The Compact Camera Conundrum: A Sony A5100 Review and Comparison to Old Film Cameras

When it comes to compact cameras, many professionals and enthusiasts agree that they are often an afterthought. Instead, companies focus on larger, more advanced cameras with interchangeable lenses and advanced features. However, I firmly believe that a well-designed compact camera can be just as capable as its larger counterparts. In this article, we'll take a closer look at the Sony A5100, a compact camera that has some interesting design choices, and compare it to an old film camera.

One of my initial thoughts on the Sony A5100 is to get rid of the viewfinder. It's small and not particularly useful, especially considering my aging eyesight. I've found myself relying more and more on the back screen, which I actually find quite useful. In fact, I think removing the viewfinder would make this camera even more appealing. The A5100 was released alongside the A6000, a camera that was incredibly popular among Sony fans at the time. However, it lacked a viewfinder, while the A6000 had one. This led to the creation of an accessory version of the A6000 without a viewfinder, which became known as the A5100.

As I mentioned earlier, I've actually used this camera before and made some YouTube videos with it. It's a great little machine, but it does have its limitations. One issue is that it tends to overheat quickly when filming video. There were several hacks involved to get around this, but I won't go into those details here. Moving on, let's compare the Sony A5100 to an old film camera, specifically the Zenith Zorky 3. This camera has been a favorite of mine for years and is actually quite similar in design to some of the early Leica cameras.

The Zenith Zorky 3 features an external viewfinder that is fixed in place. While this might seem restrictive at first glance, it's actually quite useful when using certain focal lengths. The camera uses a rangefinder-style viewfinder for focusing and framing shots, which can be easily adjusted depending on the lens being used. However, if you switch to a wider-angle lens or 90mm lens, the viewfinder becomes less practical. This design is reminiscent of older cameras and highlights the importance of good design and functionality.

Fast forward to modern times, and Sony has released several cameras that have taken some of these design elements to new heights. One such camera is the A7S III, which features a 9-point million dot display viewfinder. While this viewfinder is incredibly useful for certain types of photography, I think it would be fantastic if Sony were to offer an accessory version with this same viewfinder, but in a more compact form factor. This could potentially make the camera even smaller and more appealing.

The main drawback of the A5100 at its current price point might be disappointing some users. However, I firmly believe that this camera is a better alternative to the A7 III, despite being slightly inferior in terms of build quality and features. Shooting with the A5100 has been an absolute blast, and I've made several videos without revealing my true nature as the owner. The camera looks exactly like my A73 but is actually smaller, and I have much better audio options available.

In conclusion, while the Sony A5100 might not be perfect, it's clear that Sony has made some excellent design choices with this compact camera. By removing unnecessary features and focusing on what really matters, they've created a machine that can deliver great results in the right hands. Whether you're looking for an accessory viewfinder or simply a more compact option, I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Drop me a comment below and let's continue the conversation!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business welcome back in this video we are going to talk about the sony a7c that was announced last week and actually want to take this from two different angles so first i want to make a case for the a7c secondly i want to propose the idea that maybe sony have an opportunity here that they may have missed with this camera that could develop into something later that i think is kind of interesting but first let's make a case for the a7c so i did my initial impressions video on this and i was kind of surprised at some of the response there were a lot of people who felt that they were disappointed with the camera and the whole idea behind it they felt that it was just a repackaged a7 iii and in some ways it sort of is and i saw several people actually even say that it was a seven three with features removed so i want to set a little bit of the record straight right before we get into this in terms of the difference between these two cameras so with the a7c first of all the only thing that differs or that you could consider that would be removed from the a7 3 would be first of all the viewfinder is not quite on the level of what you're going to get in the a7 iii i have used the a7 3 pretty much exclusively as my main camera for the last two years i've done all of these videos on i'm very familiar with that camera and yes it has a better viewfinder the other things that are a little bit different obviously the shape the screen is a fully articulating so if you are one who likes the tilt screen this may not be your taste and the other thing and i did say this in my preview video is that some of the custom books custom button function custom cut one of those days custom function buttons so if you compare the a7c body style with the a6000 lineup you're going to notice that on the a6400 the a6500 a6600 that they have additional buttons that you can tie custom functions to obviously so they're shortcuts to get to things so that's nice because there are elements of this camera that i like to be able to do with that so those are what is missing in terms of the difference between this and the a7 iii now what you gain from the a7 iii are a lot of things that are really needed so first of all the current auto focus system that sony gives you in that camera is here so you have things like object tracking iaf and video animal iaf it is a much more improved and better autofocus system that you have in the a7c another big deal is the multi-interface hotshoe so this is something that for instance on the a73 you can't interface with the audio options that sony has so there's a shotgun mic the ecm b1m and then there's also i'm not gonna remember the name of it i'm using it right now on my a7 r4 but anyway it's the one where you can audio interface with xlr microphones and that's really a big deal if you're doing video production to be able to use those two audio options is is really game changing i think in many ways and then of course we have the body size now your mileage may vary on this depending on what your own personal tastes and needs are in a camera but the objective was was to come up with something that was more compact in the a7 lineup and that's what the a7c does i actually personally kind of like it for two reasons one it's a very small camera it gives me a different option if i'm gonna go out and shoot and i don't want to take a whole lot of stuff and i want to travel pretty light that's a big deal and then secondly when i'm shooting video and i'm using a gimbal it is a lighter load on the gimbal and so you have a little more flexibility there as well so i think they've done some really nice stuff with the a7c in terms of making it compact one thing that's interesting to me about the underwhelmed responses to this cameras i think we've gotten to a point this year with sony in fact really i would say the last two years where they have just really been burning it in terms of what they're able to do innovating within specs that we have on cameras and i think that the a7 s3 was really the pinnacle of that that's an amazing camera they finally have 10-bit video in that camera it does a lot of really incredible things and i think when we see stuff like that especially those of us that are enthusiasts and we're on the internet talking about it when you see that type of an innovative product come out you want everything to do that and the next thing down the pike needs to do the exact same thing that wasn't the idea with the a7c the a7c is actually a brilliant move because you got to consider that sony targets a wide range of people with their product lineup and that's how they survive and that's how they're able to pay for the innovative products you've got to have stuff that is entry level and that has been a barrier that's been pretty tough to cross for a lot of camera companies is how do we make a full-frame mirrorless camera so somebody who wants that kind of quality can get into the system but you're not going to be able to do that with the a7 s3 it's just too expensive now having said that i do think that the price point on this camera is probably a few hundred dollars too high if they were able to do this for around 15 or 1600 i think it would have been a little bit different ball game and i think that once we get to the holidays you may even see this discounted on sale this will be a big selling camera for sony and one of the things that i love about it is that they've given us a quote unquote entry level camera or a basic model that doesn't compromise too much in other words i can still use this for what i do and this is why i'm actually interested in getting one of these because as a vlog camera it's still going to be one of the best available i think panasonic has done that this year with this s5 that's a 2 000 camera but it's heavily discounted when you compare it to the rest of that lineup it they've done some interesting things and i love the fact that some companies are giving us a less expensive alternative depending on how you define less expensive or something that's entry level that doesn't sacrifice the image quality so i get it the a7c did not come out of the gate firing with crazy specifications we've never seen in a camera before it's something that's targeted to a slightly different demographic but it is inspiring to see this and it got me thinking this is why i want to suggest that maybe sony are missing something that they could be doing here and i want to get into that but first i want to give a shout out real quick to our sponsors for this video who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com present your photography using squarespace's modern professional portfolios the layouts are completely customizable and you can use squarespace's drag-and-drop based back-end system which is really easy to use to present your work the way that you want it seen squarespace is an all-in-one platform for building beautiful websites easily claiming your domain or url and creating a custom site that brings your ideas to life squarespace is host to a number of other tools including e-commerce appointment scheduling and analytics so that you can grow your brand and your following so head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch you can go to squarespace.com aop to save an additional 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain once again that is squarespace.com aop and i want to thank the folks at squarespace for sponsoring another episode of the art of photography so bear with me for a second i want to conceptualize about something that i think would be really cool to see so you know that sony loves compact cameras that is part of their five fundamentals that is fundamental number four and so that's the the design direction they go in with all the cameras lenses image quality battery life so and so forth compact is one of the five fundamentals so i have no problem with compact cameras i think it's a really cool idea so we're talking about an interchangeable lens camera with the a7c let's for a second this is just hypothetical let's say that price point is not an option and let's say that we're not really trying to target that entry-level audience we're going to build a professional camera where the emphasis is on the compact i think this actually starts getting into that territory with a few changes the first thing i would do is just get rid of this viewfinder it does nothing for me it's really small and my eyesight at my age is starting to get a little weird and so i really do not care for the tiny viewfinder it's not the end of the world i don't have to use it i can just use the back screen in fact i want to make a case here if you just remove the viewfinder this is a camera that sony used to make i guess they still make it i think you can still get these this is an a5100 so several years back when the a6000 came out and that was like the best-selling camera for sony up to that point that was a really huge camera this was sort of a second option which was an a6000 without the viewfinder and i actually love this i did a video on it way back in the day it's one of my most viewed videos ever and this had the flip up screen so you could view yourself while filming i actually filmed a lot of these youtube videos on this this would overheat very quickly so there was a lot of hacks involved but i digress i want to stick with the point the point is is that you don't have a viewfinder on here now i want to compare that with something like this which is actually an old film camera this is a zorky 3 and this is one i've had for years and this actually has an external viewfinder now the issue with this the zorky was essentially a copy of the early leicas and back in those days and you had a viewfinder in here that was fixed that was actually a rangefinder well this is for a 50 millimeter lens so what if you put on a 90 millimeter lens or a wider angle lens then the viewfinder doesn't detach so you can't keep up with it so this design used the viewfinder for focusing with the rangefinder but then you had another viewfinder for just framing the shot and this one actually is selectable just depending on what focal length you're using you spin this dial and literally all it does is like it has an aperture in there and it just crops in and shows you what you're looking at and what the final frame is going to be what if you took this kind of concept this is very old this is an old concept and we're going to bring this up to the modern day a little bit but what if there was a way to use the multi interface shoe that you can use for audio that you could also pop in a viewfinder that's detachable as well now sony have a viewfinder that they make but my point is that they have the king of all viewfinders and it goes in the a7s three and that is a nine point something million dot display what if that viewfinder was available as an accessory this didn't have one at all and you had a compact camera that you could just slide that viewfinder into that would be amazing and i don't know i'm not an engineer but if you were able to take out the viewfinder does that give you a way to even make this further more compact compactor less big smaller let's just say it would be compact and it would give you room to put your custom function buttons back on there a little bit i'm just saying but i do think that sony is on to something with the whole idea of having a compact camera in that a7 lineup i would just like to see them take it a little bit further and do more with it and maybe offer some accessories as options like an external viewfinder i would buy that in a heartbeat the ability to have through your multi-interface shoe the ability to when i'm doing video have a microphone in there and when i'm shooting stills i've got a really compact thing that i can use as a street setup and i can just get an external viewfinder especially one that's the 9 million dot display that would work but i think some of the disappointment in this camera probably comes with that price point but you know guys make no mistake this is a better camera than the a7 iii it may not be by leaps and bounds that will be the a74 but this one is a very much improved a7 iii i've absolutely had a blast shooting with this i've made a couple of these videos with it without you seeing or knowing about it and it looks exactly like my a73 but it's actually smaller and i have better audio options i would love to know what you guys think is there something more we could do with this design drop me a comment below i will catch you guys in the next video until then laterthis video is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business welcome back in this video we are going to talk about the sony a7c that was announced last week and actually want to take this from two different angles so first i want to make a case for the a7c secondly i want to propose the idea that maybe sony have an opportunity here that they may have missed with this camera that could develop into something later that i think is kind of interesting but first let's make a case for the a7c so i did my initial impressions video on this and i was kind of surprised at some of the response there were a lot of people who felt that they were disappointed with the camera and the whole idea behind it they felt that it was just a repackaged a7 iii and in some ways it sort of is and i saw several people actually even say that it was a seven three with features removed so i want to set a little bit of the record straight right before we get into this in terms of the difference between these two cameras so with the a7c first of all the only thing that differs or that you could consider that would be removed from the a7 3 would be first of all the viewfinder is not quite on the level of what you're going to get in the a7 iii i have used the a7 3 pretty much exclusively as my main camera for the last two years i've done all of these videos on i'm very familiar with that camera and yes it has a better viewfinder the other things that are a little bit different obviously the shape the screen is a fully articulating so if you are one who likes the tilt screen this may not be your taste and the other thing and i did say this in my preview video is that some of the custom books custom button function custom cut one of those days custom function buttons so if you compare the a7c body style with the a6000 lineup you're going to notice that on the a6400 the a6500 a6600 that they have additional buttons that you can tie custom functions to obviously so they're shortcuts to get to things so that's nice because there are elements of this camera that i like to be able to do with that so those are what is missing in terms of the difference between this and the a7 iii now what you gain from the a7 iii are a lot of things that are really needed so first of all the current auto focus system that sony gives you in that camera is here so you have things like object tracking iaf and video animal iaf it is a much more improved and better autofocus system that you have in the a7c another big deal is the multi-interface hotshoe so this is something that for instance on the a73 you can't interface with the audio options that sony has so there's a shotgun mic the ecm b1m and then there's also i'm not gonna remember the name of it i'm using it right now on my a7 r4 but anyway it's the one where you can audio interface with xlr microphones and that's really a big deal if you're doing video production to be able to use those two audio options is is really game changing i think in many ways and then of course we have the body size now your mileage may vary on this depending on what your own personal tastes and needs are in a camera but the objective was was to come up with something that was more compact in the a7 lineup and that's what the a7c does i actually personally kind of like it for two reasons one it's a very small camera it gives me a different option if i'm gonna go out and shoot and i don't want to take a whole lot of stuff and i want to travel pretty light that's a big deal and then secondly when i'm shooting video and i'm using a gimbal it is a lighter load on the gimbal and so you have a little more flexibility there as well so i think they've done some really nice stuff with the a7c in terms of making it compact one thing that's interesting to me about the underwhelmed responses to this cameras i think we've gotten to a point this year with sony in fact really i would say the last two years where they have just really been burning it in terms of what they're able to do innovating within specs that we have on cameras and i think that the a7 s3 was really the pinnacle of that that's an amazing camera they finally have 10-bit video in that camera it does a lot of really incredible things and i think when we see stuff like that especially those of us that are enthusiasts and we're on the internet talking about it when you see that type of an innovative product come out you want everything to do that and the next thing down the pike needs to do the exact same thing that wasn't the idea with the a7c the a7c is actually a brilliant move because you got to consider that sony targets a wide range of people with their product lineup and that's how they survive and that's how they're able to pay for the innovative products you've got to have stuff that is entry level and that has been a barrier that's been pretty tough to cross for a lot of camera companies is how do we make a full-frame mirrorless camera so somebody who wants that kind of quality can get into the system but you're not going to be able to do that with the a7 s3 it's just too expensive now having said that i do think that the price point on this camera is probably a few hundred dollars too high if they were able to do this for around 15 or 1600 i think it would have been a little bit different ball game and i think that once we get to the holidays you may even see this discounted on sale this will be a big selling camera for sony and one of the things that i love about it is that they've given us a quote unquote entry level camera or a basic model that doesn't compromise too much in other words i can still use this for what i do and this is why i'm actually interested in getting one of these because as a vlog camera it's still going to be one of the best available i think panasonic has done that this year with this s5 that's a 2 000 camera but it's heavily discounted when you compare it to the rest of that lineup it they've done some interesting things and i love the fact that some companies are giving us a less expensive alternative depending on how you define less expensive or something that's entry level that doesn't sacrifice the image quality so i get it the a7c did not come out of the gate firing with crazy specifications we've never seen in a camera before it's something that's targeted to a slightly different demographic but it is inspiring to see this and it got me thinking this is why i want to suggest that maybe sony are missing something that they could be doing here and i want to get into that but first i want to give a shout out real quick to our sponsors for this video who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com present your photography using squarespace's modern professional portfolios the layouts are completely customizable and you can use squarespace's drag-and-drop based back-end system which is really easy to use to present your work the way that you want it seen squarespace is an all-in-one platform for building beautiful websites easily claiming your domain or url and creating a custom site that brings your ideas to life squarespace is host to a number of other tools including e-commerce appointment scheduling and analytics so that you can grow your brand and your following so head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch you can go to squarespace.com aop to save an additional 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain once again that is squarespace.com aop and i want to thank the folks at squarespace for sponsoring another episode of the art of photography so bear with me for a second i want to conceptualize about something that i think would be really cool to see so you know that sony loves compact cameras that is part of their five fundamentals that is fundamental number four and so that's the the design direction they go in with all the cameras lenses image quality battery life so and so forth compact is one of the five fundamentals so i have no problem with compact cameras i think it's a really cool idea so we're talking about an interchangeable lens camera with the a7c let's for a second this is just hypothetical let's say that price point is not an option and let's say that we're not really trying to target that entry-level audience we're going to build a professional camera where the emphasis is on the compact i think this actually starts getting into that territory with a few changes the first thing i would do is just get rid of this viewfinder it does nothing for me it's really small and my eyesight at my age is starting to get a little weird and so i really do not care for the tiny viewfinder it's not the end of the world i don't have to use it i can just use the back screen in fact i want to make a case here if you just remove the viewfinder this is a camera that sony used to make i guess they still make it i think you can still get these this is an a5100 so several years back when the a6000 came out and that was like the best-selling camera for sony up to that point that was a really huge camera this was sort of a second option which was an a6000 without the viewfinder and i actually love this i did a video on it way back in the day it's one of my most viewed videos ever and this had the flip up screen so you could view yourself while filming i actually filmed a lot of these youtube videos on this this would overheat very quickly so there was a lot of hacks involved but i digress i want to stick with the point the point is is that you don't have a viewfinder on here now i want to compare that with something like this which is actually an old film camera this is a zorky 3 and this is one i've had for years and this actually has an external viewfinder now the issue with this the zorky was essentially a copy of the early leicas and back in those days and you had a viewfinder in here that was fixed that was actually a rangefinder well this is for a 50 millimeter lens so what if you put on a 90 millimeter lens or a wider angle lens then the viewfinder doesn't detach so you can't keep up with it so this design used the viewfinder for focusing with the rangefinder but then you had another viewfinder for just framing the shot and this one actually is selectable just depending on what focal length you're using you spin this dial and literally all it does is like it has an aperture in there and it just crops in and shows you what you're looking at and what the final frame is going to be what if you took this kind of concept this is very old this is an old concept and we're going to bring this up to the modern day a little bit but what if there was a way to use the multi interface shoe that you can use for audio that you could also pop in a viewfinder that's detachable as well now sony have a viewfinder that they make but my point is that they have the king of all viewfinders and it goes in the a7s three and that is a nine point something million dot display what if that viewfinder was available as an accessory this didn't have one at all and you had a compact camera that you could just slide that viewfinder into that would be amazing and i don't know i'm not an engineer but if you were able to take out the viewfinder does that give you a way to even make this further more compact compactor less big smaller let's just say it would be compact and it would give you room to put your custom function buttons back on there a little bit i'm just saying but i do think that sony is on to something with the whole idea of having a compact camera in that a7 lineup i would just like to see them take it a little bit further and do more with it and maybe offer some accessories as options like an external viewfinder i would buy that in a heartbeat the ability to have through your multi-interface shoe the ability to when i'm doing video have a microphone in there and when i'm shooting stills i've got a really compact thing that i can use as a street setup and i can just get an external viewfinder especially one that's the 9 million dot display that would work but i think some of the disappointment in this camera probably comes with that price point but you know guys make no mistake this is a better camera than the a7 iii it may not be by leaps and bounds that will be the a74 but this one is a very much improved a7 iii i've absolutely had a blast shooting with this i've made a couple of these videos with it without you seeing or knowing about it and it looks exactly like my a73 but it's actually smaller and i have better audio options i would love to know what you guys think is there something more we could do with this design drop me a comment below i will catch you guys in the next video until then later\n"