Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera with 16-50mm Lens, Graphite (ILCE-6000L/H)

I'm not sure I could more clearly love this camera. I purchased this camera after looking for an excuse to buy a nice camera for a long time. When the opportunity arrived for me to teach our school yearbook class, it was time for me to learn how to take good photos. There are plenty of comprehensive reviews on here... so I will just addressed why I pulled the trigger on this purchase, and why I'm so happy with it.For starters, I FIRMLY believe this camera is the best bang for your buck you can possibly get in DSLR or mirrorless at the time of this review. In fact, I've noticed the price just dropped this month. Like many of you reading this, I've spent COUNTLESS hours doing research to be sure this big purchase was the right one. I knew I'd use the camera semi-professionally, and needed it to meet criteria that allowed it to be effective in low light and take rapid shots to capture the action of the kids I work with. The a6000 was the clear winner despite a suggestion from a family member who has a cheaper model Sony mirrorless. After comparing the two... I'm FIRMLY convinced I made the perfect decision for me.I use this camera primarily to take pictures of the kids at our school, and that includes our middle school sports program. At 11 shots per second... I don't miss a beat. I've caught some incredible photos of our kids, and the parents and school community are buzzing about the awesome impact these cool photos have on our ability to create a buzz around campus. One of the parents on campus is a professional photographer, and when she was taking photos next to me at our annual winter concert she looked at my photos and was stunned that I was not only getting photos on par with the quality of her pro DSLR setup, but that some of the low-light photos even came out BETTER.I'm using nothing so far besides the kit lens and 50-210mm lense. Though I plan to upgrade to a strong fixed lens soon.Quick heads up... the Wasabi battery pack isn't just important, it's ESSENTIAL. This camera sucks battery like crazy, but you should be able to go three to four hours of HEAVY shooting on 2 or 3 batteries. With that said, the Wasabi batteries also have a larger capacity than the Sony batteries, so I use them more often anyways.The only other minor gripe I have about the camera is the sensor that detects your eye at the viewfinder (and shuts off the LCD display) is crazy sensitive. But that's super minor compared to what feels to me like the best big dollar purchase I may have ever made.Get a good book to teach you this camera, spend a small amount of time on it, and you won't believe the quality photos you get out of it.

Mirrorless always made sense to me. Let's face it, if you were designing a digital camera from scratch, why on earth would you put a mirror box in it? DSLRs were always a transitional idea.This is a great camera, on several reviewers best in class lists, and deservedly so. I won't live long enough to figure out every feature, but fortunately, I won't have to. I took it out of the box a few hours ago and already taking perfectly good pictures (after waiting most of that time for the battery to charge). It helps that I already have a good Sony point-&-shoot. This is a lot better camera, but the concepts and terminology are similar, I can see where they improved and built on what I'm used to - but it wouldn't be hard for a beginner either, just put it on 'intelligent auto,' start shooting, and progress at your own pace. One change over the point-&-shoot is the panorama mode, which flows better and makes better pictures, but doesn't go as wide, and isn't as sharp in the details. There is also an 'intelligent auto plus' mode, which I guess is better.I got the kit lens, which will be fine for everyday daylight stuff, and the 50mm / 1.8 portrait lens, which I highly recommend. The camera uses an APS-C sized sensor, so if you grew up with 35mm as I did, multiply by 1.5 - the 16-50 kit lens will be what you'd expect from a 24-75, and the 50mm is like a 75 in the 35mm world. With my old Canon film gear, I used my 85/1.8 as much as anything, so I plan to get a lot of use out of the Sony 50mm. The attached pic is with the 50mm lens at f2.0 (reduced, the original was 3008 x 2000, which is the smallest 3x2 pic the camera will take). The camera can be set to automatically soften ('defocus') the background by various amounts, which as you can see works well with the 50/1.8. It didn't work nearly as well with the kit lens, which only goes down to f3.5 at the wide end, and f5.6 when zoomed to 50mm. An enthusiast-level digital camera that can compete with 1970s-era 35mm gear in portraiture is great if you ask me, and a long time coming.I didn't get one of the bundles, I bought only the chinese knock-offs I wanted separately, including a spare battery and desk charger, and UV filters to protect both lenses. The camera kit includes a tiny 1.5 amp charger, with a usb cable to charge the battery in the camera, but no way to charge a spare battery out of the camera. I also bought a class 10 SD card (recommended by Amazon) before seeing that the manual says class 4 or better is fine. I download to the computer often, so don't need a huge card - a 16 Gb card will hold about 900 pics at largest size (24M) / RAW+JPEG, about 8,900 at 6M (3000 x 2000) 'fine' quality JPEG, and over 10,000 at 'standard' quality. Panoramic shots will consume more space, movies a lot more. 3000 x 2000 will make decent prints on letter size paper. Brightness, in-camera processing, color, and just plain 'camera-smarts' are just about perfect, and I can't imagine anything you can't control or reset if it's not right for you. Very nice.UPDATE - Still learning. There are many tutorials on youtube, and some topic-specific user manuals (one, for example, on what the various auto-focus modes do) that will turn up in internet searches. Explore. Have fun.