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?