Pixiq

Sony has unleashed what they claim to the be smallest, lightest interchangeable lens camera (that’d be the NEX-C3) and the Alpha 35, with its groovy translucent mirror technology, on the world today. There’d been a bit of speculation about the NEX-C3, and we had been wondering what would replace the discontinued NEX-3 and the Alpha 33. So now we now: smaller and lighter; and faster and friendlier.

NEX-C3

Accessibility seems to be the name of the game with the NEX-C3. Being small and light, it looks and feels like a compact, but its interchangeable lenses and a whopping great sensor move it towards dSLT territory, just without the mirror. Nope it’s not big and they’re trying to remove the scariness factor, too.

There’s a Photo Creativity interface that lets you make technical adjustments to your images, but manages to remove the technical terms. Gone is aperture in favour of ‘background defocus’; exposure value is now ‘brightness’; and white balance has become ‘colour’. I can’t say that thrills me, because aperture is about more than depth of field, and calling white balance ‘colour’ doesn’t quite cut it, but hey. I’m probably just far too geeky and pedantic.

All you need to do to defocus your background or alter your picture’s brightness is turn the control wheel on the back of the camera.

The picture effects setting is basically in-camera editing that allows you to dewrinkle people with the soft skin effect, or partially dessaturate them, or make them high-key, or whatever else floats your pictorial boat at that precise moment, from posterisation to toy camera.

There’s a 3D sweep panorama setting, an HDR stacking function, and hand-held twilight and anti-motion blur settings for low-light shooting. Of course it also makes HD videos (720p) – which camera doesn’t today?

It’s got 16.2 effective megapixels, it weighs in at 283g with a battery, and it’ll be available in August this year. But we don’t know how much it’ll cost.

Alpha 35

Tele-zoom High Speed Shooting sees the light of day in the Alpha 35. This’ll magnify a central portion of the image area to give an effective approximately 1.4x magnification while you shoot at up to seven frames per second. You then get continuous tracking autofocus of still or moving subjects and high-speed burst frame-rate, so that you can capture fast-moving objects or small children. Drive mode’ll give you 5.5 frames per second full-resolution continuous shooting with tracking autofocus.

The Alpha 35 uses the translucent mirror technology that debuted in the Alpha 55 and Alpha 33. Put the camera in live view and you see what the sensor is detecting in real-time, not with the fractional delay you’d normally get.

There’s a 16.2 megapixel EXMOR APS HD CMOS sensor and a BIONZ processor. Maximum sensitivity is ISO 12,800.

Taking the lead from the Nikon D3100, the Alpha 35 has an integrated help function to explain what the camera’s different settings are and how they affect your pictures. You get the same picture effects setting as the NEX-C3, too.

This one’s also available in August; again we don’t know how much it’ll cost.

Are either of these tickling your fancy? Sony has plenty more information.