Sony's Compact System Camera Has Enough Skill to Perform on Broadway
26.07.11
. Ideally, I like a lot more time with a camera before I file a review, but shooting the musical was more challenging than expected, especially considering we weren’t permitted to use any flash. Over the course of the day, I got a good sense of how well the NEX-C3 performs in difficult circumstances. Regular shooting conditions should be a walk in the park.
Though I would’ve liked to have tried it with the 16mm f/2.8 pancake lens or the brand new 30mm F/3.5 macro , I shot with it using the 18-55mm (f/3.5-5.6) kit lens, which helped me zoom in on the action happening on stage. Along with adding to the overall bulk of the camera — it’ll never fit in your pocket — the average aperture range and slow focusing speed of the kit lens made getting sharp shots of the kinetic song-and-dance numbers difficult.
But despite the tough stage lighting — all bright spotlights and colored gels — and the fast, choreographed dance movements, I was able to get a handful of nice photos of the performers. That’s impressive. Equally so was the NEX-C3’s ability to shoot relatively clean images at high ISOs in low light without a flash. I got excellent shots at ISO 1600 that had less noise than what I’d see with some entry-level DSLRs. This was all the more admirable considering the bump up in resolution means the pixels are smaller. At times, skintones were blown out from the bright spotlights, but with this camera and lens combo, that’s to be expected. (Some of this is fixable in Photoshop or by fiddling with the Exposure settings on the C3, which are listed simply as “Brightness” adjustment. More about this below.)
Source: Wired News