WORDS & IMAGES BY WILL CHEUNG Sony A6700
Big test
PRICE: £1449
SONY.CO.UK
With an awesome AF system, portable body and very long list of photo and video features, Sony’s APS-C workhorse is almost certain to be yet another success. PN finds out if the performance matches the spec
also a contoured grip. It’s all very workmanlike, though if there’s any downside to this design it’s that the shallow body means the little finger on my average-sized right hand has nothing to grip, so comfort does suffer a little. With all key controls on the right, including the camera’s on/off switch, general handling was sound – despite the small body and busy rear control layout. I found a hand adjustment was needed to get at some controls – the C1 function button on the side of body was especially awkward. One control that’s lacking is an AF joystick. Though, if it was fitted, it would probably mean displacing the AF-ON button, and this is ideally positioned. Moving the AF point around is handled by the four-way control dial, or by the touchscreen when your eye is away from the EVF. Sony’s menu structure has evolved over the years and the A6700’s is more usable than older A series cameras. However, to counter that, the A6700’s menu has a lot of pages – 54 to be exact, with potentially six more My Menu pages. It can be quite a test of memory to set up camera features if you’re in a hurry, though the My Menu option will make life easier, with seven items per page that you can populate to suit your needs. Time spent setting up these pages is time well spent, and to save you going through the whole rigmarole again in case of a camera reset, your settings can be saved to a card. For those who like to customise their camera, the A6700 doesn’t disappoint. With three buttons on the rear, two on the top, a four-way
SONY IS COMMITTED to both full- frame and APS-C formats, although it has been quiet on the latter for a few years. The last enthusiast APS-C camera was the A6600, which was announced in 2019 – while in that time we have seen notable full-frame models including the A7R V, A7 IV and the incredible A1. It was about time for an APS-C launch then, and the A6700 is it. A body price of £1449 means the A6700 is pitched against the Canon EOS R7 (£1350) and Fujifilm’s duo, the X-S20 (£1249) and X-T5 (£1699). We also shouldn’t forget that there are options in Micro Four Thirds and full-frame at that body price level. The A6700 is a 26-megapixel camera based around a back-side illuminated sensor with superfast processing skills thanks to its Bionz XR processing engine. It boasts an extensive array of autofocus and video features, and you get all this packed into a small body which has a single SD card slot. While there are design differences between A6 series cameras, they have a familial appearance, with the EVF eyepiece on the left – which might not suit everyone – and the main controls on the right where there’s
SPEED MATTERS If you need to push up ISO, the A6700’s Raws react very well to noise reduction. This was an ISO 12,800 Raw processed through Lightroom using denoise at a level of 85, with white-balance corrected to taste. Taken at 1/640sec at f/2.8 with the camera set to continuous drive and AF tracking sensitivity at 3 (standard). All 11 frames in the sequence were spot on
FROM THE BACK Given the camera’s compact nature, the rear is dominated by the three-inch articulating touch monitor, with controls tightly packed in
22 Photography News | Issue 111
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