The NEX system - Nex 3

Thanks to some poisoning from Chiff camera and othe M lenses users.  I plunged into the compact EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) System.

I was planning to get a M4/3 like Panasonic or Olympus but the 2x crop factor and its 4:3 ratio puts me off... So it was a big surprise when Sony came out this little devil system.  The NEX with E-mount with a 1.5 crop and 3:2 ratio which I am so used to.

At first, I was a bit put off with this cam when I saw the initial review and description.  Lousy interface and no View Finder (this is really a big minus as those who knew me knows that I want a VF in any serious camera I want to buy).

Then I made the stupid move of going over to Chiff's shop one day and I got poisoned.

Firstly, the LCD screen is good.  So good it blasted the Oly lousy 300k dots.  The colours and clarity it produces on the LCD makes focusing with a MF (manual focus) lens a breeze!  For first timers, you just need to enable the MF assist and shutter release with no lens attached in the camera settings.  After that, whenever you attached an old MF lens, the useless shooting tips soft button at the bottom will automatically changes to MF assit button, which allows you to zoom in at 14x or 7x view of the scene.  Very very useful for my old eyesight :)

Another wonderful thing is the articulate LCD screen which turns the little cam into a Waistlevel finder cam.  Like an old TLR.  Which makes street photography much easier.   Overall I am very satisfied with the little cam.

Some cons are already mentioned in other websites. 

1) The form factor which is a bit too small (small oso complain :P). A little bigger will be better to balance some bigger lenses that will be attached to it.
2) No built in sensor AS like their Alpha system. 
3) No EVF attachment (yet). 
4) Battery life a bit weak (but can last one whole day for me which is good enough). 
5) Some interface issues (ISO and WB needs to press a few buttons to change it)  Not a big problem for me as I shoot film so normally I just fix one ISO...
6) LCD might get a bit hard to see in very very bright daylight (so far I only encountered once when its hard for me to see but still can compose.  The MF assist button saves the day actually.

Overall, its a wonderful little gem for a certain type of photography.  Which to me, is street photography.  As the camera is small and if you shoot from your waist, its less intrusive and you get to get very close to your subject without them noticing you.

Another great point is the type of lenses you can attached to it.  It seems Sony's engineer who designed this actually wanted to attached all sorts of old MF lenses to it!  (can tell by the way they implement the MF assist functionality)  So for ppl like me with lots of old MF lenses its a great asset to have my film lenses converted to digital age.

My old CV 35mm Color Skopar 2.5 is now revived on my Nex-3! (See picture on top) .  So if you have a lot of old film camera lenses in your drybox.. I hightly recommend this camera for you (just buy the relative adaptor for it).  

Here's one more for the day.. my Nokton 50mm f1.1 on Nex-3 :P