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Saturday, August 3, 2013

NEX-3N First Impression

While I am still waiting to have a more in-depth review on Sony's latest camera, RX100II, I can't just let my vacation pass without something new! So I got this new member from Sony's NEX family, NEX-3N!

I've got many friends asking me before, "How do you think about the NEX-3N?" My answer is always neutral: only get it if you need it. To be honest, I wasn't particularly excited about this camera. As compared to my NEX-5N, which is an older model in the NEX 5 series, it has less control, not better image quality (although it is still far better than most point-and-shoot cameras). The advantage of NEX-3N is that it has a flip screen, that makes self-portrait much easier. Apparently, the target market is young ladies with passion about taking self-portraits and also want superior image quality. It is also smaller in size that makes this camera suitable for daily uses.

Below are some unboxing photos of NEX-3N. I am bringing it to Japan for vacation and more photos will be uploaded soon!

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The front view. My unit is a white body made of plastic. The camera comes with lens 20mm F2.8 pancake lens. It suits NEX-3N great in terms of portability.

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Top view. The playback button now is place at the top panel, which takes me a little while to adjust to that. The shutter, zoom and power button are integrated together.

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The control wheel is similar to those on other NEX bodies.

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The built-in flash light that NEX-5N doesn't have! The trade off is that NEX-3N doesn't have hot shoe.. But I believe most NEX-3N users won't need that anyway.

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Flipped screen makes self-portraiting fairly easy. However, that's the only way you can flip the screen. It can be flipped in the other direction.

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The 20mm F2.8 pancake lens is somewhat similar to the previous 16mm F2.8, a fast and wide prime lens. The 16mm F2.8 has been criticised on its image quality. Let's see how the new 20mm F2.8 performs!

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The lens also comes with a lens cap/hood that is used on E30mm 3.5.

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The SD card slot is now put together with other output port, different from NEX-5N where battery and card slot are placed next to each other.

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A side-by-side comparison with my Sony NEX-5N. NEX-3N is slightly taller but narrower. The most noticeable difference is the size of the grip. Clearly, NEX-3N's grip is much smaller. I guess that's also because the target group is young ladies?

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From the top, the NEX-3N body is thicker than 5N, which offsets the slimmer E20 2.8 lens and makes two cameras almost identical in thickness.

I just landed Tokyo a while ago. Please check the blog regularly for more photos taken by NEX-3N!

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