Nellie Lim x Sony a5000 Review

One month ago I embarked on an exciting journey with Sony Electronics to test out their latest Sony A5000 camera! I take pride in ensuring my photos look 'street-style' (if you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out my Instagram @nellielim) because I feel like a huge part of how I dress or style myself everyday is street-influenced. And as a result of that, I'm always unnecessarily particular about how my photos look like.

When Sony Electronics approached me with the offer to test out their camera, I thought "why not?" but I had a feeling I'll be running back to my good old Canon 600D because you can't compete with a DSLR! Besides, I like my photos to have the 'bokeh' effect (the higher the aperture the better) and your usual point and shoot cameras can't offer much quality assurance as DSLR cameras. I use a 50mm with f1.8 lens with my Canon 600D for all my photos and it offers unrivalled quality and amazing 'bokeh' effects. The only annoying part to the 50mm lens would be the fact that I have to stand pretty far away from my photographer to be able to fit my entire body into the frame and frankly, it looks odd and I feel ridiculous lol. It's also incredibly bulky and heavy to lug around and everyone around me hates having to carry it for me when they have to help me heh..

The Sony A5000 (20.1 megapixel) however, came with a 16-55mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens and I must admit, it's a serious step up from the ordinary digital cameras that I've seen in the market. It is the world's lightest interchangeable lens digital camera with built-in Wi-Fi and NFC and also boasts a 180° tiltable LCD screen!

I'm not going to bore you with every single technical aspect of the camera because I feel that the selling point of a good camera is a positive user-experience. I have summarised a list of plus points that I think are important to me but I strongly encourage you to try it out at the physical shop so you can convince yourself it's a camera worth investing in. Also, the features that are important to me might not even be important to you so please test it out for yourselves and let my photos be the judge of the camera's quality ok? :D

Okay, on to plus points:

(1) I love the fact that I can switch into a different lens, I'm already planning to get another one with higher aperture already :D

(2) I can avoid connecting to my Toshiba FlashAir SD card to export the images into my iPhone, which is getting slightly annoying because of the troublesome process. Now, I can seamlessly import my photos into my iPhone with the help of the 'PlayMemories Mobile' App! Ahhh, #ilovetechnology!

(3) Tiltable screen allows for quick selfies! :D

 

(4) It fits into ANY bag

(5) The main selling point for me is the manual focus feature that allows me to focus on any point on the photo so I can achieve a "deep" bokeh effect in my photos! 

Even with dark lighting!

One downside though.. the LCD viewing screen is appallingly pixelated :( When I started snapping photos with the camera, I was frustrated because the images displayed on the screen looked grainy and blur. And I actually resorted to using my DSLR to taking my usual #ootd photos. But I received a pleasant surprise when I imported my photos and realise they were all super clear! :D Here're some of the photos I've taken with the Sony a5000 over the past month:

Alright, I won't delve into the technical aspects of the camera because you can find out more here if you're a tech/camera geek! You can also hop on over to my Instagram to check out the photos I take with the Sony a5000 or check out the hashtag #sonya5000! :D

-----

If you want to win this exact camera, Sony is inviting all fans to participate in the a5000 challenge where you'll stand to win up to 120 exciting prizes in total from Sony. It's a regional contest for Southeast Asia so the top 3 winners from each country who have the fastest and most accurate answers to the trivia questions will win a brand new Sony a5000 camera! :D

To join the contest, visit Sony's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/Sony.ImagingSEA, or at http://a5000challenge.sony-asia.com and race against the clock to answer 10 fun and interesting questions about the a5000 camera. You will stand a chance to win one of the 120 attractive prizes from Sony if you have the highest scores and fastest timings! You can even earn bonus points to boost your ranking if you're really competitive like that..

The contest will run for one month, from 31st March 2014 to 28th April 2014. So hurry up, get your brains werkinnn!