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full screenprintcontentsfull screenprint10 VIDEOMAKER >>> JUNE 2019
tons and dials you might need when
shooting. However, you can customize
many of the buttons to control what
you want.
Likewise, the camera does not have
a headphone jack, making it a poor
choice for shooting when the audio
needs to be at its best. Sure, you can
get lucky monitoring with just the
meters, but without hearing what you
are capturing, you might be surprised
by unexpected wind or background
noise. The meters don’t show you the
difference between a good signal and
a noisy one.Using the monitor
The biggest upgrade with the a6400 is
its monitor. The display on the a
offers a much larger tilt range, includ-
ing a selfie mode. It’s still not fully
articulating and flips up instead of out.
It would work well for vloggers, but if
you’re using a hot or cold shoe mic,
the display is going to be completely
blocked by that microphone. There
is a way around it though: With an L
bracket with a hot or cold shoe mount,
you can place the microphone out ofthe way. This setup works pretty well.
Another symptom of its compact size,
the EVF blocks the ISO settings on the
screen when flipped up.
If you find you need the screen to
be brighter, you can bump it up by
two notches brighter than standard.
That’s better than nothing, but in
some high-glare situations, the added
tilting is going to be much more ef-
fective in helping you see the image
you’re capturing.
On the plus side, if you’re shooting
in one of Sony’s Log gamma profiles,
you can use their gamma display as-
sistant to view in a standard 709 color
profile. Overall, the a6400’s screen is
functional with decent image quality.Menu operation
A well-organized menu is very im-
portant. The a6400 offers a cus-
tom menu, where you can add the
features you use most. This is a great
feature, but what about the options
you don’t want in this menu? With
few exceptions, you won’t need
to go deeper than two levels on
the menu to adjust settings on thea6400. Sony’s tab system for finding
the grouping of menu operations is
intuitive. There are two camera tabs,
one for photo and one for video. The
other tabs are for network settings,
playback and setup.Shot assist tools
You’ll find peaking, zebras, audio
meters and a histogram to help assist
with shooting in the a6400. They are
all easy to find and equip, and they are
mostly effective. Peaking is found in
the photo tab rather than the video tab.
You can adjust both peaking color and
peaking intensity to fit your situation.
We recommend choosing a color that
isn’t already represented in your image.
If you don’t use zebras, you should.
They are great for getting proper
exposure. The a6400 lets you set the
threshold that the zebras appear from
70 to 100 percent pure white. The
camera will also let you view a histo-
gram of the video as you capture it
Finally, although there is no head-
phone jack, the camera does give you
meters for a visual representation of
the audio being captured. The audio
inputs can be controlled automatically
or manually.Media and bit rate
The a6400 has one SD media card
slot. It’s found with the battery on the
bottom of the camera. This can be a
difficult area to access once a tripod
is attached. With the extended battery
life, the size of your media will mat-
ter. A 64-gigabyte card will capture
about 85 minutes of UHD 4K footage
at 24fps set at a bit rate of 100 Mbps.
A battery will last around the same
amount of time, so a larger card is not
necessary unless you want to only
change out the battery when needed.
The a6400 offers three file formats.
The first is XAVC S 4K for 30 or 24fps
at a bit rate of 60 or 100 Mbps. For
HD there is XAVC S HD with 24, 30,
60 and 120 fps at 16, 50, 60 and 100
Mbps. Lastly is AVCHD for your 60i
needs at both 17 and 24 Mbps.Sony a
REVIEWTilting touchscreen display384 R02 Sony a6400.indd 10 4/23/19 2:22 PMVIDEOMAKER >>> JUNE 2019 11
a6400. Sony’s tab system for finding
the grouping of menu operations is
intuitive. There are two camera tabs,
one for photo and one for video. The
other tabs are for network settings,
playback and setup.Shot assist tools
You’ll find peaking, zebras, audio
meters and a histogram to help assist
with shooting in the a6400. They are
all easy to find and equip, and they are
mostly effective. Peaking is found in
the photo tab rather than the video tab.
You can adjust both peaking color and
peaking intensity to fit your situation.
We recommend choosing a color that
isn’t already represented in your image.
If you don’t use zebras, you should.
They are great for getting proper
exposure. The a6400 lets you set the
threshold that the zebras appear from
70 to 100 percent pure white. The
camera will also let you view a histo-
gram of the video as you capture it
Finally, although there is no head-
phone jack, the camera does give you
meters for a visual representation of
the audio being captured. The audio
inputs can be controlled automatically
or manually.Media and bit rate
The a6400 has one SD media card
slot. It’s found with the battery on the
bottom of the camera. This can be a
difficult area to access once a tripod
is attached. With the extended battery
life, the size of your media will mat-
ter. A 64-gigabyte card will capture
about 85 minutes of UHD 4K footage
at 24fps set at a bit rate of 100 Mbps.
A battery will last around the same
amount of time, so a larger card is not
necessary unless you want to only
change out the battery when needed.
The a6400 offers three file formats.
The first is XAVC S 4K for 30 or 24fps
at a bit rate of 60 or 100 Mbps. For
HD there is XAVC S HD with 24, 30,
60 and 120 fps at 16, 50, 60 and 100
Mbps. Lastly is AVCHD for your 60i
needs at both 17 and 24 Mbps.Lens Mount: Sony E-Mount
Camera Format: APS-C (1.5x Crop Factor)
Pixels Effective: 24.2 Megapixel
Movies: AVCHD 2.0, MP4, XAVC S
Audio: AC3, Dolby Digital 2ch, Linear PCM
Memory Card Type: SD, SDHC, SDXC
Image Stabilization: None
Video Format:
•3840 x 2160p at 24/25/30 fps (100, 60 Mb/s XAVC S)
•1920 x 1080p at 100/120 fps (100, 60 Mb/s XAVC S)
•1920 x 1080p at 24/25/30/50/60 fps (50 Mb/s XAVC S)
•1920 x 1080p at 50/60 fps (25 Mb/s XAVC S)
•1920 x 1080p at 25/30 fps (16 Mb/s XAVC S)
•1920 x 1080i at 50/60 fps (24, 17 Mb/s AVCHD)
Built-In Mic: With Video (Stereo)TECH SPECSSony a
REVIEWPhase AF points Detection: 425
Contrast AF points Detection: 425
Viewfinder Type: Electronic
Viewfinder Size: 0.39"
Viewfinder Pixel Count: 2,359,
Display Screen: 3′′ Rear Screen Tilting Touchscreen LCD
(921,600)
Connectivity: 1/8′′ Microphone, HDMI D (Micro), USB 2.
Micro-B, Wired Remote Port
Wi-Fi Capable: Yes
Battery: 1 x NP-FW50 Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery
Pack, 7.2 VDC, 1080 mAh
Dimensions (W x H x D): 4.7 x 2.6 x 2.4′′ / 120.0 x 66.9 x
59.7 mm
Weight: 14.22 oz / 403 g (with battery and memory card)Interval shooting
We’re happy to see interval shoot-
ing built into this camera. Interval
shooting gives the a6400 in-camera
time-lapse capabilities. We tested
shooting the beach on a windy day.
We didn’t have much time to do a
long exposure time-lapse, so we were
hoping it would be easy to set up, and
fortunately, it was. However, the a
won’t create a video in-camera in this
mode. That’s not really a big deal.
Most editing software can combine
images to make time-lapse video. Plus,
since it’s capturing full 24-megapixel
stills, the resolution of the video you
create can be greater than 4K. As you
shoot, the camera will conveniently
inform you of how long it will take to
capture the number of frames you set
it to capture.Log and HLG
Sony has long offered a log gamma
picture profile to just about every
camera they make. The a6400 is
no different with both SLog-2 and
SLog-3, as well as HLG, enabling
Sony’s HDR workflow. This is when
the gamma display assistant comes
in to play. You can use it to preview a709 or 2020 LUT specifically for the
gamma you are shooting in. Shooting
in a different gamma than standard
can be difficult to expose for proper-
ly, so previewing with a LUT applied
makes things easier.Sensor stuff
Mirrorless cameras have been notori-
ous for offering poor rolling shutter
performance. When vertical lines
bend and warp like jello, that’s the
rolling shutter effect. The a6400 has
significant rolling shutter when shoot-
ing in 4K. 4K shooting that requires
fast panning will not look good on this
camera. When shooting HD, however,
it’s not an issue.
We mentioned before that the cam-
era lacks in-body image stabilization.
This is the biggest feature from the
a6500 that is missing in the a6400.
Unless you plan to shoot from a tripod
all the time, we recommend pairing
this camera with lenses that offer im-
age stabilization.Lenses
Sony has a large selection of native
lenses for the a6400. Regardless of
whether the lens is designed for afull frame or APS-C size sensor, it will
work on the a6400, as long as it uses
E mount. You can get an APS-C lens
for as little as $250. That will get you
the prime Sony E 16mm f/2.8. A larger
investment of $1,200 gets you the
Sony E PZ 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS.
That’s pretty affordable and aligns
well with a $900 camera. We shot
with the Sony E PZ 18-105mm f/4 G
OSS and Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.
OSS. They both cost $600.
We preferred having a constant
aperture across the zoom of the lens
over getting a longer zoom. If the
18-135mm is for you, it comes in a
kit, bringing the price down by $
compared to buying the lens by itself.Autofocus
We mentioned before that the camera
has improved autofocus, but of the
new AF options, only Real-Time
Tracking AF works for video. Regard-
less of the type of tracking, what
video shooters need most is consis-
tent focus performance. Any hunting
for the focus point and the shot will
be unusable.
In our tests, the AF tracking did
work but was easily confused by ob-384 R02 Sony a6400.indd 11 4/23/19 2:22 PM