I'm thinking of going down the a 3000 route

[gio67]

I have the nex 6 and to be honest have not used my 580 in almost 8 months,
what will I be losing and what will I be gaining ?, tilting screen aside,
anybody got any comparisons, the main reason will be lenses, I have gathered a few emount lenses now and an LEA2 adaptor
I have all my A mount lenses
and in the e mount I have 16mm + FE and UWA, sigma 30 mm, zeiss 35mm 1.8 and the 55-210 so I'm pretty well covered and will be adding the Zeiss 16-70,. it just seems a waste to have all my A mount lenses and the 580 gathering dust, out of them all I will probably keep the tokina 11-18

[Greg Beetham]

Go for it I say, you only live once.
Greg
ps report back now yo heer.

[classiccameras]

I bet there's an A5000 round the corner!

[gio67]

I bet there's an A5000 round the corner!

and a 7000 and a 9000, but what kind of consumers would we be if we waited

[pakodominguez]

what will I be losing and what will I be gaining ?, tilting screen aside,
anybody got any comparisons, the main reason will be lenses, I have gathered a few emount lenses now and an LEA2 adaptor
I have all my A mount lenses
and in the e mount I have 16mm + FE and UWA, sigma 30 mm, zeiss 35mm 1.8 and the 55-210 so I'm pretty well covered and will be adding the Zeiss 16-70,. it just seems a waste to have all my A mount lenses and the 580 gathering dust, out of them all I will probably keep the tokina 11-18

DK bought one and apparently he's happy enough. It works for what he needs. He posted some samples on DPR.

You loose AF speed. Image quality is a given. The only thing that seams weird to me is putting a 1000$ lens (the Zeiss 16-70) on a 300$ body... I assume Digital cameras are disposable, but this is taking it to the extreme.

[bfitzgerald]

I'd advise a try before you buy it is without question the worst camera I've ever held in my life. Like a cheap toy you get in a Christmas cracker nasty plastics, and the EVF is terrible horrible low res/tiny as is the rear screen.

For A mount users it's a no go obviously you lose IBIS which is a major turn off.
Try for yourself I honestly couldn't think of a single thing that redeems it. Sensor is ok, but then any APS-C sensor is good these days.

[pakodominguez]

I'd advise a try before you buy it is without question the worst camera I've ever held in my life.

Didn't you said that about the A58?
I haven't see the camera yet (I was away for 3 weeks) but this is what DK said about it:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52142856
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52149157
I'm not having one, despite the really interesting price. If the wife get bored of the NEX5 she did still from my bag the day I bought the NEX7, she will probably get a RX100II. I'll wait for the NEX7 successor, and the only thing I need is better AF (and better video compression. or no compression at all!)

[gio67]

I'd advise a try before you buy it is without question the worst camera I've ever held in my life.

Didn't you said that about the A58?
)

every silver lining has a cloud

[bfitzgerald]

The A3000 makes the A58 look good!
In this case I think it would be hard to find anything good to say about the A3000, yes it capture pictures but so does any camera.

[Greg Beetham]

The A3000 from what I can read so far kinda flies in the face of the claim that Sony isn’t a cheap brand.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

Honestly Greg I think it does cheapen the brand. I'm not against cheaper bodies or budget offerings, but you can only go so far before it makes the company look "cheap and tight" both the A58 and the A3000 are IMHO a step too far in cost cutting.

All the makers have "cheaper" bodies, and yes cheaper lenses. But the bad quality of the materials used in both of these models really does reflect poorly on Sony. Even the pretty cheap feeling D3200 and EOS 1100d actually look pretty good v these offerings. And the EVF in the A3000 is a disgrace, sort of junk you get in a budget zoom bridge type camera.

If the film was "A Bridge too far" then this is a "cost cut too far" Simply put Sony offer less than every other maker, at the same or a similar price, and that is not a good move however you want to look at it. It's quite possible to make respectable cheaper products with a bit of effort. I've noticed cost cutting from Sony over the years, even recently they are now shipping cameras with no separate chargers either (RX100 one example and that's not a cheap product) they even felt the need to cut the power cable length down in the boxed Alpha models, and use very light poor quality materials for the user manual.

These might seem like minor points but it just makes Sony look like a cheap company desperate to save a few pennies.

[David Kilpatrick]

Understand that the A3000 viewfinder is the worst finder in the world. It is smaller visually and a third or less of the resolution of the old Konica Minolta A2 finder - that bad, and the chip used is so small that the eyepiece has a huge magnification which in turn makes the dioptre correction shift a great amount with each click. However, I can just use it...

The A3000 image quality is stunning. This is a clip from a shot, which is part of my BJP review if they care to use it:

tourists-clipf8.jpg (287.23 KiB) Viewed 7186 times

This 100% clip is from an ISO 100 image with phenomenal dynamic range, which the raw file eats. You can see the moiré appearing on the seat of the chair, because the A3000 like most contrast-detect focusing cameras has a super weak AA filter (otherwise, their focus is affected). It's good up to 3200 ISO with the right processing, dynamic range reduces but you can secure relatively low noise.

The A3000 and lens is now only £299 from WEX in the UK. This lens, 18-55mm, is stunningly sharp as you can probably tell (at f/8 here, a good working aperture, and 27mm focal length). I do not like this camera at all, I'm also using an Olympus OM-D E-M5 with 12-50mm and other lenses which I like a great deal, but I can assure you the A3000 produces much sharper images. I have to use a Sigma lens on the Olympus to get close. And then it's worse at 1600 than the 3000 is as 3200. Both Sony sensors, but of course the fourthirds format 16 megapixel needs smaller pixels than 20 megapixel APS-C.

David

[pakodominguez]

Understand that the A3000 viewfinder is the worst finder in the world. It is smaller visually and a third or less of the resolution of the old Konica Minolta A2 finder - that bad, and the chip used is so small that the eyepiece has a huge magnification which in turn makes the dioptre correction shift a great amount with each click. However, I can just use it...

The A3000 image quality is stunning. This is a clip from a shot, which is part of my BJP review if they care to use it:

Hi David.
A couple of questions:
As a professional, is this a good backup camera? (how many pics from this camera you already put on Alamy?)
As a consumer (entry level, upgrader from PS cameras... Sony's real target), will you get upset after a couple of weeks using it? or it is OK?
How good (or bad) is the AF?

regards

Pako

[alphaomega]

So the answer is to wait for a Sony camera with more functionality and better EVF than A3000 but employing this excellet 20Mp sensor. That is exactly my position. Ideally I would like a NEX-6 upgrade with this sensor and a better EVF. I agree with the criticism that the NEX-6 EVF is too dark in clear daylight.

[bfitzgerald]

I don't doubt the sensor is decent it should be too. But for me there is more to a camera than just the sensor. If you can't enjoy or like using something you are not going to want to use it, and I think that is very often forgotten.
A bit like saying a car has a good engine, but shakes your bones driving it and feels cheap as tat. Are you really going to "enjoy" driving it? Same for cameras, I pick up a film 7 and it feels great..I want to use it because I like it.

I picked up the A3000 and I wanted to cry it was so bad. I genuinely left the shop shocked that such a low quality product ever got off someone's scribble pad and made it to factory production. I've been quite critical of Sony in the past, but this is a new low for any camera maker to go to. I'm shocked Sony would want people to see this with their name on it.

It's rare for me to quote Kirk Tuck but this is his take on it..
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.ie/201 ... build.html

Looks like he hates it too!