New a6000 Owner Deeply Puzzled re: Performance

[verve825]

Hi, y'all-

Brand-new a6000 owner here. I've used SLRs, DSLRs, P&Ss, and needed a new "enthusiast" level camera. Brought the a6000 (with kit lens) home yesterday, shot 20-30 pics in both JPEG and RAW, manual and auto, bright light and low light, went home, and was hugely disappointed by what I found. Images were not crisp, lots of distortion,washed out/poor color saturation, and pictures which reflected an AF which reminded me of a wandering eye, alighting on whatever struck its fancy at any given moment. (In fairness, I was shooting flowers and birds, not people, but still.) 

Went back out today with the a6000 and an 11-year old Lumix TZ-5, with all of 9MP. On both manual and auto settings, in good light (shooting <ISO 200) the Lumix blew the a6000 away. I understand the a600 E PZ 16-50 f/3.5-5.6 OSS kits lens is not high end glass and can be held accountable for some of this, but I'm genuinely puzzled as to what's going on. The lens itself looks fine, and this is not only a lens issue anyway. I've racked my brain, read the manual, read reviews, read FAQs, and something is definitely awry. 

I would be deeply grateful for any and all input as to what might be going on. 

With real thanks,

Jeff

Edited June 6, 2019 by verve825
Clarity

[Pieter]

Something must indeed be wrong as your experience with the a6000 sounds nothing like mine.

It is indeed true that for low ISO's, image quality is more dominated by lens performance than sensor performance. Some people argue their new smartphone takes pictures which are just as good as those from a decent camera. When shot at base ISO and printed to a small size that may well be true. It is in worse lighting conditions and with a proper lens attached when your a6000 really shines. The 16-50 is really a convenience lens as it packs so small and light, but it doesn't get the best out of your camera.

Regarding the autofocus performance: the a6000 has many different autofocus settings compared to a P&S. Learn to master them and you'll find you have much better control over where you want to focus. Autofocus on the a6000 is plenty fast but imo never assume the camera knows where you want to focus: you decide and tell the camera what to do. Misfocus on stationary subjects is usually user error. To be honest I upgraded my a6000 to an a6500 as I had focus issues on moving subjects with the a6000, especially when the subject was moving towards the camera (I have two small kids that move a lot).

[verve825]

Much gratitude for taking the time to reply- I sincerely appreciate it. Based on your input and that of others, I think I underestimated the need to replace the kit lens ASAP. Even taking that into account, there seems some dissonance (at least in my mind!) regarding the a6000's promise and its output. Just have to shoot more, I guess.  

Thanks again!

[Pieter]

Practice makes perfect and there's a lot to practice with this camera if you come from a dslr. If your previous camera was a Canon or Nikon APS-C, the a6000 should perform very similar in terms of image quality (if not better due to newer sensor). Of course one can always argue about each brands color rendering in jpeg and the autofocus behaviour of a mirrorless camera is quite different from a (d)slr. If your expectations were that the a6000 would perform much better IQ-wise you might be disappointed.

By the way, when assessing out of camera jpegs, make sure all lens corrections are turned on in camera. There shouldn't be noticeable distortion then about which you complain.

[verve825]

Thank you, Pieter! I think you're right- I suspect some of my issue is based on mis-managing my own expectations viz. IQ. Keeping this in mind, I'll shoot for a couple of days without judgement, and get to know the  camera a little better. 

 

Best regards,

 

Jb

[Pieter]

You're welcome. Should more questions arise I'd be happy to help.