Sony announces A5000 Mirrorless Camera at CES 2014

CES, Digital Cameras, Tech Gadgets Shiva Subramanian

Sony is releasing many products and using CES to its advantage. Sony released A3000 before and now in CES 2014, it released A5000. The camera range that comes to mind when we say Sony Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens camera(MILC) is the NEX range of cameras. But unfortunately, Sony has decided to give some permanent rest to the name and the NEX name will not be used any more. Instead, Sony renamed the MILC series to Alpha and A5000 comes in that series.

The A5000 was introduced in the Press conference organized by Sony. The camera improves over the NEX range and is cheaper also. The camera at first glance looks like a Galaxy Camera.  It is bulky and the white color is very much sure for it to be mistaken as a Galaxy Camera. The A5000 is a 20.1MP camera which is also mirrorless. Now what is a mirrorless camera? First of all, there are two types of cameras. Mirror based camera (also called Single lens reflex camera, more commonly known as SLR) and mirrorless cameras (also called mirrorless interchangeable lens camera or MILC). Mirror based cameras use a mirror and prism system which help the photographer to focus the object better whereas in mirrorless cameras the optical reflex viewfinder is not present. There is actually no differentiation or no clarity at all by this term. DSLR cameras which are of the mirrorless kind use mirrors which seem to move out of the way allowing light to fall on to the large sensor. So if a mirror is still present then why should it be called mirrorless camera. Well, anyway, this camera is of the latter kind. Here are some specifications of the camera.

Sony A5000

  • It uses a APS-C (Advanced Photo System Type C) CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide semiconductor) sensor,
  • A Bionz X processor which can also give you built in Wi-Fi.
  • The camera weighs about 210g which means the Camera is the “lightest weight interchangeable lens camera” (without lens, card or battery).
  • The camera also includes a 3″ 460k LCD dot display, a zoom function, NFC connectivity, pop up flash,

The camera is priced at $600 and should come with a 18-55 mm lens. The release date is to be announced but do expect it soon.