This post is an interim follow up to my first post of impressions on the Sony a6300 camera. I promised I would post Part 2 with some video footage tests from the a6300, which is still coming soon, but following are some further observations I made about the camera that I want to share first. There will now be a final Part 3 to this series, which will mainly cover the video tests and some final conclusions. Sony a6300 Sample Test Shots & First Impressions – Part 1 is here if you missed it.
Adobe Camera RAW Update
First thing, Adobe released Camera RAW 9.5 last week, which now supports processing of RAW files from the Sony a6300. Great! So now we can all develop RAW files from this camera in Photoshop and no longer have to shoot photos in JPG anymore. If you have Adobe Photoshop CC installed you can update your Camera Raw Plug-in to version 9.5 for free, which also supports a number of new RAW file types from other new cameras, including the new Canon 1D X Mark II.
Metabones Canon Lens Adapter
Now that I can comfortably shoot in RAW, I decided to buy a Metabones Mark IV Canon EF to Sony E Mount Adapter today. Then I shot some test shots with it using the Canon 70-200 L F/4 IS Lens. The a6300 body might look sizable attached to the Canon lens in the snap below, but in real life the body is tiny. Less than half the size of just about any DSLR body.
Autofocus with the Metabones MK IV adapter on the Sony a6300 with Canon lenses works great. Better than I expected. Well worth the money. I couldn’t notice any difference in autofocus speed between my Sony lens versus my Canon lens using the adapter on the a6300. Canon Image Stabilization from Canon lenses also works with the Metabones adapter, but it does slow down the autofocus speed quite a bit at times for some reason.
With the Metabones adapter though, some of the auto focus modes aren’t available. You can’t use the zone auto-focusing or the expanded flexible spot auto focusing, but you can use wide focusing (all 425 auto focusing points active), center point auto focusing, and regular flexible spot auto focusing.
Face detection autofocus also works with the adapter, but eye follow autofocus doesn’t work with it. Also, you can use continuous autofocus with it for moving subjects, but you can’t use the Center Lock-on AF where the camera detects the subject positioned in the center of the viewfinder and continues to track the subject when it moves.
Memory Cards
Be aware that you really should only use UHS-1/U3 SDXC level memory cards with the Sony a6300. Today I was shooting with the Sony SD card that came with the camera, which is a lower level Sony SDHC U1 card, and the camera wouldn’t shoot any 120 frame per second slow motion video at the 100 Mbps bit-rate or any 4K video at all. Also, when I was shooting photos at 11 frames per second, the buffer got filled up very quickly. So regular U1 cards really can’t handle this camera very well and I am not even sure why Sony gives you a memory card with the camera that can’t really keep up with it. I would recommend just using either the SanDisk Extreme 90MB/s SDXC UHS-1/U3 64GB or the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s SDXC UHS-1/U3 64GB cards for it and you will have no problems.
Autofocus Accuracy
I was a bit concerned about the accuracy of the autofocus on the a6300 as I mentioned in my previous post. So this past week I did a lens calibration test using my Lens Align Mark II calibration tool to test the autofocus alignment between the Sony a6300 camera and the Sony Vario-Tessar T* E 16-70mm f/4 ZA OSS Lens that I bought for shooting video with this camera.
Below is the autofocus test shot I took with the Sony a6300 with this 16-70mm Sony Zeis lens and using the Lens Align calibration target (the full resolution test shot is in the ZIP file linked below together with the other RAW files) and it seems autofocus is off a bit and that the lens is back focusing by about an inch.
But the red number ‘0’ seen on the target is still sharp enough that it should not noticeably effect sharpness when shooting. If I shoot with a telephoto lens at F/4 or F/2.8 some shots might not look spot on. But you wouldn’t know it unless you are pixel peeping and a little sharpening in Photoshop will fix it anyway. So it’s not a serious issue.
However, the Sony a6300 has an AF Micro Adjustment function in the camera settings menu, but what is disappointing is that for some reason the Sony Vario-Tessar T* E 16-70mm f/4 ZA OSS Lens is not supported by the a6300 for making autofocus micro adjustments. Why not, I don’t know. It is one of Sony’s higher level Zeiss lenses and in my opinion I should be able to add micro adjustments for this lens on this body.
Noise
Today I experienced an unwelcome surprise of some noise in the shadows at ISO 200 as well as noise at ISO 100 on a long exposure. I was never expecting to see any noise at either of these 2 very low ISO levels. But I guess we must remember that this is an APS-C crop sensor with 24MP crammed into it, so it is not going to be as low on noise as a full frame sensor at ISO 100 that has only around 20MP. Below are the crops of the noise I experienced (RAW files are linked for download at the bottom). On the ISO 200 shot it happened when I brightened the shadows on the RAW file with the exposure brush by around 1 stop. And on the ISO 100 shot it was a long exposure of 2.5 seconds at F/11. I may have overexposed the shot a bit, but 2.5 seconds is not a long exposure in general for ISO 100 and I don’t feel I should be seeing noise on either of these shots. But, again, I am just getting very technical here, as I did on the autofocus issue, and the quality of the still pictures from this camera are still very high and usable for almost all purposes.
Power Banking It
Here is a quick snap shooting today with my Anker Astro Power bank connected via USB to charge the battery in the Sony a6300. It doesn’t actually charge the battery while you are shooting though, it only powers the camera itself when shooting. But if you take a break from shooting, then just power the camera off, leave the power bank connected, and then it will automatically switch over to charging the camera battery from the power bank as soon as the camera power goes off. Just grab one of these and you don’t need to worry about ever having enough battery power on a shoot for this camera after that.
So that is it for now. All the RAW files for the sample shots in this post can be downloaded here.
Questions and comments welcome below as always and Part 3 of this series on the Sony a6300 is in the oven and coming out soon.
Hallo Marc,
I´m verry interested in this cam. But in forums and adapter-descriptions (Sigma mc-11; Metabones) is written that AF-C doesn´t work yet. Can you confirm that? Because I want to use my Sigma Lenses (18-35 1.8 and soon 50-100 1.8) (EF-S Mount) with the A6300. And what I mainly shoot are Children. So my concern is the AF on moving Subjects.
What can you tell me about that? Will that work with the Metabones Mark IV?
Kind Regards
Mario Stöckl
Hello Mario, I am very sorry, but I can’t tell you anything about Sigma lenses because I don’t have any and haven’t tested this camera with any Sigma lenses.
But earlier today I just tested 5 more older Canon lenses with the Metabones Mark IV adapter and it worked perfectly with the AF on this camera. The lenses I tested are:
Canon 15mm Fish Eye (older model)
Canon 24-105mm F/4 IS
Canon 24-70mm F2.8 (older model no IS)
Canon 100mm F/2.8 Macro (older model no IS)
Canon 135mm F/2 (older model)
Best wishes…
Hallo Marc,
Thanks for your reply.
My concern is the AF-C. Does it work fine with the Canon lenses? If yes then I think it works with Sigma lenses also.
Kind regards
Mario
Your welcome Mario. If you are asking about the continuous auto focus, yes, that works great with this camera together with Canon lenses for moving subjects.
For the first sample photo that you see in this article of the Tuk-Tuks, they were moving towards me at around 30-40Km/h when I shot them. I was using the continuous autofocus together with my Canon 70-200 lens and it worked perfectly.