparent in poorly-lit situations where the AF assist lamp is deployed only to fire its beam into your fingers.

What’s most surprising is that, unlike other compact interchangeable-lens cameras, the NEX-5 surpasses many SLRs for detail, dynamic range and noise levels. The 18-55mm kit lens doesn’t quite do the sensor justice and exhibits a fair amount of distortion throughout its focal range. Barrel distortion is only visible at the very wide end of its focal length and quickly turns to pin cushion distortion – it seems to be at its worst at 33mm (50mm equivalent). In other respects it performed well, with impressive corner sharpness and barely any chromatic aberration. The lens’s built in optical image stabilisation – dubbed Optical SteadyShot by Sony – also works very well.