The Sony NEX-7 has finally arrived

After months and months of delays due to the horrible flooding in Thailand, Sony has started shipping the NEX-7 orders that were placed through the Sony website. My order arrived via FedEx this morning, a few hours after Stephen Foskett received his NEX-7.

Of course, I haven't read the manual (although I probably should - there are a billion new features I need to learn about) so the first pictures I took were with the stock lens, and everything set to auto, with the exception of the color setting set to Vivid.

I swung by the office to pick up the Cisco 3600 series AP that had been delivered (beta testing new Cisco features), and on the way back I stopped at the 360 boat ramp to take some test photos. It was very overcast, not the best day to be taking photos. Out of all the big differences between the NEX-5 and the NEX-7, I have to say that I love the view finder. The green grass I saw through the viewfinder looked a lot different than the green grass in the final pictures. The grass through the viewfinder was cartoonish electric green, and that's not what was in the photos. I'll have to read up more on what I should expect to see through the digital viewfinder before I use that for composing a shot with ISO/f stops.

The picture files are huge, obviously. They've ranged from 5 - 11Mb per picture, and storing upcoming digital photos is something I'm going to have to start dealing with sooner than I'd imagined.

When I got home, I adjusted the ISO and aperture on the tree in the front yard to see what the image would look like when it was overexposed. The tree images still have a lot of detail (IMO) considering how far I've pushed the exposure with the aperture almost wide open (5.6). Indoors I still had the aperture wide open (4.5) to pick up as much detail as possible from the ambient room light.

Clarity? Well, in the self portrait I took by the 360 bridge, I can tell I have an eyelash in my right eye. Mind you, I couldn't feel it, but the NEX-7 captured it in the photo. The indoor self portrait in the bathroom mirror was less detailed at full resolution, probably because I'd adjusted the exposure a bit by then, and maybe due to the camera trying to focus on the mirror itself, rather than my reflection.