Three years ago the Sony α6600 became part of my equipment, the first “mature” camera body of my system. Arguably that role could have been assigned to the α6300, but it lacks IBIS and, with Sony’s approach of not incorporating OSS in new lenses under 70mm, in-sensor stabilisation cannot be considered an optional any longer. The introduction of the α6600 phased out the NEX-6, that — while perfectly capable to take excellent photos in simple scenarios — was clearly too NAIVE for a serious amateur use. Paradoxically, the new low-entry, the α6000, sports an EVF that is very poor in comparison. This, together with the lack of IBIS and an AF system that sometimes, though rarely, misses the spot even with landscape shots, was the new problem to solve in my equipment.

Being fine with the capability of the α6600 AF to track animals in motion, my desire was for an inexpensive, simple body for landscapes only: without leading edge technology and as light as possible (the combination of α6000 together with the Samyang 35mm F2.8 was so incredibly compact and LIGHT that I’ll sorely miss it).

My options for a new camera body in Spring 2024 are enumerated in the table below:

The full frame A7IIc/r camera bodies are very similar to the α6700, but the former in APS-C mode offers a too small resolution, while the latter is way too expensive. Unfortunately Sony seems to not care the lower segment a lot, given that the current Alpha line entry level, the α6100, not only misses IBIS, but also sports the same poor EVF of the α6000, while not being exactly cheap. The α6400 still doesn’t offer IBIS and it’s definitely too expensive. A reasonable option would have been an used α6500, but the only time I tried an used camera didn’t end well and I returned it. The lack of coverage of an inexpensive entry-level body is not only an impression of mine, as it has been recently covered in an interview by the Sigma CEO — the main reason being clearly the strong competition from smartphones, but probably also a lack of creativity in manufacturers.

We’ve seen some cameras with very technically impressive specifications, but I worry that they’re not always capabilities that many photographers really need. Moving forward, I speculate that more user-friendly specifications might mean more to customers. Easier to use interfaces, a compact and lightweight body for enhanced portability, or some other specifications might be more important.

Given that there were neither new models announced this year, nor there are rumours about them, in the end I decided for the α6700: definitely expensive, but packed with features, it seemed to me the best investment. It is to be noted, though, the impressive progression in prices in the past ten years — unfortunately there has been also a progression in weights, even though with the α6700 it seems to have been stopped.

Settings

For a general review of how I set my camera bodies, have a look at this old blog post about the α6600 (LINK); here I’m going to update some details.

First, some generic considerations about the news that Sony introduced with the α6700. For what concerns the menus, for sure they have been greatly improved, and now they are pretty good aligned with the ones of full frame cameras (there’s also the capability of saving the whole configuration to a CAMSET file); but the other side of the coin is that, having three cameras bought in a timespan of seven years, I have three very different menu systems (funny enough, phasing out the α6000 I believed I was going to reduce the entropy). Now, fortunately, with a good deal of controls and custom controls the access to the menus can be dramatically reduced, but Sony managed to mess around even here: the REC button has been moved to the top, in the old place of C1, the custom button in the upper back has been removed (summing up, since REC can be customised, we can say that a custom button has been moved to the right side) and the switch that allowed a single button to function as AF/AE-L was removed. Labels are so messed up that the custom button near the “trash” button is labeled in three different ways (C2, C3 and C4) in the three camera models I have. I could mitigate a lot these inconsistencies, but something remains.

As a final note, I welcome the capability of updating the firmware with the SD card; with my other camera bodies, that for this operation need an USB connection and a specific software to run on the laptop, I had problems and in some cases I couldn’t execute the process.

As usual I have two memory recalls: MR1 for static subjects and MR2 for fast moving subjects such as birds in flight. In both cases aperture control is primary, so Auto ISO is used; in the latter case it’s also important to have a fixed minimum shutter speed to freeze action. For the α6700 M mode is used because shutter time can be conveniently controlled with the front dial (that cannot be assigned to ISO Auto min. SS); for the α6600, A-mode is still used since there’s no front dial. α6600 introduced “custom hold” settings, which are a subset of overrides that be temporarily activated by pressing a button, eventually also engaging AF: in this way it’s possible to have alternate focusing buttons that also override a few current settings. I programmed Custom Hold 1 to override the focusing area to “Wide focus area”: with the α6600 it’s required by animal eye AF that, unlike human eye AF, doesn’t work with tracking, but only within the active AF area; with the α6700 there’s no such limitation (VERIFY), but the wide focus area can be useful to facilitate the discovery of the subject. Custom Hold 2, instead, activates AF-C and tracking: it can be used for slow moving subjects that alternatively stay put and restart moving (such as critters), without necessarily setting a very fast shutter time as MR2 does; I’ve also noted that AF-C is also dramatically faster and more accurate with a few lenses such as the Sigma 105mm F2.8 DG DN Macro Art. The α6700 introduced a third memory recall, MR3, which I use in a similar way to Custom Recall 2 and additionally setting the AF subject detection to “insects”.

The α6700 introduced a very useful global settings, Full time DMF, that makes it possible to manually override focus in any circumstance, even when the trigger button is not half-pressed.

REMOVE TABLE FROM POST ABOUT a6600, PUT A LINK TO HERE

Given these premises I reprogrammed the custom buttons, trying to keep as much consistency as possible with the other two cameras:

Other settings that might be frequently changed have been assigned to the Fn operation menus (TBD ALIGN A6600):

Video settings