Sony a6300 — little things

This is part of a long series of posts about the Sony a6300. The series starts here.

I like the Sony a 6300 a lot. It has an excellent two-speed sensor, a beefed-up construction that’s reminiscent of the a7RII and a7II, really accurate and Johnny-on-the-spot autofocus, a manual EVF/LCD switching mode that takes the cursing out of tripod-mounted photography, EFCS and a silent shutter that is useful for static subjects, and more.

But this post is about some of the things – mostly little things – that tick me off.

SD card access

The a7x family has a door in the side of the camera for getting at the SD card. The a6300 has the SD card in the battery compartment. That’s good in a way: one less opening in the camera to leak. But getting the SD card out is tricky, especially if you’ve long fingernails.

Battery backwards from a7x

The contacts on the a7x battery face away from the camera body. The contacts on the a6300 battery face away towards the camera body. And get this: it’s the same battery. Why did Sony penalize the person who tries to use both cameras?

SD card write light on bottom of camera

On the a7x, the write light for the SD card is on the back of the camera, were you can see it if the camera is on a tripod. On the a6300, the light is on the bottom of the camera, where it is essentially invisible.

Menu system unnecessarily different.

I have remarked before about the cavalier manner in which Sony moves around menu items from camera to camera. In the a7RII the Format command was moved to below the Copyright menu item. In the a6300, it’s even further down the list (but still right below the Copyright item, so there’s a tiny bit of consistency. Alphabetical order would make more sense.

No front wheel

The a7x cameras, and Nikons and Canons, have front and back wheels. The a6300 has a back wheel, but the function of the front wheel gets overloaded on the dial/joystick/OK button thingie on the back of the camera. It’s a marriage made in hell. It’s way to easy to have the camera think you want to change ISO when all you’re trying to do is adjust the shutter speed.

Front grip too shallow

Maybe Sony was trying to keep the camera’s measurements small, but they went overboard with the front grip. And that’s not a place where smallness makes any difference, since the front grip could be a lot deeper with affecting the front to back distance with just about any lens attached. If they made the front grip deeper, not only would the camera be more comfortable to operate, they’d have room for side SD card access like the a7x.

Finder

I’m a glasses wearer, and I find it harder to see the edges of the finder than, say, in the a7RII.

There are some minor good things as well (remember, this is about the minor things – I said at the outset that there were a bunch of major good things).

Self timer has 2, 5, 10 seconds.

Just like the a7RII.

HDMI, USB door is much easier to use than the flimsy thing on the a7x cameras.

Is it sealed as well? Hard to say.

User can pick the first three non-underscore characters of the file names.

I’ve mentioned this before. It’s something I’ve long wanted on Sony cameras.

In general, it seems that Sony is trying to make the a6300 a lot like the a7x cameras, and that is a good thing.