Half a day with the Sony NEX-7

My brother bought the Sony NEX-7 and I managed to borrow it for half a day. He also bought the 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS along with the kit lens but it looks ridiculous mounted (just take a look at the link). I then put on the kit 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 lens and went for a short walk around my office to test the camera. Images below were shot Av Mode in RAW and went through my standard processing for exposure, color, saturation, and sharpening.

Sony NEX-7 + 18-55mm F3.5-5.6
| 1/100 sec, f4.5, ISO 100 | 1/640 sec, f/5, ISO 100 | 1/100 sec, f/4, ISO 100

Sony NEX-7 + 18-55mm F3.5-5.6
| 1/1600 sec, f4, ISO 100 | 1/640 sec, f/4, ISO 100 | 1/500 sec, f/4, ISO 100 | 1/100 sec, f/4, ISO 100

Sony NEX-7 + 18-55mm F3.5-5.6
| 1/1600 sec, f4, ISO 100 | 1/640 sec, f/4, ISO 100 | 1/500 sec, f/4, ISO 100 | 1/100 sec, f/4, ISO 100

What follows is a very very very short and sweet impression of the camera.

Things I liked:

• It feels light with the kit lens. I could carry it all day. With the kit lens, it generally feels good in the hand.
• APSC sized sensor with a 1.5x crop factor.
• FPS is crazy high at 10fps.
• The LCD is nice and clear and it swivels.
• Images are bright, colorful and have nice contrast and are very easy to post process.
• Bokeh for the kit lens is quite decent.
• Build quality is good.
• Built-in flash is nicely done. The arm can swivel and you can basically make the flash bounce at angles up to 90 degrees up.

Things I'm iffy about:

• It doesn't feel like I'm holding a camera, more like a gadget. I can understand why consumers will think that's cool though.
  
• The AWB renders things on the warmer side, especially indoors on yellow tungsten. But if you shot RAW, this isn't a big issue.
• The EVF resolution has been universally hailed as one of the best in the market. Eh... it's still quite pixelly and slow to me. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the OVF of DSLRs.

Things I didn't like:

• The changing from LCD to EVF takes about 1/2 second after I put my eye to the viewfinder. Oops! Moment gone!
• The top two dials get moved too easily and because they aren't marked, you have to rely on the LCD to tell you you've moved them. Which will be very often.
• With a slow SD card and shooting in RAW, the buffer struggles after a burst.
• Sony seriously needs to fix the options menu.
• No touch screen on the top of the line NEX?
• The NEX line as a whole needs faster lenses.
• The lenses are seriously big for a camera so small. Even the newest prime lenses are big. Kinda defeats the purpose of the body's small form factor IMO.

All in all, a very consumer oriented product (pretty obvious from the layout of the menu) even though the NEX-7 is the so-called 'professional' grade NEX that appeals to the power users. The Achilles heel of the NEX-7? 1) the top 2 dials that are too easily moved and 2) the serious lack of lens choices. And no, lens gotten from the adapters don't count.

I have to say it's a fun camera to shoot and I managed to get some decent pictures from it. Will I get one? Hmmm... good question. Not sure if it's more portable than my DSLR to be honest. It's smaller, but the lenses aren't. I think I can make a better judgement when more lenses are released.