Friedman - The Complete Guide to Sonys Alpha 6000 Digital Camera

The Complete Guide to Sonys Alpha 6000 Digital Camera

The Friendly Manual with Professional Insights

By Gary L. Friedman and Ross Warner

Version 2.0

ISBN 978-1-312-31945-5

Published by The Friedman Archives Press

Copyright 2014 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced either in print or in any digital format without express written permission. Contact the author at .

Sony A6000, Zeiss FE 24-70 f/4 lens at 26mm, tripod.

Special thanks goes out to David Redfearn and Larry Rose.

The price of the printed book includes a free, full-color PDF version of the book. Just send me an email at , include the receipt of the book you bought (if you didnt buy it from the FriedmanArchivesPress.com website, then I dont have your customer information), and Ill send you a download link. This also applies to those of you who bought this book for your B&W e-reader.

If you are reading the PDF version of this e-book on an Android or iOS platform, your reading experience might be enhanced if you view the PDF file using one of these free apps:

• For iOS: GoodReader from www.goodreader.net
• For Android: ezyPDF Reader (from the Google Play store)

Gary L. Friedman is a professional photographer who has traveled the world with both film and digital cameras. He runs the stock image website www.FriedmanArchives.com, and gives digital photography seminars worldwide aimed primarily at beginners who want to learn the basics and improve their creative photography. (He conducts photo expeditions around the world too, geared especially for the unique needs of photographers.)

Before graduating to photography he was a rocket scientist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he patented the image authentication system used in high-end Canon and Nikon cameras. He has been published in books, newspapers and magazines worldwide, and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records while in college (go ahead and search the FriedmanArchives.com website if you want to find out what he did to get included).

Despite his mastery of the technical background, Mr. Friedman has an approachable and easy-going teaching style that makes his books a pleasure to read. You can read more about his background at http://friedmanarchives.com/bio.htm.

Note: Before you read about me, I want to thank Gary Friedman for giving me the opportunity to participate in this exciting project. Also, since this is a collaborative effort, youll frequently see the use of I, but please understand this is a collective term that refers to both Gary and me.

Prior to becoming a full-time photographer, Ross was a musician, a music recording studio owner and engineer, and a computer software and hardware technical writer. His first two writing jobs were with Ray Kurzweil and at the Artificial Intelligence Technology Center at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Oh, yeah, before that, he was a reporter for his hometown weekly newspaper at age fifteen.

He first became serious about photography in 1997 in preparation for his first photography trip to East Africa. After using Hasselblad and Minolta film cameras, scanning the film, working with the files in Photoshop and making digital prints, he moved to digital cameras when Sony finally took over from Minolta. After a series of shoulder operations he sold his DSLR equipment and heavy lenses and made the switch to Sonys mirrorless camera system.

He now spends his time shooting nature, landscape, and travel images. He sells prints through his website http://www.rosswarner.com and licenses stock images for publication through http://alamy.com .

We hope you learn something while youre here and have a good time doing it.

Okay, where do I start? Let me first make this blanket statement: Sony is now officially the most innovative camera company on the planet. Its not just because of Sonys mirrorless cameras, although these have shaken up the industry as well (as Ill describe momentarily). Its because these mirrorless cameras are the most recent in a long line of out-of-the-box-thinking cameras:

• The Alpha 300, which added Live view by putting a tiny little camera in the pentamirror and pointed it at the focusing screen
• The SLT architecture, which sought to solve the conflicting requirements of phase-detect AF and movies/Live View
• The NEX series in general, which threw out convention and started with a clean slate that was optimized for small size and video
• The RX series of fixed-lens cameras, which offered the largest sensor in a traditionally-shaped no-compromise body
• The A7 and A7R full-frame mirrorless cameras, the worlds smallest full-frame (meaning the sensor is the same size as a 35mm negative) interchangeable-lens cameras, which the world has praised for their outstanding image quality in a teensy weensy form factor

The A7 also introduced several new features that have been incorporated into the A6000:

• Improved hybrid AF (faster and better for moving subjects, and even improved substantially MORE for the A6000)
• Microlenses on the sensor (improved wide-angle lens performance)
• Improved high ISO performance
• Adaptive noise reduction
• Diffraction reduction
• Eye AF (excellent for portraits with shallow depth of field)
• Zebra stripes
• Lock-on AF (an improved method for following a moving subject)

Youll learn more about these features in the next section.

Although both the A7 and the A6000 are 24-megapixel cameras, the price of the A6000 is less than half that of the A7. Thats an incredible bargain! The A6000 actually offers several improvements over the much more expensive A7.

However, it is true that the A6000 has an APS-C sensor rather than a full-frame sensor, and that it lacks a second control dial and some customizable features that the A7 has. Still, its possible to set up and use your A6000 almost the same as the A7. If you have both (as I do), you should be very comfortable switching between them.