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Hi Folks, I'm new to Sony (I'm a Nikon guy so I'm not completely new, and an Oly guy as well) and I wanted a really small and capable camera that was NFC-able with a fair-sized sensor.  The new a5100 seemed to have fit the bill, so I acquired one.  There are some "cons" but not many, and so far I am satisfied with my acquisition.  But I have some general questions about the overall E-mount line.

 

Because I was looking for SMALL, I was looking for a pancake, so I acquired a 20mm f/2.8 lens along with the camera (it was spec'ed as 0.8 thin), but when it arrived I found it looked a lot thicker (like >1.5" thick).  The I realized that much of that extra thickness was the rear cap, and then discovered that the front cap was in two pieces.  One regular front cap that "squeezed" off, and a second piece that twisted off reducing the lens to that 0.8 final dimension (so I was happy about that).  I'm really curious why the two-part front cap.

 

In general what is a good set of lenses to carry around with the camera and still respect its small size?  And what is the interchangeablility of Sony lenses?  Does everything that says E-mount on it work with the ILCE-5100?

 

Thanks all

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For small lenses either the 30mm Sigma 2.8 or 35mm Sony 1.8 (stabilized) are good small primes. The power zoom is obviously tiny, and its stabilized, but its a kit-quality lens... given that I use it half the time for its convenience. The 16mm Sony 2.8 is the brother to the 20mm you currently have, not sure if you would want both. From memory, everything else is larger by a significant margin! But you may be interested in carrying a single larger and longer-focal length lens like a telezoom or a 50mm Sony/60mm Sigma, depending on your needs.

 

Any E-mount lens will work with any E-mount camera, as far as I'm aware. Only caveat is the APS-C lenses on the full-frame A7 series will enable the cropped sensor mode (or result in distortion/vignetting/etc otherwise). Sony labels the full-frame E-mount lenses with FE, and every lens including these is compatible with the A5100.

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