Sony NEX-7
It had been rumored for months, and from the start the photographic community was going crazy about it. Why? Well, this could finally be the ultimate tool for all those who love to adapt legacy manual lenses to mirrorless camera bodies.
First, with its 1.5x crop APS-C sensor, the final angle-of-view is not as restricted as with Micro Four Thirds, which has a 2x crop. For example, a 28mm wide angle becomes a convenient and universal 42mm, a 50mm lens becomes a useful 75mm short-tele, ideal for portraiture, and a 35mm lens acts roughly as a 50mm lens (52.5mm, to be exact).
Second, it has full manual controls on the body, meaning you can change most settings without having to dig deep into the menus as with previous NEX models.
Third, recent Sony sensor have been known for their excellent image quality, and this one ups the ante with 24 megapixels, leaving much leeway for crops, downsizing and other kinds of processing.
Fourth, and this is what everybody is so hyper about, it features an integrated 3 million dot (!) OLED viewfinder, positioned at the top left like a classic rangefinder camera. This, coupled with Sony’s brilliant Focus Peaking technology, makes the NEX-7 the ultimate tool for adapting manual lenses of all kind.
Here’s a first preview on dpreview, and here’s a list of media coverage from sonyalpharumors.
P.S.: Personally, I am absolutely crazy about this camera, and if there won’t be any highly negative reviews once production models are being sent out, I will buy it, compare it to the Leica M8 and keep the one I like better. Yes, I am willing to sacrifice my Leica for this …
P.P.S.: Oh, and yes, it keeps the tilting rear LCD from its predecessors. I mean, c’mon, how much cooler can it possibly get?
August 24th, 2011, 9:29 am | 
The guys over at Imaging Resource have comparison images (of the A-77, which has the same sensor as this one), and they’ve compared it with the best Canon (1D) and Nikon (D3) models around, which all have > 20 MPix.
Resolution-wise, there’s no big difference I’d say, which is amazing for an APS-C sensor. But look at the red cloth to see the effects of noise-reduction – here the difference to full frame sensors with their much bigger single pixels is obvious.
I think that by far the best ‘compact’ camera is a Leica M9, with its full frame sensor, and its missing AA filter in front of that. You need medium format cameras with a much higher pixel count (and with also missing AA filters) to top that one.
That said, these three new Sony cameras are still revolutionary if you consider their prices, and that the comparison mentioned above was against some 8,000$ pro cameras (not to mention the 5,500$ M9 or even medium format digital backs).
So yes, even considered the relatively high price of a NEX-7 body, it is a good one IMO. Oh, and btw: the view finder has 3x1024x768, so roughly 2.4 million pixels.
Thanks for the additional info, Wolfgang!