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Sony A6000 and 18-105mm f/4 OSS PZ G Lens Sample Video – The Aquarium

In this article I will show you some amazing HD Video footage from the Maritime Aquarium last Thursday using the Sony A6000 and E-Mount 18-105mm f/4 OSS PZ G Lens. The family and I went and not only was it a great time, but the facility was clean, friendly, and very affordable! Lots of hands-on stuff for the kids and they had super friendly volunteers sharing their knowledge in several areas as you will see in the video. Layla is the perfect age I guess, because the was having the best time ever at this place 😉  I also took some photos which you will see at the end of the video and I also posted them below so you can get a closer look if you wish 😉

The video on the A6000 is much better than my Sony Nex-6 and the SELP18105g lens performed awesome! The A6000 is night and day better in low light video and I was using the 1080/24p setting which is what I mostly use on my Nex-6 for reference.

So why is the A6000 so much better? Well it’s the way it samples the video from the sensor, and the new BionzX processor has so much more processing power. The camera has to analyze, color correct, sharpen, noise reduce, and whatever else it does on every single frame of video which is a lot of work! It’s impressive to say the least and worth upgrading for that feature alone if you want much better low light video footage. The focus is also significantly faster as you have seen by now I’m sure.

So I had the A6000 set to Aperture Priority Mode (A) and Auto ISO, which tops out at 3200 by default. You can change the high and low end of the Auto ISO though in the settings! So, I raised the upper limit to ISO 12800 to make sure I had fast enough shutter speeds for the video and photos I was taking. I did not have the time to use manual mode and a tri-pod with the family and Layla, so it’s really just basic low light footage, and a lot of it 😉

The focus during video was excellent about 90% of the time I would say. The Sony A6000 just knew what to focus on, just like the Nex-6 in that regard. Every once and a while it would switch to the background, but usually that was because of a minimum focus distance issue caused by the user, me 🙂

Without further ado, here is the family trip aquarium video…

The Maritime Aquarium – A6000 @ 1080/24p

Please be sure to select the 1080 HD option once the video starts, so you can go full screen with a nice sharp result! It make take a second to load if you have a slower Internet connection, but quality wise it’s totally worth it!

Closing Remarks

That is about it for this article, but I have much more to come with the Sony A6000 including a head to head test vs the Nex-6, Lab Testing, and many more real world photos and video footage. So far the A6000 is performing well, but the super fast AF is not as good as a DLSR with a mirror if you were wondering. I know it would be awesome if it was, but it is not capable of tracking as fast as the A57, A58, A77 II, or A99 for that matter. It’s mirrorless don’t forget and pretty awesome for sure, but not that amazing 😉

The Sony E PZ 18-105mm f/4 G OSS Lens is awesome I must say so far. The constant f/4 aperture, build quality, optical quality, focal range, low weight, OSS, and variable powerzoom make it a killer deal at the current price point of ~$598 US in my opinion. The 16-70mm f/4 OSS Zeiss lens,(SEL1670Z Review Click Here), is a better option for photography, because it’s sharper, but for video the SELP18105g is fantastic in my opinion. The size is small enough that it’s easily manageable in comparison to the 18-200mm powerzoom (selp18200 review Click Here)), which is also really good, but very large physically in comparison.

Thanks again for checking in everybody, and please feel free to comment or ask questions below as always 😉 I really enjoy chatting with you all, so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you are on the fence…
Jay

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  1. Hi Jay –
    Looks like a fun place for kids. Great environment to test out the low light capabilities. The video was amazing. The pictures were good, but you can definitely see the noise in the image due to the high ISO. It’s expected though given the higher ISO and aps-c factors. At the same ISO setting, would there be an equal amount of noise in the video as compared to a picture file? Maybe it’s just harder to notice in a video where the image is constantly changing.
    Thanks.
    Jose

    1. Hi Jose and thanks for the comments 😉 I was very surprised how awesome the video looked, especially in the noise department. The ISO was at 3200 for most of the video, because I did not change the Auto ISO till the end of the video. Every frame is fully processed and noise reduced as if it’s a jpeg pretty much don’t forget. The photos are all Raw files that I really did not do much to in Lightroom 5 other than contrast. If I heavily noise reduced them, they would look a little better. If I was shooting Jpeg, I would think the images would look similar to the video footage if viewing at the same size. I also think by sampling the whole sensor and down sizing for 1080p, the BionzX Processor can really weed out the noise better than on the full 24mp photos.
      Thanks again,
      Jay

  2. Nice Quality Video Jay. Waiting for the Camera I will have it in a few days. Thanks for sharing.
    ERIC.
    One Question. The Sony RX 100III doesn’t have a hot shoe. Does it have Flash Sync Terminal???? Any way to hook up a Ext Flash?????

    1. Hi Eric and thanks for the comments.

      One Question. The Sony RX 100III doesn’t have a hot shoe. Does it have Flash Sync Terminal???? Any way to hook up a Ext Flash?????

      No it does not have any sort of flash sync port. You could technically trigger flash units with the on camera flash, but this often more trouble than it’s ever worth.
      I hope that helps,
      Jay

  3. too bad with this lens …we cannot use flash any more , except if you like big shadow on your pic ;((

    1. Thanks for the comments Cris and you are absolutely correct. The on camera flash us usually only god for the basic kit lens, and honestly sucks anyway.
      You can’t use the on camera flash anymore, but that is what the accessory flash units are for which allow you to bounce the light off the ceiling. It makes for a way better photo in the end and allows for the larger lenses to be used with no issues 😉 The Sony FVL-F20M for example, is great unit for the A6000 or even full frame A7 series cameras. Sample photos using that flash unit can be found here: FVL-FM20 flash testing w/ A7r

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