Sony has just announced the a6500 mirrorless camera, a mere 8 months after the announcement of the impressive a6300. Both cameras follow up the popular (and very capable) a6000, beloved by photographers and videographers alike.
What’s New In the a6500?
Stabilization & Processor
The primary improvement in the a6500 is the addition of in-camera image stabilization. Previous generations relied on lenses with optical stabilization, but the a6500 includes a 5-axis (horizontal, vertical, pitch, yaw, roll) stabilization system that provides an equivalent of approximately 5-stops of stabilization to reduce camera shake. What does that mean? If you normally require 1/500th of a second to hand-hold a shot with a particular lens to get sharp results, you’ll be able to hand hold at 1/15th of a second with the a6500.
Stabilization works with e-mount and adapted a-mount lenses, and when stabilized lenses are attached, the system is smart enough to allow the lens to correct pitch and yaw while the body corrects roll, horizontal and vertical movements.
Additionally, the a6500 has a newly designed processor and a larger memory buffer. The processor has front-end LSI (Large Scale Integration) to increase speed and improve noise reduction at high ISO, allowing Sony to claim a native high ISO limit of 51200. The increase in buffer size allows continuous shooting of 307 fine JPG frames at 11fps .
The Body
At first glance, the camera bodies are almost identical in styling, with both featuring a 2.4 megapixel OLED electronic viewfinder. However, the a6500 now features a magnesium alloy body, an improved, long-life shutter module and robust lens mount. The body also has improved weather sealing for use in harsh weather conditions.
The body now includes ten custom buttons, including a C1, C2, and C3. So if, for example, you get your camera settings all set up for how you like to shoot portraits, you can save that setup as C1, and your settings for shooting low-light sports as C2, and you can then return to those settings at any time with the press of a button. You’ll also find a larger shutter button and easier to operate controls, according to Sony.
Finally, the a6500 has been improved with a touch-pad-focus enabled touch-screen. This means that if you’re using the LCD in live-view mode while shooting video or still photographs, you can change the camera’s focus point simply by dragging your finger across the screen, either tracking your subject or selecting a new one entirely.
Video
Like the a6300, the a6500 can shoot 4K video, capturing 6K resolution and then oversampling to achieve the best possible detail in the final video, with no pixel binning. The camera also shares the a6300’s 425 phase-detection AF points and “4D” AF system that claims to be the fastest AF system in existence, acquiring focus in .05 seconds.
Video is captured with the XAVC S codec at 100Mb/s at 4K and 50Mb/sec at full HD. The camera can shoot full HD at up to 120fps, for 1/4 slow-motion at 30fps, or 100fps for 1/4 speed slow-mo at 25 fps. Want to capture all the detail and color grade later? The Sony a6500 can shoot S-Log gamma for a full 14 stops of dynamic range and S-gamut for a wider color space.
Unfortunately, there’s still no headphone jack.
Pricing & Availability
The Sony a6500 body alone will cost $1399 when it begins shipping in a few months, about $400 more than the a6300, which won’t disappear for a while. The European press release states that shipping will begin in December (at 1,700 Euros). I haven’t heard a firm date for the American release, yet.
However, you can pre-order yours on Oct 10th!
Questions? Comments?
Feel free to ask any questions that I might be able to answer in the comment section below. I can usually respond the same day, but it sometimes takes a day or two.
