Sony NEX Launch – detailed transcription

The products
Right, let’s get into the nitty gritty detail of it all. There’s two cameras, the NEX-5 and NEX-3. NEX-3 is actually a derivative of the NEX-5, they are very similar cameras. They are like siblings if you like of each other, very similar specs. Essentially NEX-5 is for the experienced user and comes in black and silver;  and for the absolute beginner NEX-3 comes in silver, red and black … and you can see the colour variations across the table there.
When our engineers set out with that fresh sheet of paper they lay down various boundaries that they wanted to keep within, targets that they wanted to meet in the end fulfilment of this product. Number one, it had to have a DSLR sensor. We are not the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, but we are not about to try and reinvent the wheel yet again, try and re-educate the monkey that everything they’ve seen before wasn’t good enough and actually this is better again.
No, we already produce fantastic DSLR sensors, we’ve been equipping our cameras since 2006 with them so why change that? APS-C is there and it’s understood in retail – and predominantly the consumer understands it as well in the DSLR category. So there is one boundary, now that is a defining point because you’ve got to squeeze that into a very small camera and that’s not easily achieved.
It had to be the size of a compact camera, so when it’s fitted with its pancake lens it had to be as small and pocketable as possible. The lenses obviously need to be interchangeable, that gives the flexibility and control of shooting when you’re out in the field, and to have some inter-compatibility with our existing products in our Alpha line-up.
So those were the four defining factors and I think they’ve achieved a fantastic job. They’ve done what they set out to do.
I want to draw your attention to a couple of key points. Three sensor sizes are shown in this slide; digital compact camera on average these days has a 1 over 2.4 size sensor. You’ve got four-thirds or micro four-thirds in the already mirrorless category, and then there’s what we’ve got in our DSLR cameras, the APS-C size sensor.
The difference between these sensor sizes makes a massive difference in the way the images actually result and the future prospect of development beyond what you see today. In a year’s time we could be talking about different cameras and there’s more potential in an APS-C size sensor, we believe, to continue to develop technologies.
We offer twice the sensitivity, or one-stop greater sensitivity, over our competitors in the micro four-thirds category. At the moment their sensitivity maxes out at 64 hundred, ours, in this camera, goes up to 12 eight hundred. Now, nobody shoots black cats down coal mines very often so it’s not actually that this is the important value. What is important is what it does lower down the scale. An extended latitude range and noise reduction system (means) we actually achieve less noise at the lower ISOs than our competitors.
There is less depth of field generated with a larger sensor. That beautiful defocused effect is something that separates a DSC from a DSLR. You can’t get that effect (with a smaller sensor). You’ve simply got very little control over getting that effect with a modern day digital compact camera and even with the other mirrorless cameras, the effect is there but not as great as it is with the APS-C.