Sony a6300 review

The a6300 is Sony’s latest and greatest compact system camera (CSC), and an update to the Sony a6000. Back in 2014 I wrote that the a6000 “hits a home run for quality, performance, features and price”, so the a6300 has big boots to fill.

There are quite a few similarities. They both use a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor – the same size that’s found in consumer SLRs – and they’re virtually identical to look at, too, with a slim, rangefinder-style design that’s common to all Sony CSCs. There’s just enough room for an electronic viewfinder, flash hotshoe, integrated flash, mode dial and command dial along the top plate.

Power, shutter release and a custom button are mounted on top of the handgrip, which is big enough for a secure fit in the hand. The rear is home to a tilting 3in screen, a wheel and a small collection of buttons. All of this matches the a6000, but with two years of development and a price that’s around £400 more than the a6000 cost at launch, the a6300 needs to do a lot more to justify its existence.

The big news is an upgraded autofocus system with 425 phase-detect points on the main imaging sensor. It’s hard to quantify the performance of an autofocus system in absolute terms as there are so many variables, but on balance I’d say this is as good as I’ve seen from a CSC.

Subject tracking was extremely responsive, and the 9fps burst mode with continuous autofocus produced a decent proportion of pixel-sharp shots when shooting moving subjects. Best of all, this 9fps mode includes a live view stream with minimal blackout for each frame. The experience was much closer to shooting with a professional-grade SLR than most CSCs manage.

There’s a decent-sized buffer, allowing 48 JPEGs or 23 RAW frames to be captured before continuous shooting slowed down. Shooting in the single drive mode wasn’t so impressive, averaging 0.7 seconds between shots.

This sensor has a higher maximum ISO speed, up from the a6000’s 25600 to 51200. This is only useful if the sensor has the noise performance to back it up, but in this instance the a6300 delivers the goods. JPEGs at ISO 1600 and above exhibited cleaner, sharper fine details than the a6000, particularly in subtle textures such as hair and skin. In fact, the a6300 wasn’t far behind the full frame Sony a7R II for noise levels, although the a7R II established a clear lead at ISO 12800 and above.

The other significant advance is the introduction of 4K video. It may be a while before we’re all using 4K TVs, but it makes sense to shoot at this resolution now. Footage will stand the test of time better, and 4K footage invariably looks sharper than 1080p even when scaled down to fit a 1080p screen.

The a6300’s 4K footage looked excellent, with precise details and little evidence of noise at ISO 3200. 4K videos also had a pleasingly neutral colour palette that’s a good starting point for colour grading in editing software. Autofocus was decisive, too, thanks no doubt in part to the phase-detect autofocus points.

However, the lack of a touchscreen is a baffling omission. It’s an extremely useful feature for moving the autofocus point when taking photos, and the only practical way to do so while recording videos. Some videographers will prefer to focus manually, but it seems daft not to allow touchscreen-controlled autofocus as an option.

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The 3in LCD screen has a widescreen aspect ratio that suits video better than photo capture. However, as with other recent Sony CSCs, it was too dim to use outdoors. A Sunny Weather setting significantly boosted the screen’s brightness to help resolve the problem, but for some reason this Sunny Weather setting is bypassed when recording 4K video. Perhaps colour accuracy is better without it, but that’s little comfort if you can barely see the picture at all when shooting outside.

A microphone socket is included —  a feature that was noticeably absent from the a6000 — but it’s not a huge amount of use as there’s no headphone socket for monitoring. It’s also frustrating that memory cards must be reformatted in order to switch between NTSC and PAL frame rates. Admittedly, it’s not a setting that gets changed often, but it’d be pretty annoying to have to choose between shooting at the wrong frame rate or deleting all your existing photos and videos.

Picture quality

I also have some reservations about the a6300 as a stills camera. The a6000 compared well with rival CSCs around the £600 mark, but the a6300 has a different class of camera to compete with. The 2.4 million dot electronic viewfinder has a higher resolution than before, but its 0.7x magnification (as 35mm equivalent) is smaller than the Fujifilm X-T1 and X-T2’s 0.77x. The widescreen LCD gives a relatively small view of photos compared to 3:2 and 4:3 screens used elsewhere.

The biggest drawback is the number and layout of buttons and dials, which fall significantly short of other premium CSCs and SLRs at this price. The lack of space on the slim camera body is the main limiting factor but there’s room for a second command dial if Sony wanted to include it. The long-winded access to exposure compensation feels particularly out of place for such an expensive camera.

It’s much harder to criticise the a6300’s image quality. The 24-megapixel sensor produced sharp, clean photos with a rich colour palette, and focus was extremely reliable. Noise levels were among the lowest I’ve seen from an APS-C sensor, although the JPEG processing worked better on fine details than it did on out-of-focus areas of the frame. Overall, I’d place the a6300’s photo quality very slightly behind the Fujifilm X-Pro2, broadly on a par with the Fujifilm X-T1 and comfortably ahead of the Panasonic GH4.

^ Rich colours, pixel-sharp details and no hint of noise. The automatic exposure has balanced the highlights and shadows well too.

^ Using a fast manual shutter speed to freeze motion has given a wide aperture and a narrow depth of field. Focus here is spot on. (1/640s, f/4, ISO 160, 60mm equivalent)

^ There’s masses of fine detail in this shot but even at ISO 100 there’s a hint of noise in the mid-grey gradients. (1/100s, f/7.1, ISO 100, 25mm equivalent)

^ ISO 500 shouldn’t be too taxing for an APS-C camera. The cogs in the foreground are clean and detailed but the out-of-focus face in the background is a little noisy. (1/60s, f/4, ISO 500, 52mm equivalent)

^ The same applies here at ISO 4000. There’s nothing much wrong with the foreground detail but the featureless background looks blotchy. (1/60s, f/4, ISO 4000, 30mm equivalent)

^ Shooting in shady conditions with a 1/250s shutter speed to freeze motion has resulted in an ISO 2000 setting. There’s some grain on skin textures and the background looks blotchy once again. (1/250s, f/4, ISO 2000, 105mm equivalent)

^ ISO 6400 is a tough test for skin and hair but this is far from a bad result. (1/80s, f/4, ISO 6400, 70mm equivalent)

Conclusion

The Sony a6300 is a superb camera but at £1,000 body-only, that’s pretty much a given. What’s less certain is whether it’s a better buy than the Fujifilm X-T1 and Panasonic GH4, two superb CSCs that cost about the same.

The a6300’s video capabilities are among the best around but the lack of a touchscreen is enough to make me reject this camera in favour of the Panasonic GH4 for video work. The GH4’s superior ergonomics and headphone socket are further confirmation. However, the GH4 can’t compete for photo quality at fast ISO speeds.

The a6300’s major selling point is its best-in-class autofocus and continuous shooting performance. However, the people who will appreciate these features most — sports and nature photographers — will probably want fast, tactile controls, too. The forthcoming Fujifilm X-T2 with its improved autofocus performance is the CSC to watch in this arena (review coming soon) although it’s more expensive at £1,400 body only.

For now, I’d be more tempted by Panasonic GH4 for nature and sports photography with its stunning performance and flexible autofocus system. If image quality and ergonomics are more important that autofocus performance, the Fujifilm X-T1 remains my top recommendation.

The Sony E-Mount range has an excellent track record, though, as this is the best model to date. The a6300 doesn’t come top in any single area, but if you want a single camera that performs well for video capture, high-speed shooting and low-light shooting, this might well be the best option.