Sony today announced a new E-mount lens, a lightweight and compact long-range 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom, featuring Optical SteadyShot stabilization. The company also announced a silver version of one of its most popular cameras, the a6300.
Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS Lens
Key features:
- 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens
- Closest focus 1.48 ft
- 1 aspherical lens
- 2 ED elements
- 2.75×3.5 inches
- 11.5 oz
With a high 7.5x magnification and close 0.29x maximum magnification, the diminutive Sony E 18-135mm is a versatile optical tool that is well-suited for travel photography when paired with Sony’s a6000, a6300, and a6500 mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras.
Sony claims outstanding corner-to-corner sharpness throughout the entire zoom range, and fast, precise, quiet AF via a linear motor. Its quiet operation makes this lens a good choice for videos. Built-in optical image stabilization should improve its usability in low-light situations.
The Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS APS-C E-Mount Zoom Lens will be available in mid-February, and can be pre-ordered from Adorama for starting January 10.
Silver Sony a6300
Here’s a look at the a6300, which was introduced last year and is now available in Silver. It will available for preorder from Adorama body only for $898, or with a 16-50mm kit lens for , on January 10, and will ship at the end of February.
Key features:
- 24.2MP APS-C Exmor CMOS sensor with accelerated readout
- Claimed 0.05 sec AF acquisition
- Up to 11fps continuous shooting w/AF and AE
- 4K movies with 2.4x oversampling, full pixel readout, no pixel binning
- 425 AF points
- 2.4 Million Dot OLED EVF
- Dust/moisture resistant magnesium alloy body
- Wi-Fi, NFC, QR code connectivity
The a6300 features a newly-developed 24.2 MP APS-C Exmor CMOS sensor that features new construction designed to boost light collection efficiency and minimize noise throughout a wide sensitivity range of ISO 100-512,005. Highly conductive copper in the circuitry significantly accelerates readout speed to support 4K movie recording with full pixel readout without pixel binning, full HD 120fps shooting and 14-bit RAW output for still images.
The camera is also said to have high-performance features such as 11 fps continuous shooting with autofocus and auto exposure tracking. In live-view, continuous shooting is possible at up to 8fps. Or go with 11fps continuous shooting for extra assurance of sharp climactic shots. AF/AE tracking performance is said to be fast.
The α6300’s 4D FOCUS™ system is said to offer fast autofocus acquisition time of as little as 0.05 seconds. The 425 phase detection AF points are densely positioned over the entire image area, which should aid in locking in focus on off-center subjects. Hybrid AF is available for movies in both HD and 4K. Other enhancements include silent shooting with continuous autofocus and auto exposure, the ability to use AF in focus magnifier mode, expanded flexible spot AF, Eye AF in AF-C mode and more.
The α6300 is equipped with a high contrast, high-resolution XGA OLED Tru-Finder with approximately 2.4 million dots. A new mode available for the viewfinder allows display of images at 120Hz, ensuring that action is displayed smoothly with very few afterimages for the sense of immediacy you get when shooting with an optical viewfinder.
A tiltable 3” (921k dots) LCD™ Display makes it easy to photograph over crowds, or objects close to the ground or maybe you just want to get a different perspective. The screen can swivel up approx. 90° and down approx. 45°. Sony says the screen displays double the brightness via a unique RGBW pixel structure for easier checking of the focus and image details.
A silent shooting button lets you shoot candids more easily. The Sony a6300 continues the Sony tradition of extreme customizability, with any of 65 functions assignable to 10 customizable buttons, so you can program the camera to shoot the way you work.
4K video
The α6300 offers internal 4K recording4 in Super 35mm format with full pixel readout, no pixel binning and 2.4x oversampling. By collecting 20 megapixels (6K equivalent) of information, which is approximately 2.4x as many pixels as 4K, the α6300 then oversamples the information to produce high-quality 4K footage, which they say provides exceptional detail and depth.
Additional professional video features include; S-Gamut3/S-Log3 and Gamma Display Assist, the ability to record Full HD at 120 fps for 4x or 5x slow motion HD video, both a mic jack and XLR compatibility via the MI shoe, enhanced Zebra functionality, picture profile settings, as well as Time Code / User Bit, clean HDMI output and much more.
The consumer-friendly XAVC S format supports 4K recording at a maximum 100Mbps bit rate as well as Full HD recording at 50Mbps, so the α6300 can capture movies6 filled with finely detailed movement. For efficient handling, XAVC S files are minimized in size using Long GOP data compression and contained in the widely compatible MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format.
