I like photography. These days, like almost everybody else, I do most of my casual shooting on my phone. But for almost ten years I’ve had a Nikon D3100 DSLR (APS-C format) for more “serious” photo outings. It has been a good camera. But it was time for an upgrade, especially since I’m interested in playing around more with video and the Nikon is not well suited for that.
After a lot of cross-shopping and research, I settled on the Sony a6600 mirrorless with the 18-135mm zoom lens. It’s also an APS-C format camera (I considered going full-frame but decided against it), but it has a lot more megapixels than the Nikon and features a solid mix of still and video capabilities. The main thing I was worried about was whether the viewfinder would be acceptable. It is. New OLED digital viewfinders are so good that you hardly realize you’re not looking at a “real” optical view through your lens.
Anyway, for its first outing we spent part of a day at Natural Bridge State Park in Natural Bridge, Virginia. I left the camera in automatic mode to get a feel for how well it handles things on its own. A bunch of still photos are posted below; they are unedited other than a little bit of cropping and straightening. I also included a short video of some test footage I took of flowing water (normal and slow-motion). Enjoy.
