Sony A6300 review (rolling) - Striking image but nagging issues

[Andrew Reid]

Welcome to my rolling review of the Sony A6300. Like the rolling shutter of the A6300 this review takes a long time to get from the top to the bottom so grab a hot drink (be careful not to overheat) and enjoy the ride...

Read the full review on EOSHD here

[liork]

Waited for that, thank you!

[j_one]

Solid review Andrew, thanks.  I'll personally use this camera for creative shooting that requires wide-angle gimbal shots of short length (music videos, fashion films, etc)

[liork]

From many samples I see, the colors look better generally than A7S II, what is your opinion on that Andrew?

[CMB]

Can't help but read this review with a slight smile. Wasn't the auto focus supposed to work miracles and destroy Canon's Duel Pixel AF? Turns out not only can't it auto focus but that it can't even shoot when it over heats.

[MattH]

The "tweaking the ear of a hamster" analogy made me laugh.

[benymypony]

I expected this post with impatience !

[Oliver Daniel]

I was slightly considering this as a C-camera but I think it will just collect dust. 

I do love the monster specs from Sony, however there are many annoying issues to go with that as well. 

It would be ace to get a mirrorless or DSLR camera that shoots 2.5k, 10 bit, has high quality slow motion, decent DR. Lovely colour and a flexible mount. (Almost a Blackmagic!). 

I feel that top quality, affordable 1080p has been skipped for brittle, low bit-rate, marketing grabbing 4K. 

Little gripes aside, I think some people will get some great use out of the A6300.  

[Eduardo Granadsztejn]

Thanks!!!

I finally will wait for the A7III 

 

[BrorSvensson]

I believe that the new Sigma Canon to Sony adapter allows for video auto focusing. Could be wrong though.

[raf702]

RS and overheating are my issues on why I'm not pulling the trigger on this. Hopefully a firmware fix will do justice, then maybe I'll change my mind.

[Rungunshoot]

I've had it for 2 weeks now and just wrapped my first paid gig with it.  This is definitely not an A-cam.  It overheats very quickly in 4k. I used it in 90 degree weather for about 20 minutes and got a heat warning.  I tried to keep recording and ended up getting black/corrupted frames. The cam also reverted my memory card to "read only", requiring me to re-format it once I had dumped the footage.  The 4k rolling shutter is so bad that it ruins my attempts at post-stabilizing 4k footage because it warps the image too badly.  And there's no IBIS so good luck with Rokinon primes.  Regarding the lowlight image, I disagree with Andrew's endorsement; I find the in-camera noise reduction artificial-looking. It creates blocky patches that resemble MPEG compression artifacts.

 But I still want to use the a6300 for a few reasons.   First, it's small.  I can easily mount it on a small gimbal.  Second, autofocus.  It's really good. Maybe not as good as Canon, but it can track a moving face in all but the dimmest of light or heaviest backlight.  The AF is ultimately very usable, especially on a gimbal.  Third, it's relatively cheap and (theoretically) weather-sealed.  Which means I don't feel as scared doing dangerous stuff with it.  Finally, it uses APS-C lenses, which means it stays small even with lens attached.  You can put the cheapo 16mm pancake on it and it's almost pocket-sized.  So while I wish Sony would fix the glaring issues with this cam, I'm gonna keep using it for a few months in anticipation of something better.  

[elgabogomez]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the review. I have ample experience with the nex 5n and a5100/6000, and its heating issues. Would you say the a6300 has it worse than the 5n or about the same? I can flex my style of shooting for roughly the same overheating but definitely not more. It costed me a couple shoots and one or two interview pauses back in the 5n days.

[Andrew Reid]

3 hours ago, liork said:

From many samples I see, the colors look better generally than A7S II, what is your opinion on that Andrew?

It's interesting. I avoided shooting SLOG this time. Went for Cine4 and graded with FilmConvert, Kodak, A7S II profile. Colour definitely seems nice.

[Videomasterstudio HD]

too much red and yellow. sony looks awfull because of this. low light and resolution are great.

[rs3d]

@Andrew Reid

Thank you for the review, great insight! 

You are talking about the Sony 16-105mm F4 lens in the review - or is it the 18-105mm F4 for E-Mount? 
I'm very undecided between getting this and the Zeiss 16-70mm F4...

[tugela]

A lot of the issues with the camera are related to the relatively tiny body it has. I'm pretty sure most of those would go away if they used a SLR sized format.

[vaga]

It'd probably be fine even in an a7 size body

[wolf33d]

Well I used the A7R II and sold it. Non usable for me because of the issues you mention (ergonomics, RS, ...) but also price of the lenses and so on. 

Hopefully with the 5DIV we will have a touch screen, good Dual Pixel AF, nice 4K and even if I criticised them all the way I will get it.

We always criticise canon but at the end of the day, 4 years after the 5DIII we still speak about it as the best DSLR ever for video (raw) and so many stills photographer critic the DR and so on but still use it at the end of the day because more reliable, better lens and colors than Sony and so on.
Isn't that funny? 

Why a company cannot get best of both world between specs and ergonomics/basics?????

Nikon are doing it in photo, but they are ridiculous in video (see D5/500...). 
Canon lacks the specs
Sony the basics and ergonomics
Panasonic not bad but who cares about M43? Want FF or minimum APSC.

.....

I say let's create a camera brand at EOSHD with Canon ergo, Sony specs and so on

[Cinegain]

32 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

.....

I say let's create a camera brand at EOSHD with Canon ergo, Sony specs and so on

Let's take it to Kickstarter!

Joking aside (or are we?!), I don't mind the M43 crop and mount too much, it's quite workable. I just wish it had a bit more performance in it. All comes down to pixelsize, bitdata and processing/codec. Imagine a crossbreed between the NX1, GH4, E-M1 and BMPCC. But yeah... not likely to happen unfortunately. Unless indeed someone takes it up to themselves to change the game, but that's just not realistic I'm afraid.