Documenting adventures with minimal effort to relive them later: My experience with GoPros

Background

I bought my first GoPro in 2011, stuck it on my helmet and went dirt biking. The video was OK, but it didn’t “pop” like the ads. The only moments worth watching were the crashes. The rest of the feature-length video was torturous monotony.

Part of the problem was editing. Having only one distorted fisheye perspective was a bore, and the overall video quality didn’t make me feel like I was reliving the ride at all. The audio was a joke.

After a while I started editing videos down to concentrate the action e.g. turning a 12-hour ride into a 6-minute clip. I got good results by alternating between first-person and ride-bys, splicing in some drone footage and adding dramatic music in the background. This was my approach to documenting the motorcycle adventure I took with my father in Europe in September 2017.

But this process of editing is incredibly time consuming, so invariably I ended up compromising on quality, and it made me sick of the footage itself. I still haven’t edited our Scotland trip because I’ve burned out multiple external hard drives just trying to wrangle the terabytes of 2.7k 60fps video all into one place. Bummer.

These days I’m somewhat less ambitious, but the end result is still worthwhile. I use my action camera to document my rides so I can watch them on days when I can’t get out. I try to shoot only my favorite parts (often descents) to minimize time spent editing and maximize the “flow”.

Experiment results as follows.

Which action camera to buy?

I’m still mad at GoPro for all the random bugs I have to work around. To fend off Chinese competitors they prioritize gimmicky new features over stability and quality. Nevertheless, they’re probably the most user-friendly of the bunch (based on independent reviews). I think the Hero7 (two generations old at time of writing) is a good value at the moment, as is the DJI Osmo Action. In 2020, for around $200 you get remarkable 4k60 100mbps video quality in lightweight and robust package.

I’m intrigued by the Sony RX0 ii, which promises vastly better image quality and more advanced tuning options. The inability to autofocus while shooting doesn’t bother me in my “like you’re really there” use case as much as it would bother somebody who frequently alternates between close and faraway subjects (e.g. a selfie-happy vlogger). But it’s pricey and doesn’t do 4k @ 60fps (or even 2.7k60), which is a shame. Perhaps they’ll fix that with their next revision. I would still snap one of these up if the price fell.

Whatever you buy, it’s crucial to play around and get to know it before you take it on any once-in-a-lifetime trips. In general you’ll improve the quality more by rapid-prototyping with a mid-spec camera than you would by plonking down an extra $200 for the latest-and-greatest flagship GoPro.

Mount

The best mount is the one can you bring everywhere without it being a huge burden. For a while I used chest and helmet mounts like every nerd out there but at this point I’m convinced the best option is a chin or mouth mount. Wrap-style full-face helmet chin mounts are available on Amazon for like $15, but if you’re not wearing a full-face you can use something like the Pro Standard Grill Mount. Not only is your head an excellent gimbal, but the perspective also looks quite natural. It’s easy to simply pop it out of your mouth for quick third-person perspectives as well. It’s less fussy than any other mount and it’s incredibly versatile. I do recommend molding the part that you bite down on in hot water to match your teeth - this way it doesn’t require as much teeth-clenching (which, believe it or not, gets tiring after a while) to keep the camera secure.

Resolution

If you’re just shooting for Instagram, 1080p is going to look great. If you (like me) want to watch your videos on your computer or (gasp) your TV, the upgrade to 4k will be noticeable. In a pinch, 2.7k is a reasonable compromise and is vastly easier to edit.

Fun fact: If you shoot in 4k or 2.7k and downscale to 1080p in post, the resulting footage looks considerably sharper than it would if you had just shot in 1080p to begin with.

Frame rate

24fps looks cinematic, but in first-person action cam footage it can look really choppy depending on shutter speed (see subsequent section on shutter speed). 30fps looks fine. 60fps looks smooth and glossy - ideal for flow. Most electronic image stabilization (EIS) is optimized for higher frame rates. Most monitors can’t even display more than 60fps, so the only reason to go higher is if you want to do slow-mo stuff.

Shutter speed

I wouldn’t insist on strict adherence to the so-called “180 shutter rule” (shutter open duration = 1/2 frame rate), but it’s a good starting point.

If you’re shooting lower frame rates (24-30fps), your footage will look weird and jerky if your shutter speed is too high (faster than 1/60 or so). On the other extreme end, lazier shutter speeds contribute to motion blur; i.e. You can make first-person video look super fast by having a longer shutter speed. This is fine and dandy, but it causes a weird jittery effect when combined with electronic image stabilization. My advice: If you’re using EIS (rather than a gimbal) in a first-person action video, keep the shutter speed at 1/120 or greater (preferably 1/240).

A not-fun fact: With GoPros, shutter speed is either fully auto or fixed. It’s a shame one can’t specify lower and upper bounds like you can with ISO (to be discussed later).

A fun fact: If you shoot in bright environments a lot, you can slow down your shutter speed without overexposing by using something called an ND filter. We don’t have bright environments in the PNW in November, so I haven’t messed around with this yet.

ISO

Oversimplified: The ISO is your image sensor’s sensitivity to light. Raise it and the image will get brighter, but also grainier.

Exposure comp

The camera has its own idea about optimal exposure (put simply: image brightness), and in the case of GoPros, they seem to always overexpose (stuff is too bright). This stinks, because for “blown out” whites there’s no way to recover that detail in post, and it can look really bad. Thankfully, most cameras allow you to adjust the “EV Comp”. Setting this to a negative value will cause the camera to underexpose relative to its intuition. Unfortunately this option is greyed out when shutter speed is manually selected (even though the camera still uses a floating ISO to adjust exposure).

Color

There are lots of good tutorials out there on how to do professional-style color correction and grading. Personally I never got the hang of it. I’m the color equivalent of tone deaf, so sometimes I’ll edit something on Monday only to revisit it on Friday and discover an ugly green tinge that I hadn’t noticed before. In any case, my goal isn’t to capture color exactly as it happened - with “like you’re really there” videos I want the color to make me feel like I felt on the day of the shot. So I take a shortcut and use something called FilmConvert (atop Final Cut Pro X). For me, FilmConvert is the perfect balance of user friendly but powerful. I’m going to mangle the terminology here, but here goes: It can take the ugly flat video files produced by my camera and apply look-up tables (LUTs) to make that footage look like it was shot on a specified type of film. This makes it ideal for quickly adding character to the shots, as well as matching the color between multiple different cameras from multiple manufacturers. It’s kinda like an Instagram filter, but a little more powerful and not ugly and overblown - so I guess more like a Lightroom preset.

White ball

I record native white ball and adjust the temperature in post. If you have no idea what I just said: Cameras don’t know what should be truly neutral white. It’s like how we were confused by The Dress. Shooting native white ball seems to give me plenty of flexibility to fix in post.

Result:

Not so bad, right? I notice a couple of remaining issues: The wind noise is distracting and the Hero7 tends to jam up for all the good parts (in this case the descent). Despite searching online I haven’t found a good solution for the freezing-up other than to stop and re-start the video periodically before it has a chance to crash. I’ve tried factory resets, new SD cards, varying resolution and frame rate settings, etc…it’s just a known issue with the Hero7, they tend to crash a lot. It seems to happen less if the equipment is kept physically warm, and if you use fully charged batteries all the time (even though the batteries typically have 30-40% charge left in them when the camera fails).

The wind noise was a considerably easier fix: You buy the GoPro a little sweater for it to wear that covers the mic and protects it from wind.

Put all these things together and you can get some fairly nice looking video that makes you feel like you’re really “there”, with minimal effort.

Disc rub - MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP

You spin your wheel and you hear a soft “shhhhhhh” or a “sheeng sheeng sheeng” (pardon the onomatopoeia) coming from the caliper. Your wheel doesn’t spin ad finitum like it used to - instead it comes to an abrupt-ish stop as the disc contacts one of your pads.

You Google “fix brake disc rub” and all you see is “loosen the caliper mounting bolts, compress the lever and re-tighten the bolts with the lever still compressed”. Well, duh. You do that like 20 times, but the rub keeps coming back in one form or another after you re-tighten the mounting bolts. Your back is now sore, you’ve put a crick in your neck, and your brake is even worse than when you started. Biking is the worst.

This is common. As with my tubeless tire post, this is not a tutorial or a product technical manual - there are plenty of those out there that you should read first. This is to succinctly make you aware of some tricks that often aren’t covered in the tutorials.

First, a safety moment

Any time your hands are near your rotors, you need to be careful of 3 things: 1) If the wheel is spinning and your finger gets caught in some channel of the rotor, it’s a trip to the hospital. Keep fingers clear while the disc is spinning. 2) It’s possible to contaminate your rotors with the oils on your hands. Keep your fingers away from braking surfaces and/or wear nitrile gloves. If you contaminate your rotors on accident, you can clean them with disposable alcohol wipes. 3) Your brakes are safety critical (especially if you’re only running 1 brake!). When you’re finished adjusting, it’s a good idea to torque the caliper mounting bolts to spec and check them periodically, especially before nasty descents. If ever in doubt, take your bike into the shop. I will say that it is safe to ride a bike short distances with one or both brakes rubbing slightly (i.e. several miles to the shop). It just sounds ugly and robs you of some power.

Always try the easy fix first

With the caliper bolts loose, spin the wheel at a pretty good clip before stopping it by clamping the brake lever down and retightening the bolts. Try in both directions of wheel spin. Don’t ask me why, but this sometimes shocks the caliper out of its rut and into good alignment.

Backlighting (optional)

You’re still reading, so I guess spinning the wheel didn’t work. This whole process is easier if you can put a white sheet of paper behind your caliper and shine some light so you can see the disc between the pads. If the disc is warped, you’ll be able to see the direction of the wobble. If the disc isn’t warped, you’ll see which brake pad (left or right) is being contacted. Handy, and much cheaper than a rotor alignment tool.

Tighten the bolts very gradually and brace by hand

Reminders: Don’t let your hand touch the braking surface and don’t spin the wheel fast with your fingers near the rotor.

Many times, the rotor is centered when you clamp the lever, but when you tighten the bolts, the caliper twists slightly as a result of the tightening force and rotation the bolt exerts upon it. This is especially likely if you torque down one bolt while the other bolt remains loose. Instead, while holding the brake lever, alternate tightening each bolt 1/8th (or even 1/16th) of a turn at a time. One bolt will prevent the twisting forces of the other bolt from rotating the caliper out of alignment. You can also use a finger to brace the caliper from rotating (pictured), or at least detect if the caliper is rotating in a particular direction as bolts are tightened, and pre-adjust for it.

The business card trick

This is a classic. I have a lot of leftover business cards after finishing business school and going to a new job. Loosen the caliper mounting bolts. Fold a business card (preferably an old one, as it’s going to get marked up) around the rotor. Rotate the wheel so the business card gets wedged between the brake pads and the rotor. Adjust as you tried to before: Squeeze the brake lever, tighten the bolts (while still holding the lever), then release the lever.

Throw money at the problem: Brake alignment tools

These are basically metal reusable business cards that are shaped to sit atop rotors. I tried them on 160mm Shimano wavy discs and found they were kinda fiddly and not really worth the trouble, but other people find them to be a godsend.

Fixing a warped disc

For what it’s worth, it’s not a big deal if your rotor is ever so slightly warped. It’s often possible to eliminate the “sheeng sheeng sheeng” sound with decent alignment. But it’s also possible to fix warped discs with or without the proper tools.

For one thing, the backlighting trick discussed above will tell you where and in what direction your rotor is out of true - without using a professional-quality gauge.

Note that this is a little sketchy and it shouldn’t be your first option. Bending rotors back and forth could eventually cause failure, although a single adjustment shouldn’t be anything to worry about. You can do it with your (gloved) fingers, applying as little force as possible to straighten out the bend.

Or you could just, y’know, buy another rotor. I’m all about lazy solutions.

Bonus tip 1: Preventing disc warping

Shortly before smoking my brakes on a 5,000ft descent.

As an overweight cyclist who rides a lot of hills: Don’t drag brakes - stop with relatively short stabs to prevent heat buildup. Alternating front-back brakes can help too, if traction is not an issue. Don’t ride like I do sometimes, and certainly don’t dunk your brakes in cold water (e.g. a creek crossing) shortly after heating up your brakes on a descent. When installing rotors, always tighten rotor bolts in a star pattern, and tighten them all at once (rather than going to full torque on 1 and then moving to the others). Before the bolts tighten down into the hub, rotate the disc clockwise on the hub to eliminate play (so braking forces don’t cause it to rotate against the bolts).

Bonus tip 2: Perfect disc alignment across multiple wheelsets

Having multiple wheelsets can be like having multiple bikes in one, because they can be mounted with different tires for different surfaces. But the manufacturing tolerances for rotor mounting points on hubs are not super precise, especially between different wheel makers. You can use disc shims to place the rotors in the exact same place across multiple wheelsets, so you don’t have to adjust the brakes every time you swap wheels. (You might still need to adjust the derailleur when you swap wheelsets)

Notes on bicycle tubeless tire setup

If you’re about to convert to tubeless (good on ya), I’m assuming you’ve read or watched a few tutorials on the topic already. What follows is NOT a comprehensive tutorial - instead I’m noting tips I’ve learned through experience, that I seldom hear elsewhere.

Rim taping

If it isn’t obvious: There’s a difference between a rim strip, which is non-adhesive, and rim tape. Many rims come with rim strips, but relatively few come with rim tape, which effectively prevents air from leaking through your spoke holes. Generally, you must remove any rim strip from your rim before attempting to tape the rim. There are exceptions: For example, on WTB TCS 2.0 rims, they specify you should tape OVER the rim strip (“Solid Strip”), which will prevent broken spokes from damaging your rim tape seal.

Before taping, I recommend wiping the rim clean with isopropyl alcohol. Pull the tape tight as you progress around the wheel - the tightness of the tape is the main determinant for the effectiveness of the seal. For MTB pressures (<30psi), 1 loop of Stan’s overlapping at the valve core is sufficient. For higher road pressures, it’s best to use 2 loops, again overlapping at the valve core. Cut the tape cleanly and diagonally. Then use a tire lever to push the edges of the tape down onto the rim from the inside - you don’t want your tape competing with your tire for a spot on the rim’s locking surface. For an extra-good tape job, you can install a tube (and tire) after your tape job and inflate it to maximum rated PSI, leaving it overnight before removing the tube and continuing with installation. This applies extra pressure to the tape.

In a pinch, you CAN use Gorilla tape on alloy rims. However, it’s thicker and heavier than purpose-built rim tape, and it leaves behind a residue that is very difficult to remove (I use a pen, a paper towel and Goo Gone, and it takes forever). Gorilla tape is not recommended on carbon rims - according to my local bike shop mechanic, Gorilla tape adhesive can pull the actual fibers out of the carbon weave upon removal. Use Stan’s tape or something instead.

Today I’m cheating - my rims came pre-taped. DT Swiss knows what’s up.

Valve stems

It’s totally possible to DIY your own stems from old tubes (which saves you $10-15), and they seem to seal just as well as the official offerings.

If you’re going this route, it’s best if the stem core is removable. Having removable core helps you in 2 ways: (1) It can help you push more air into the tire faster when it’s time to seat the tire bead on the rim; and (2) You can use it to inject sealant, which is easier and cleaner than dumping sealant into the unseated part of the tire. Here’s how you tell if your stem core is removable:

Removable core, with core installed

Removable core, with core removed

NON-removable core

Here’s how to cut a good valve out of an old tube: Stick the stem in the rim and try to match the shape of the seal to the shape of the rim. Do this a little bit at a time and keep testing the fit. Better to cut a little too little and cut again than to waste a perfectly good valve. (tiny leaks will often seal up with tubeless goop).

Many tubeless stem bases I see in the aftermarket have a minimalistic rounded profile to help them seal completely against the rim well - this works great. However, if you’re going for a squarer profile for the cut, it can help to make the cut longer along the arc of the rim to discourage the stem from spinning when you’re applying twisting forces to the stem in the rim (e.g. while tightening the removable core). Do what seems to mesh best with the geometry of your rim, and that will help you minimize the sealant required to seal the area around the stem reliably.

Some riders advise cranking the nut on the valve stem at least a quarter turn with pliers beyond finger-tight to ensure a good seal. I have never needed to do that to achieve a seal at the stem, and I’m a little bit worried that doing so might make it harder to remove the stem in a trailside repair. Experiment at your risk.

Mounting the tires

Remember, tires are directional. Sometimes the “ROTATION—->” is super faint - much fainter than the billboards on the sidewall (TCS EXO 3C etc.). It’s there (keep looking) unless it’s not. Google Image some pictures of the wheel mounted and you might at least find what other people think the direction should be. God forbid you check the manual that came with the tire.

Unless you want a bunch of extra practice with all this, align the tire logo to the valve core opening before you put the tire on the rim. I’m told this is for “style points”, but it also helps you locate the stem easily when working on the wheel. As you put the tire on, be careful not to agitate the tape you just applied.

Cool? Cool. So now we’re here - tire halfway mounted. Notice I’m still allowed on the rug because I haven’t added sealant yet - and neither should you (we’ll get to that later).

Although there are standards for everything, sometimes lax manufacturing tolerances make your life harder when it comes to getting the second bead onto the rim. If you’re having a hard time muscling the last bit of the bead onto the rim:

• For a little extra clearance at the very end (which is often the toughest bit), make sure the bead of the tire is dropped into the rim all the way around. Start fitting the tire opposite the valve stem to make this easier.

• Spray some diluted shampoo on the stubborn part of the rim as lubricant.

• Using a tire lever should be a last resort, as it’s not recommended by tire manufacturers. I like my tire levers small, soft and plasticky to minimize the likelihood of damaging the rim, the tire or my poor fingers.

• If you’re still having trouble getting the tire all the way onto the rim, don’t break your thumb in your attempts - we can simply declare this as an opportunity to support our local bike shop, who will probably be happy to help you pop that sucker on.

Inflating the tire and getting it to seal - without sealant

So now everything is in place, but it’s kinda floppy. DO NOT ADD SEALANT YET. First, do a “dry run” - try to inflate the tire to at least 30psi or so without sealant.

• Beware, this is the time at which the “POP”s occur, which could freak out your fiancée and her cat sitting across from you in your 500sqft studio. Now is the time for eye protection.

• To minimize POPs and maximize chances of sealing properly, you can try to pry the bead onto the higher, outer parts of the rim (see picture) before attempting to inflate.

• You could also pull your removable valve core to allow air to flow faster from your inflator into your tire, increasing the chances of a seal. If you don’t have a valve core removal tool - well, frankly, you probably do, but it’s easy to lose in the bottom of a tool drawer or at the end of your multitool - you can get away with a pair of pliers, but try not to mar the threads or over tighten the core.

• A more powerful trick is inflating the tire first using a tube inside, then deflating and breaking only 1 side of the bead to remove the tube. This way, when you reinflate you’re guaranteed to start with at least 1 side seated, which will increase air pushing on the unseated side.

• You can cheat with an air compressor, pressurized air canister or shop pump. But a floor pump has always worked for me on a wide variety of setups.

• If all else fails, you can seat the tire using a CO2 cartridge for quick a blast of air. Wear eye protection and thick insulating gloves when going this route. Do not attempt CO2 inflation with sealant in the tire. CO2 cartridges are endothermic and sealant doesn’t like to freeze, nor react with CO2. After the CO2 seats the tire, fully flush the CO2 out of the tire and inflate with a pump.

This dry run also gives you a low-risk chance to check the airtight fit of e.g. your DIY valve stems without spraying sealant everywhere. If you hear “SHHHHH”, you may have fitment issues the sealant can’t solve (e.g. with your DIY valve stem). But if it’s a gentle “hisssssss” and you get up to 30psi or so with a regular pump, sealant will probably get you to the finish line of holding air. Check the “witness line” on the tire is equally far from the rim all around - if not, you can massage it with your fingers or add/remove air to get the tire fully seated. Nice job, the hardest part is over.

That thin black rubber strip just above the rim is the witness line. Ignore the tan sealant bubbling out.

Adding (and removing) sealant

Position the valve at 7 o’clock or so when injecting sealant, and leave it there for the inflation. That way gravity will ensure the sealant won’t all gum up in one place. Most sealant manufacturers recommend 4oz for 29” wheels. I would start with less if you’re working with quality tires and a good tape job. You can even throw a bunch of sealant in there to seal the stem area and any other trouble spots, and later use the injector to suction out some of the surplus sealant from the bottom of the tire (put it back in the bottle, why not, this stuff is expensive!). You do NOT need to remove the tire to do this - only the valve core, with the stem positioned at 6 o’clock to form a nice puddle of sealant to suck up. “BuT DoeSn’T ThAt DeFeAt ThE POiNt oF TuBElEss SiNce It WoN’T AuToMatICallY SeAl PuNCtUrES?” Well, it’s a balance. Of course there will always be some residual liquid sealant that you cannot suction out, which will likely find its way to seal any small holes as you ride. Personally, I see no reason not to simply carry a 2oz tube of sealant in my pack and use it to top up whichever tire I need to if necessary, rather than carry an extra 6oz of rotating mass in both my tires all the time (which will evaporate and booger up faster in the tire anyway). When used with modern air-tight tire carcasses that fit precisely against rims, you just don’t need a much sealant as you do if you’re sealing up a tire with permeable sidewalls (e.g. non-tubeless-ready). 4oz therefore might be overkill, even for a 29er. Heck, some road tubeless setups can be run without any sealant at all. Your mileage may vary.

Inflating the tire and perfecting the seal - with sealant

A bounce here or there between vigorous pumps will take care of the odd hiss, which are probably near the valve stem if you’ve done a good job taping.

Once you get up to 30-40psi, the tire should be fully seated. Double-check the witness line. Shake, rattle and roll the tire, bouncing it on the ground, whatever you gotta do to achieve a good seal. An effective technique is to set the tire on the ground with the valve stem down, then flip it while hoisting it up into the air to dump sealant around the stem area inside the tire.

Go for a ride if you can, which will spread and smoosh that goop all over the inside of the tire. If you can’t ride for now, at least rotate the tire a few times every few hours to move the sealant around and prevent it from gumming up into sealant boogers.

What do I expect next?

It is common to lose a fair bit of pressure over the first 24 hours, especially if the tire just sits during that time without being ridden. This does not necessarily indicate that the leaks will not self-seal given more time. The seal may continue to improve as you ride. High quality tires and rims with tight tolerances might only lose 1-2psi per week once set up properly.

I have performed a few dozen tubeless installations or fixes in my life, which I realize is not as much as any shop mechanic. However, using the above tricks, I’ve never needed an air compressor, shop pump or air blast canister. $20 floor pump from Amazon works fine. I’ve even tried it with the high-volume portable Lezyne I have strapped to my bike, and it works great.

Bonus tips

Experiment with lower tire pressures! Running low pressures while tubeless will not increase rolling resistance as much as tubed setups.

Everyone knows tubeless tires tend to be more durable than tube tires, and it’s possible to fix them with plug kits (tread) or some stitches (sidewall). However, you should still carry a spare tube or two with you in the event of an unfixable gouge. Assuming you carry a spare tube with you at all times, Tubolito is one of the most cost-effective ways to shed weight from your kit on a ride (even though it’s a lot to pay for a tube). I have one with me at all times and have yet to use one, but I have loaned it to other riders in need, who were impressed with the compactness and durability. I should really get a commission from those Tubolito guys.

Ride safely.

Sony Alpha 6000 Review for Non-Photography Folk

A relative asked me how I liked my Sony Alpha 6000 digital camera. I like it a lot, for many reasons! Instead of trying to talk really fast, I’m compiling my thoughts here.

So - what is the A6000? Let’s start with the lens format. This is an E mount camera, compatible with any E mount lens. The ability to swap lenses is why it's better than your iPhone.

Most cameras with interchangeable lenses are DSLRs. A DSLR has a mirror inside that enables an optical viewfinder. However, the A6000, along with every E mount camera, is mirrorless, so there’s no optical viewfinder - just a digital one. This isn't a big deal for most people.

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This picture (taken with a Canon T3i) shows how compact the A6000 really is

What matters is this: The omission of a mirror makes the camera cheap and compact. Depending on the lens, you can probably cram an A6000 in your coat pocket. Plus, the design has fewer moving parts - ideal for reliability.

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35mm, 1/640 at f/2.0

You know what else is handy? Reallydamnfastshooting (11 shots per second) and continuous autofocus to follow your subject mid-pounce. Sony says it's the fastest autofocus in the business, and I believe them. The video mode is top-notch, but who needs it when you can take 11 still shots per second?

Shooting at 11fps is ideal for capturing "the" moment...

...and 10 other moments every second that you don't really care about.

Mastering the shooting modes is simple. The interface is intuitive, even though the buttons are cramped on the small body. What you hold feels extremely well put-together. Small details - machined metal surfaces, engraved lettering - are nice touches on the attractive design. The camera presents like a miniaturized DSLR, eschewing plasticky cost-cutting measures that plague most mirrorless competitors.

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Pictured with the E mount 50mm f1.8 mounted, plus the 55-210mm f4.5-6.3 and 35mm f1.8 - all with Sony's superb OSS stabilization.

Cheap, convenient, capable and easy to use…what’s the catch? Well, the APS-C image sensor here (much like most DSLRs under $1,500) is 33% smaller than that of a full-frame DSLR. This means the A6000 will capture less light light and only 66% of the field of view that a professional-grade DSLR would, ceteris paribus. For any lens you buy, multiply the focal length by 1.5x to get what you can expect from the A6000’s cropped sensor (e.g. a 50mm on the APS-C will give you the same FOV as a 75mm on a full-frame DSLR). Whether the reduced light and FOV will bother you depends on how pro you want to get, particularly in low light.

How do you offset that disadvantage? I’m able to solve most low-light problems by removing the lens cap. Beyond that, be sure to pick the right lens for the job. I think the bundled master-of-no-trades lens greatly limits the A6000. Get the camera body alone, then pick a lens that suits your style.

The first lens I bought was Sony’s 55-210mm zoom. 210 x 1.5 = 315mm, which is a lot of zoom! You can capture faraway subjects, or dramatize your outdoor portraits by making the background look huge.

The second lens I bought is my walkabout - Sony's 35mm 1.8f fast prime. It’s not cheap, but it’s versatile and compact. Don't worry about the lack of adjustable zoom - with 24 megapixels, you have plenty of resolution to crop if you need to. I used this lens for most of my Washington vacation photos.

For portraits, I picked up a Sony 50mm 1.8f, another fast prime. If you can get space between you and your subject, this lens can save you big money over the 35mm. I haven't had a chance to use it a lot so far - "at home" pictures will have to do. Pets are always willing test subjects.

Albertine and I briefly compared the A6000 and her Canon Rebel T3i - a comparably priced but more traditional crop sensor DSLR.

For the Sony:

• Faster focusing and shooting
• Easier to carry and faster to whip out of a smaller bag
• Better video
• Blobbier bokeh
• Better dynamic range (more detail in extreme light/dark)

For the Canon:

• Cheaper and more readily available lenses
• Edgier bokeh
• Optical viewfinder
• Looks more legit

If you're doing action shots, there's no contest - Sony takes your cake. If you're doing more portrait-y stuff, it's not as clear. Here are some test shots with comparable lenses - the Sony had a 35mm f1.8 while the T3i was fitted with a 40mm f1.8. I threw in a couple shots with Albertine's new 6D (50mm f1.8) as well...though that shouldn't be a fair contest.

Most minute differences in color between the cameras could be ironed out in Lightroom. The T3i seems more ~dramatic~ in how color seems to bleed through the image. It shoots nostalgic photographs right out of the box. To get the same inspired effect, the Sony requires some Lightroom magickery. The 6D, being a full-frame DSLR, captures more light than the other two - but using the 50mm lens that was designed for crop sensors on it leads to some blur around the edges.

Of course there's more to image quality than that - you can find other websites if you want to zoom in on split hairs. Overall, I'd say the image quality of the Sony punches above its price point with accurate (if not dramatic) color and superb sharpness.

Of course there’s crap I don't like about it too.

First of all - E mount lenses are expensive. They're high quality, but it’s disappointing there aren’t more entry-level lenses that could get the job done.

Secondly - if you’re an aspiring semi-pro, nobody will take you seriously with a camera this small. This doesn’t bother me, but it’s something to consider if you’re trying to send a professional signal to clients.

Thirdly - as we alluded to earlier, the APS-C crop sensor means less light, all else equal. It's better than my old Micro Four-Thirds Lumix and worlds better than a typical point-and-shoot, but don't expect beautiful, creamy portraits at night. Left to its own devices, the little Sony will compensate by pumping up the ISO and/or exposure. You'll have to pick your poison between graininess or motion blur.

Fourthly - say you get hooked, and you want to purchase a full-frame body for better low-light/indoor performance. With a typical DSLR from Canon or Nikon, you can keep using your existing lenses and just upgrade the camera body (probably keeping the old body as a spare). Not so easy with E mount. While Sony's full-frame (A7) is physically compatible with E mount lenses, it needs fancier FE format lenses to leverage the enlarged sensor, and those cost big money over the E mount lenses you've already accumulated. You could just use the FE lenses on your A6000 to begin with, but they add cost and bulk over the standard E mount kits.

Finally - startup and memory card access speeds are not especially quick compared to all the other functions on the camera. They’re not terribly slow - just not as fast as I’d like for it to be the ultimate “holy-cow-it’s-a-whale” camera. ("holy-whale-it's-a-cow", maybe)

In summary: It's hard to find better image quality at this price point, let alone this portability factor. It's a fast, fun, willing companion that you can carry just about anywhere. Just be ready to pony up for the right lens, and steal your friend's full-frame DSLR when you need to work in low light.