Sony NEX-7 with Rokkor-M Konica and Contax Lens

Sony NEX-7 ISO 800 with 18-55mm OSS @52mm f/5

We posted earlier about our trip to Unique Photo to see the new Sony NEX-7. It was an open house with Sony representatives exhibiting the new Alpha and NEX cameras, Sony lenses, and flash guns.

There was a lot of interest with the new cameras so our time with the NEX-7 was curtailed. The Sony representatives were all very helpful allowing lens changes and personal memory card usage to grab some images of the pre-production NEX-7.

The brief time with the NEX-7 was great. Since the NEX-5 was our main camera, it's been a while since we used a viewfinder. The NEX-7's EVF was a new experience. It felt odd in the beginning putting a small electronic screen up to your eye but we adjusted by the end of the night. We didn't have time to adjust the diopter, which we should have. All the information from the rear LCD is translated to the 2.36 million dot, 0.5" XGA OLED EVF. The EVF and slightly larger body of the NEX-7 made shooting with quite heavy SLR lenses very manageable.

We did not use the two new dials on top of the NEX-7 since we were using manual lenses. The dials felt great when we did play with them briefly. There was an additional button by the Shutter button that we will most likely reassign to a new command.

We learned a few things about the NEX-7. It responded to the same remote control as the other NEX and Alpha cameras. Also in the menu there was a Micro Adjust option for auto focus lenses. Lastly the NEX-7 was considerably lighter than it looks and will make for a great travel companion.

What would we change with the NEX-7 from our brief encounter? Change the Exposure Bracketing to +/- 3EV with a 5 shot option. The extra button by the Shutter button hopefully is customizable. We would set it to EVF or LCD mode only and not rely on the sensor.

We set the NEX-7 to Shutter priority, and Auto-ISO when the light allowed. The camera was set to JPEG output and that is what's posted here. The posted images are resized and 100% crops from each lens. No other changes were made to the file. All the lenses handled great with the NEX-7. The snapshots are not the best but we had a great time playing with the NEX-7.

Sony NEX-7 ISO 160 with Contax Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 Planar - the shutter speed at 1/60 didn't help this shot.

Sony NEX-7 ISO 200 with Minolta 28mm f/2.8 Rokkor-M

Sony NEX-7 ISO 400 with Konica Hexanon 57mm f/1.2

Sony NEX-7 ISO 6400 +1EV with Voigtlander 12mm f/5.6 Ultra Wide Heliar

The CV 12mm Ultra Wide Heliar shot above was not focused and was taken to see if red-shift at the corners was present.

Thanks to Unique Photo, Sony, and the lovely model in the photos above.