REVIEWS ON THE WAY: Sony A6300, 24-70 and 85 1.4 & Oberwerth Camera Bag

March 21, 2016 Accessories, Bags, Sony 20

REVIEWS ON THE WAY: Sony A6300, 24-70 and 85 1.4 & Oberwerth Camera Bag

Sony Sony Sony! They are still on top of their game!

Just a note to let everyone know that I am receiving a load of goodies today via Fed Ex! The new Sony A6300, which I had a preview of two weeks ago. It is the successor to the hottest selling mirrorless camera over $600, the original A6000 (which I still own). The A6000 has been WILDLY popular and partly responsible for Sony’s huge growth over the past few years and can now be had for $498! The 6000 along with the hot A7 series has propelled Sony to the top of the Mirrorless heap for sales. Now with the new A6300, they expect to keep on track.

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The A6300 is fast, VERY fast. When I shot it in Miami a couple of weeks back it had some impressive AF tracking going on, but I knew I needed it at home for a while to really give it a fair review. I will be comparing it to the A6000, and testing some cool lenses on it as well. The inexpensive 28 f/2 from Sony which is an amazing lens, should be perfect on the A6000 giving a sort of 35mm equivalent. This would put a world class APS-C camera and fast 28mm f.2 lens in your hands for under $1500. Still a hunk of cash but I feel this combo would be blazing fast, accurate, and great in low light. Also, smaller and much less $$$ than a full bore A7RII setup.

I will also test the new 24-70 f/2.8 and 85 1.4 on the 6300 as well as the A7RII. See my earlier tests HERE and HERE

Loads of goodies to test and review makes me a happy man 😉 So look for the Sony reviews SOON.

New Camera Bag. The Oberwerth Freiburg Bag. 

I also just received this new lovely bag from Oberwerth. It is the Freiburg model and is gorgeous. Hand made in Germany, and expensive, but one of those with true quality. I love my Wotancraft bags and my Hold Fast Gear bags and my Tenba bag, but this one is a step up in “class” and in appearance, for those with not only discriminating taste but those who enjoy a spacious bag to hold their gear and goods. I will have a video up this week for the Freiburg bag, look for it by Thursday!

You can see more about Oberworth bags HERE. 

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20 Comments

  1. Hi Steve, very much looking forward to reading your review of the a6300, hope that you will look at what sort of shallow DoF you can achieve with the right lens, also vs the full bore A7Rii!?

    Thanks, Will

  2. Steve:

    Looking forward to the 6300 review. I’m currently using the 6000 (bought for <$500) with the Sigma 30mm f2.8. A combo with off-the-charts bang for the buck and great handling. I'll be interested to hear what your impression is of the improved viewfinder.

  3. Tell you what happened to me that kind of cinched the deal away from Sony. A good friend sent their A7R2 in for repairs. In short a horrible experience. Sony doesn’t even fix them, they use a call center in the Philippines that hasn’t finished customer service 101 yet and when it did come back, they didn’t complete the repair. Sony may be marketing great products but their post service isn’t at the level of either Nikon or Cannon yet, maybe Olympus. Until that improves I’d say the SONY will always be a hobbyist camera….Thoughts?

  4. Hi Steve, being a native of Koblenz where the camera bags are made, I need to correct your spelling: It’s Oberwerth – not Oberworth 😉

  6. Hi Steve, I am upgrading from a6000, so from your viewpoint is it good to go for a new a6300 or A7II, both seem to be in same price range?

  7. It’s a pity Fuji stopped sending you cameras, everything you have ever said about the prior X cameras was accurate and balanced, very valuable feedback for them. They seem to get all their feedback from existing X Shooters who can get by with the shortcomings. Which as you say won’t win over anyone new, or even those who owned the cameras in the past and found them frustrating. I think the XT2 will be closer, with Tilt and 4K but then it’ll miss the OVF which is kinda the point. I’m on the XTran fence as the JPEG’s are excellent and with my XT1 I simple tweaked the JPEG settings and 90% JPEG’d. I’m hoping the X200 will be 23mm or longer and not 18mm as rumoured, or that will be a miss for me also.

    • It’s a miss on their part as that’s part of the fuji charm. Which makes fuji shooters sound completely bonkers and getting them really good deals on the secondhand market 😛
      A committed fuji shooter has probably used any number of no compromise cameras and knows where the gains are from the compromises presented by using a fuji kit. While being aware of the comforts of at least sub 40 pixel files or proper large negatives. Most durable converts come from (as in the latest thing in their camera bag previously) the 12-16pixel market of outdoor used older 1-5d’s and d700’s and crop bodies where the fragile files really made unfavorable lighting situations irreparable (i.e. too far from my originally intended image to be satisfactory) compared to the load and energy expenditure of the kit.

  8. Hi Steve. This might be odd location but have you test Sony 55mm f14 Z on A6000?

  9. Thanks Steve – Understand and not so cool by Fuji. I currently use Xpro1 and also got hold of a mint second hand M9P. Before that I did try the olympus Pen series. Fantastic colours and has a good feel and heft about it with cracking lenses, but to be honest, the menus are a nightmare and takes away the enjoyment. I wish it didn’t! In the end the Leica/Fuji combination with its simplicity works for me. Thanks for the quick response and I am now trying to muster some courage to summit some pictures to your Inspiration blog. Regards Dominic

    • Man, you got exact 2 camera’s I’m using right now. And I also use Olympus Em10 markII, portability wins over bad menu imo, so I’m keeping it for now. Cheers!

  10. Steve, I actually received the same bag about one month ago. Sadly they had serious import issues, my bag sat in customs for about 3 weeks because of missing paperwork. Then the velcro from the insert came off when I tried to adjust the dividers. Otherwise the bag looks great and seems to protect my gear well (and it holds my Ipad pro without a problem!!!).

  11. Hi Steve. Are you still planning to review the Fuji Xpro 2 soon? Fantastic site…love your enthusiasm and look at it every day for inspiration and the odd review. Kind Regards Dominic

    • I had Amy review the camera, which was posted last week. That will be the X-Pro 2 review for this website. Fuji does not send me cameras, they fear I will say something bad about them, so they stopped sending me cameras for review after the original X-Pro 1. So so political, this business. I did rent one for 3 days, enjoyed it. Def a step up from the old Pro 1. Sensor is improved and has much much less of the “mush” when processing raw files. Speed is good, and it is as close to an RF experience that you will get short of buying a true Leica M. B&W mode was very good, but so is the one on the PEN-F. Low light is good but not great, others can best it there. Me, personally, I would own the PEN-F over the X-Pro 2 but that is because I have quite a few M 4/3 lenses, and enjoy M 4/3 for what it has that others do not (fun factor, speed, swivel LCD, 5 Axis IS, Live Time, etc). With that said, I am sure the X-Pro 2 will make many Fuji users happy. Will it win over new people to Fuji? Not sure, I feel they need something with more WOW to do that. But in my short use, it’s a solid offering from Fuji. That and the X-T1 are their two best IMO. Can’t go wrong with any camera these days over $1000. All are so good. Thank you.

      • You’ve said that in your hands the m43 senors can match any APS-C out there. Does this still hold true after handling the Xpro2?

        I expect the a6300 to show an obvious improvement over the E-M1. Please include a note on that comparison when you write up the a6300.

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