Computer Shopper - UK (2019-10)

ISSUE 380|COMPUTER SHOPPER|OCTOBER 2019 41

SONY A6400

★★★★★

RECOMMENDED £1,240•From http://www.amazon.co.uk

SONY’SMARCHONthe mirrorless camera
industry continues with the A6400, amuch
more affordable relative to the professional
A7 and A9 models.
At £1,240 it’s not entry-level per se,but
that moneygets you alightweight wisp of a
24.2-megapixel camera that offers 424
autofocus points and can shoot up to a
speedy 11fps, not to mention the 18-135mm
kit lens. Body-only,it’s only £949.
Even with this lens, the A6400 is
wonderfully compact: at just 120mm wide
and 67mm tall, the body is barely any bigger
than ahigh-end compact camera. It’s easy
to handle; the front grip could stand to be
alittle deeper,perhaps, but it’s comfortable
and feels well balanced with the kit lens
installed. Since this is an E-mount camera,
there’s no shortage of other lenses available,
including four-figure professional glass.

WORTHY OFTHE FRAME
Whatever lens you attach, the A6400’s
small size belies afantastically usable camera.
Athumbwheel on the back, as well as adial
next to the mode dial, makes using manual
modes straightforward. Pretty much all the
buttons can be repurposed to do things
other than their defaults, too, which helps
with getting things set up to your liking.
The 3in, 921,000-pixel displaycan be
angled up and down to provide easier
framing when shooting at low or high angles.
It doesn’t swing outwards but it can face
forwards, and you can use its touch
capability to set the autofocus point with a
prod. It also acts as atrackpad when the
camera is held to your eye, allowing you to
drag the autofocus point around with your
thumb –afantastically intuitive system.
There’s an integrated electronic viewfinder
positioned, unusually,onthe farleft-hand side
of the camera. Youcan opt to run it at either

VERDICT

Wellpricedbutwithoutsacrificingquality,Sony’s
pint-sizedmirrorlesscamerapacksapunch

MIRRORLESSCAMERA

50 or 100fps, with

the latter dubbed

High quality and

theoretically offering

better motion handling.

In practice,weran the

A6400 in both modes

and could barely tell

the difference.

That aside,the viewfinder is a

good one –a1cm, 2,359,296-pixel unit

that was great fun to use.Its off-centre

positioning will be unusual to DSLR

habitués, but it’s quick to get used to and

frees up the right side of the touchscreen

forautofocus repositioning.

Battery lifeisreasonable rather than

outstanding. Rated at 360 shots using the

viewfinder,or410 using the less power-hungry

LCD screen, we found the A6400 good for

about aday’s worth of relatively intensive

photography.Take amerciless approach to

the power-saving menu and you could

probably stretch it out to afew days.

POINTSWIN PRIZES

Picture quality,meanwhile,isexcellent.

Dynamic range is good, and the A6400

returned sharp,printable images. Lefttoits

own devices, the 1,200-zone evaluative

metering system worked well and produced

nicely balanced images, though with exposure

simulation available in the viewfinder,we

found ourselves reaching forthe A6400’s

manual mode more often than not.

Autofocus works well, and the excellent

coverage of autofocus points, which covers

pretty much the entire frame,makes it easy

to set up.Those with apenchant formanual

focus will find –aswith most mirrorless

cameras –that the manual focus ring on the

lens is alittle frustrating to use compared

with the precise optics of aDSLR lens, but

with both focus point

magnification and

focus peaking, getting a

sharp image manually is

simple enough.

One area in which the

A6400 really excels is its

continuous shooting

speed. At full throttle,

Sony says it shoots at

11fps and, in our tests, it

shot 44 Raw files in alittle

under four-and-a-half

seconds before pausing

to buffer; afinal speed

of 10.2fps. If you’re happy

to shoot JPEGs, you can

spraywith even wilder

abandon: the A6400 shot 113

top-quality JPEGs in 10.8 seconds before

buffering; arateof10.5fps. Both of these top

speed results are with the autofocus locked

from the first frame and, using tracking

autofocus, the best speed we saw in JPEG was

astill nippy8fps. If you’re aregular action

shooter,the A6400 will keep up just fine.

The A6400 handles higher ISOs nicely but,

inevitably,not as well as agood full-frame

camera. It’s competitive up to ISO 1600,

although the higher reaches of that range

showed alittle grain. Addastopand images at

ISO 3200 showed significant noise,and the

stop beyond that –and everything beyond –

should be considered foremergency use only.

FILM FAN

There are no issues with shooting in good

light, however,and the A6400’s video features

and quality were another pleasant surprise.

XAVC 4K shooting at 25fps is possible,

providing you have aUHS-I or UHS-II U3

card, while Full HD footage offers achoice of

25fps, 50fps or 100fps. Youcan also shoot

in-camera proxies and in S-log, making the

A6400 avery capable camera forvloggers, or

an excellent starter camera forthose who

want to produce high-quality,flexible video

without spending afortune.

Even if it doesn’t dominateathigh ISOs,

this is an excellent camera. From its portability

to handling, image quality and lens library,the

A6400 is the new mirrorless camera to beat.

DaveStevenson

Batterylife

0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100

Seepage90forperformancedetails

SENSORRESOLUTION24.2megapixels•SENSORSIZE

23.5x15.6mm(APS-C)•FOCALLENGTHMULTIPLIER1.5x•

VIEWFINDERElectronic(2.36milliondots)•LCDSCREEN

3in(921,000dots)•VIEWFINDERMAGNIFICATION(35mm-

EQUIVALENT,COVERAGE)0.7x,100%•WEIGHT403g•

DIMENSIONS67x120x60mm•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•

DETAILSwww.sony.com•PARTCODEILCE6400MB.CEC

SPECIFICATIONS

360shots