It seems like it was only yesterday that Sony released the a6300 mirrorless camera (even though it was actually February), yet Sony is back again to unveil the a6500; an incremental name with incremental upgrades. One of these upgrades is blazing fast autofocus and, while the previous a6300 featured the “world’s fastest autofocus”, the a6500 aims to inherit that title.
The internals of the a6500 are mostly identical to its predecessor, with the same 24.2-megapixel APS-C sensor with 425 phase-detection autofocus points. The new camera does however come with a new LSI processor that allows for faster performance and better high ISO processing.
The big improvement on the a6500 is the inclusion of 5-axis image stabilisation. This was a much requested feature for users who wanted to shoot low light photos and steady handheld videos. The stabilisation works for both stills and video and it will work in conjunction with Sony’s OSS lenses.
The a6500 now also has a touchscreen for faster operation in terms of skimming through settings and autofocus selection. By utilising the new touch screen, users can now tap to focus on subjects with speed from the help of the 425 phase-detection autofocus points.
Like the a6300 before it, the a6500 can also shoot 4K video and with the aforementioned touchscreen, it can pull-focus by tapping on selected subjects. Other than that, the video recording is pretty much the same as before, with 4K recording up to 100Mbps and Full HD recording up to 120p.
Overall, the body of the camera is a little bigger than its predecessor, but that’s only to compensate for the bigger features – it’s price tag is not exactly small either. The new Sony a6500 will cost $1400 (about RM5,800) and ships in November for the U.S.
[Source: dpreview]
