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Sony announces the new a6500

06 October 2016

Sony announces the new a6500

When we started stocking the a6000, we could see something quite special that Sony was developing almost under the radar with the a7 range always stealing the limelight.  Moving forward, the a6300 took this further - unbelievably fast for a stills camera and also offering decent 4K video.  Okay, so it wasn't quite perfect with the camera overheating when shooting continuously in 4K.

This is one of the key things its successor, the a6500, is keen to address.  Indeed tests by our friends at Newsshooter have shown that the a6500 outperforms the a6300 by quite a signficant margin and can now be treated as a realistic 4K solution that won't let you down.

But there's more - in fact a shed load more.  Sony has now included the in-camera 5-axis optical image stabilisation from the a7 II range.  Quite how it has managed to bundle it into such a small body is anyone's guess!  This is great news for stills and video shooters alike.

The AF performance on the a6300 was already pretty impressive and the a6500 inherits the same features.  What has changed is the maximum buffer for high-speed continuous shooting is now an impressive 307 frames.

The a6000 range

Hallelujah - Sony have adopted a touchscreen!!!  This is one thing I love about cameras like the 80D - touch screen focusing.  You can set the speed of the focus shift in the menu. The α6500 also features touchpad functionality. When utilising the viewfinder for framing and shooting, the LCD screen can be used as a touch pad. Simply drag a finger across the screen to shift the focus point from one area to another.

The a6500 also has a new 'Slow and Quick' mode with frame rates from 1fps to 100fps for up to 50x quick motion and 4x slow motion recording.  You can now also pull an 8mp still image directly from the camera whilst shooting in 4K.

Lastly you'll notice a new menu system, taken from the a99 II, and a slightly larger body with a mild redesign on buttons.  

So really it's the touchscreen, improved recording reliability and the 5 axis stablisation that are the big features here.  Shame they didn't find room for a headphone socket!

We'll have the camera available to hire around the middle of December.  In the meantime, here's an interview shot by the Newsshooter team, demonstrating some of the new video features.