UPDATE: Bought the A6000!

I have to tell you, it is my all time favorite camera!!

Do I buy an A7000 or a Sony A6000?

Many of you who know me or read my blog  know that I am a HUGE fan of Sony’s cameras.  As a professional photographer I have over 350 weddings under my belt in the last 10+ years.  During weddings, there are so many things that I LOVE the Sony cameras for but there are also limitations. For what I use the Sony for, it is perfect on the wedding day and I actually use a hybrid combination of Sony and Nikon using my Sony when I don’t need off camera flash (OCF) and Nikons when I do.

I have been shooting with my Sony A77 mark I for several years.  When I first bought it, I wrote about iton this blog.  While there aren’t any wedding photos on that post, I have been using it for wedding details, groomsmen portraits and some fast captures for about four years.  The Sony A77 II came out and fixed one of my biggest pet peeves with the camera.  It replaced that proprietary flash hot shoe with a normal hot shoe.  Now, I can use my Nikon flashes and my Sony camera.

With this new camera, I sold my A77 mark one with the purpose of buying the new Sony A77II.  The problem is, I didn’t ever actually buy the new one after selling the old one.  Instead, I started reading about Sony’s mirror-less cameras that were out and how they were doing pretty awesome stuff. Jason Lanier (look him up on YouTube) inspired me to consider getting a mirror-less camera rather than the A77.  The compact size seems to fit some of our current needs.

Why buy a Sony mirror-less camera?

I wanted to take you through a bit of my own decision process for buying this camera and tell you about the “perfect” system that I have come up with.

  • I shoot weddings, but I still have my Nikons which I can use for 90% of my shots.
  • I love shooting details with my Sony Cameras (p.s. I didn’t sell my Sony Alpha lenses, only the camera body)
  • My wife and I want a smaller camera body to travel with. This one is a big one for us.  Like many togs out there, we have HUGE camera bodies that help us take great photos.  But bringing those cameras along on a hike is a HUGE burden. We wanted something that wouldn’t be exclusively “Pro” looking for weddings.

We don’t need the Sony camera to solve every wedding shot that we need.  As photographers, sometimes we feel that we have to buy into an entire system to do our jobs correctly.  We don’t.  It is completely fine to shoot our wedding details with our Sony camera while shooting our receptions, portraits and group shots with Nikon.  Look at it this way.  When you buy a $600 Sony Mirrorless camera for details only, that is your investment for those shots.  I purchased the Sony A77 for exactly this purpose and found myself expanding it’s purpose over time as I grew to love the camera more and more.

Which mirrorless camera?

The big question is which mirrorless camera do I purchase. I know that this month, Sony is set to announce it’s newest offerings and from many rumor sites, we can guess that the A7000 is just around the corner offering weather resistance, in-camera stabilization, and 4k video. All great additions and worth it to purchase that camera.

But the bargain hunter in me can’t get away from the fact that once the A7000 is released, there will be a flood of discounted A6000’s.  At under $600 for the body, the A6000 is already a tremendous value.  My guess is that it will go down another $100-$150 with the announcement of the 7000.  That makes the A6000 a steal by any measure.

So while I love the new stuff on the A7000, I am not 100% on buying it because the A6000 is such a great bargain.  Plus, with the difference in money, I can get a couple other accessories and lenses to trick out my A6000.

A great camera system

I put together a little list of items to make my A6000 camera purchase “perfect.”  Note, I don’t think that any system is perfect but this will be a pretty awesome little system.

  • Sony A6000 Camera Body.  I may even get the silver version.
  • 16-50 f2.8 Lens.  I already own this lens from my A77 mark one days.
  • Sony Macro 100mm/2.8 – I have this lens already too. This does a great job with macros, but also is pretty decent as a portrait lens.
  • Sony Alpha Mount Lens Adaptor – since my lenses are Alpha mount, I need an adapter because the camera body is an e-mount.