Today we're going to be talking about the Sony a6400.
What's new and improved and what issues still remain.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and I'm going to make it do what it do baby.
First up, I just want to thank Camera Canada
for supplying me with the Sony a6400
so that I could make this review.
Camera Canada is definitely my go-to store
for my Sony bodies and lenses. So, if you're Canadian like me
and you're looking to get your hands
on the new Sony a6400 make sure you check out Camera Canada.
Links will be in the description below.
so let's start with the most obvious physical change,
the new screen. It flips up so you can see yourself.
Now this screen is got a lot of flak for its design because
when you put a microphone in the hot shoe,
it blocks the display, but I think that these
complaints are a little bit short-sighted. First off
there's some great solutions for this. So, you can put a cage
on this like the one for the a6300, and that'll move
the shoe off to the side and out of the way of the screen.
And a cage is also a good purchase for this camera because
it can help with getting a better grip,
and also reduce the chances of overheating.
There's also this new, fun little adapter
from SmallRig that shifts the shoe,
just a slim, light, little design,
off to the other side without needing a whole cage
and it's at a really affordable price
of just, like, $15 to $20.
But these somewhat specific inconveniences don't outweigh
the advantages of this particular screen design.
Now flip out screens are great, but I do think they're starting
to become a little bit overrated.
They aren't nearly as robust as a centred screen
and are much more likely to get karate chopped off your camera.
Plus they put your view out to the side,
which I don't really like for composing shots.
I prefer to be directly behind the lens
and with this screen you can still see from below.
Or above with the flipping features,
but now you can also see yourself.
So, it's kind of the best of both worlds.
I really like this design. When compared
to the a6300, the screen now also has
touch capabilities for moving the focus point
and it feels a little bit more responsive than some of
the other models I have like the a7 III. It also no longer
dims when shooting 4K so it'll have a much better time
competing against the sun when shooting outdoors.
And you can now also increase the refresh rate
of the EVF which is a nice little add. So, overall
I'm a big fan of the changes to the display system.
The next biggest change would probably
be the autofocus with the a6400
now being called the fastest autofocusing camera in the world
with its .02 second response time, as well as
the addition of more contrast detection points to match
the 425 phase detection points. But the most useful addition
to the autofocusing is the new active tracking
as well as the easier way to engage the Eye AF.
Compared to my a7 III the a6400 is just smarter
when it comes to autofocus.
I no longer have to choose whether
to use the AF On button or the Eye AF button.
I can just press "autofocus" and it'll do it all.
if it detects an eye it'll use eye tracking
which you can now customize to which eye
you want to prioritize, and if that's not available
it'll use regular face detection.
And if neither of those are applicable, it'll use
general subject tracking indicated by this box with lines
on either side of it, and it works incredibly well.
It's a time-saver, it's more intuitive,
and it's impressively effective.
I've been getting an average keeper rate of about 85%.
And that's using lenses like the Sigma 16mm here
that are kind of relaxed when it comes to focusing speed.
If I were to use more sporty lenses
like the 70-200, it gets even better.
And if you go all the way up to the 400mm it basically
never misses a shot. You don't even have to try
at that point. For video out of focus
the feature set is pretty much the same as it was before
because these advanced features don't carry over
into the video side of things.
So, you're going to get similar performance to what
you would have experienced on the previous cameras,
which isn't really a complaint because Sony has always been
pretty good when it comes to video autofocus,
but I will say that it felt like
the transitions were a bit smoother.
When on the normal drive speed. On the a7 III
I always kind of complained that when at normal speed...
transitioned a bit too snappy,
like it was just instantly in focus,
where I felt like with this camera, it had a bit smoother
of a response and I like that. Now, this next point
features both an improvement and an unfortunate lack
of improvement, and that's with the custom white balance.
You can now set the custom white balance
on each individual custom white balance setting.
So, rather than have to go down to the bottom and choosing "set"
and then mapping it to a particular custom white balance,
each custom white balance now has its own set operation.
And I think that's a pretty cool change-up, but it still has
the same problem where you can't set a custom white balance
when you're in one of your memory states.
So, if you're on memory one,
you can't set custom white balance.
You have to be either in manual photo or manual video.
This baffles me that this problem still exists
and really should be fixed.
However, to end on a positive note for the white balance
they did also add Auto White Balance Lock,
which is a nice feature so that when you're priming up a shot
or in continuous shooting, the white balance won't change
from shot to shot and will allow you to keep your shots
more consistent if you use Auto White Balance.
And speaking of consistency,
the a6400 colours now perfectly match
the other recent Sony cameras that came out, like the a7 III
and the a7R III. Some people online complained
that the previous models in the a6000 series
had a bit of a tint that they didn't like,
and if that's the case you might like the colours
on the a6400 a little bit better.
But all I can claim is that it does
perfectly match the a7 III.
The menu also matches that of the a7 III now so that's
a bit of an improvement over the previous models
with some advantages to the structure,
as well as the "My Menu" customization.
But if you're somebody who hated the Sony menus in the past
then this update isn't going to do much for you because
they're still pretty clunky and just as illogical as before.
But in that menu, you will find
the new built-in time-lapse feature
which works well and has all the necessary adjustments.
So, for people who are interested in interval shooting
This is a nice little value-add. Highly approve of that addition.
The picture profiles have also been updated
to include HLG, which is the first time
we've seen this on a 6000 series camera and you have all
four HLGs that you'd find on the a7 III.
So, this is a pretty big deal for people that want to
match footage with their bigger cameras, or even use
an HDR workflow. And speaking of picture profiles, the base ISO
for S-Log2 has been lowered on the a6400 down to ISO 500.
Which is pretty interesting 'cause I don't think
I've seen that before on a Sony mirrorless camera.
But on a broader note about ISO, I didn't really notice
any observable differences in noise quantity or character
between this and the a6500. they look about the same to me
but the ISO range was extended to 32,000 from 25,600.
There's also been improvements to the photo buffer
over the a6300. You can now jam about twice as many shots
in there at about 50 raws and 100 jpegs, which brings it
a lot closer to the a6500, but the a6500 is still pretty
far ahead with double that still, at, like, 200 jpegs
and 100 raws. But the a6400 does now offer a true 120fps
recording mode in 1080p, as well as all the other S&Q
variable modes from the a6500. And all of this can be achieved
without the 30-minute record limit found on pretty much
every other Sony mirrorless camera, and it's also
the only one to not break up the files into 4GB chunks.
I complain about this all the time.
But this is the first time I've used a Sony that hasn't split up
the files like that, you can now record for as long as you want
into a single file, and this is a massive benefit
to any video shooter, but there are some limitations
based on battery life and overheating.
So, first up, battery life.
The battery life is slightly improved,
maybe 10% better than the previous cameras,
but it still isn't great. When recording 4K 24p
I got about 85 minutes on average to deplete the battery
and it got a little bit better in 1080p where I averaged
around 110 minutes, and I got about 350 shots
of mixed EVF and LCD shooting for stills.
So, even if you do have unlimited recording time,
your camera will still die reasonably quickly,
but you can power with USB power
which will extend your battery life a lot,
as in, like, several hours, and at that point,
it's only going to be storage space
or the overheating that are going to stop you.
I did several overheating tests
and received dramatically different results,
depending on how you have the camera configured.
So, my baseline test was shooting at 4K 24p
with the screen closed, and sitting on a flat surface
with the overheat shutdown setting in the camera
set to standard, and some LED lights on in the background
which warmed it up a little bit to about 24°C,
and doing all this, I was able to record
until the overheat warning came on at 40 minutes
and then the camera shut down completely at 54 minutes.
And the same was also true if you kept every one of those
factors the same but instead of placing it on a flat surface
you held it in your hand
and covered the bottom about the same amount.
Then I tested it with the same settings, but with the screen
extended a little bit away from the body
and it lasted a little bit longer with the shutdown
at 62 minutes and the warning at 48 minutes.
Then I put it on a tripod so that the base wouldn't be
covered, but I still kept the screen deployed like this
and it lasted a little bit longer still,
this time the warning came at 54 minutes
and the shutdown was at 71 minutes.
Then just for fun,
I gave it the breeze from an open window,
which is quite cool because it's still winter here
and doing that with everything else the same
it recorded well over two hours without a single warning.
So, my conclusions with that are that you should
avoid holding the camera in warm environments
and you should have the screen away
from the body to give you a little bit longer life.
But if you're holding it in colder environments,
you'll probably be fine.
Then I tested it at 4K 30p
which disables the Super 35 and oversampling
and I closed the window back up.
So, we were back at 24°C,
but I left it on the tripod
and with the screen deployed, and it lasted 15% longer
than the 24p at 82 minutes before shutting down.
And then lastly, I tested it on 1080p
Super 35 mode and it lasted for well over three hours
and wasn't even that warm to the touch.
So, 1080p won't be a problem at all.
Then I increased the auto power shut off temperature
up to "High" from "Standard" and ran all the tests again.
And they all seemed to last pretty much indefinitely.
Even when placed on a shelf, covering the bottom,
and with the screen closed, and at 4K 24p Super 35,
and with the LED lights on, and with the window closed,
So, it was like 24°C, and with USB charging,
it still lasted for three-- almost three hours
before the thing just had to stop recording
because I ran out of storage space.
It was quite hot to the touch, but the camera was still on
and ready to record if I had more storage to give it.
So, basically setting the temperature to "High"
on the camera will allow it to last probably as long
as you would need it to, and so collectively these tests show
an improvement in overheating over some of the previous models
as long as you keep in mind some of the limitations
I just described. Now, I wasn't able to test in any
extremely hot environments, but you can probably assume
reduced runtime in those situations.
But in my shooting environment,
the only obstacle became the storage space.
Now, of course, you can connect it to an external recorder
like I tested with the Atomos Ninja V,
but unfortunately, this is one area
that sadly wasn't improved at all.
You still have the same bizarre quirks and limitations,
like there's no face detection when monitoring in 4K,
you have to disable the internal recording to get around that,
which I explained in a previous video that I made
using the a7 III. The screen still goes black when recording
externally, you still can't activate HDMI info display
when shooting in 4K, basically any issues you had with HDMI
on the previous Sonys are still active here.
I made a video listing all these issues
on the previous cameras, if you're interested
in how the HDMI performs on the Sony cameras.
I'll put that in the description as well as
any other related videos. The last feature I can think
to mention that hasn't really been improved
that much would be the rolling shutter.
It's still a big bucket of Jell-O in 4K,
but it is slightly improved in 1080p.
Here's some footage of 1080p at 120fps slowed down to 25%.
Alright. So, let's talk a little bit about value.
The a6400 is now priced where the a6300
was previously priced at $900 US.
And the a6300 seems to be on some sort of perpetual sale.
But at full price it fully renders the a6300 obsolete
and there's definitely no sense paying the same price
for the a6300 when the a6400 exists.
But I don't even think the sale price on the a6300
is worth the discount.
The 6400 is a much better buy.
Compared to the a6500, which is $300 more,
I would say again that it's borderline obsolete.
The only real advantages are the increased buffer size
and the stabilization.
And the buffer, I feel, is pretty negligible.
So, let's talk about the IBIS. If you're mostly
going to be using your camera on a tripod,
I would not get the a6500 as you'll be removing
one of the only advantages that it has
and even if you were going to use it handheld,
I think that with a reasonably high shutter speed
or with stabilized lenses, you can get away with the a6400.
I've got some test shots here that I took--
that I took with the 85mm f/1.8, which is the largest lens
that I had that wasn't stabilized
and it's pretty long for an unstabilized lens handheld
because it's about 130mm equivalent
and I took a shot on a tripod
and then I scaled it up with the shutter speed handheld
until I could get a shutter speed that I thought was about
equivalent clarity to that on the tripod.
The tripod shot is on the right,
and on the left are the different handheld shots.
And we start here at 1/60 of a second,
which obviously isn't as sharp, and as we jump through
and I went up... Eventually when I got
to about 1/160 of a second, which is this one here
I felt that I was able to achieve pretty similar sharpness
and clarity to what we had over here with the tripod.
If you're going to be vlogging with unstabilized lenses,
then you might appreciate the IBIS of the a6500
but keep in mind the stabilization on the a6500
isn't that great comparatively,
and because of the slow rolling shutter,
it's not like you're going to get that smooth of shots
when you're whipping the camera around, so I might still stick
with the a6400 even for vlogging.
because for your typical vlog style
it's quite possible that your audience wouldn't even
be able to tell the difference with nothing to compare it to.
Here's some footage of me vlogging at a brisk pace
on uneven snow-covered ground.
But if you want really smooth shots,
you're going to want to get a gimbal and you can take
some of the money that you saved not buying the a6500
and put it toward that. And if you already own a gimbal,
I would definitely get the a6400 and not the a6500.
So, that's it. Overall, I really like the a6400
and I think it offers a really compelling value
and definitely the best bang for the buck
in the Sony crop sensor world.
But that's going to be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful, or at least entertaining
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Alright... I'm done.