Sony NEX-7 Looking Increasingly Epic

Head over to Imaging Resource and use their camera compar-o-meter. While the JPEGs that they have uploaded are highly compressed, with the 24MP images only coming in at 8MB, they are at least comparing apples to apples. With that said, the NEX-7, at lower-ISO, successfully renders as much detail as the D3X. Amazing.

Images stolen from Imaging Resource.

What is truly, truly, truly outrageous, though, is that the ISO performance isn't terribly far behind. Looking at the ISO-3200 images, I would peg the noise characteristics of the NEX-7 to only be about half-a-stop behind the D3X. Again, amazing.

Comparing on price, the NEX-7 is so far in the lead, in my opinion, as to be almost silly. When placed next to the current top Micro 4/3 camera, the GH2, the difference is positively gargantuan. Very rarely do cameras in a similar price category diverge so wildly in quality. The noise characteristics of the previous generation of sensors were already better than Canon or Micro 4/3, but the resolution of the NEX-7 places the camera in a completely different league.

I wish that I could like the A77 just as much, but the noise and resolving abilities with that semi-transparent mirror are reduced enough to not make the concession worth it. The NEX-7, also, is in competition with Micro 4/3, which has spoiled me with the light weight of the whole system, which as I mentioned is facing a serious technical deficit. I'm telling Sony right now, if they can manage lenses even remotely comparable to 4/3 lenses, I will dive into the NEX system.