Sony NEX-C3 review

VIDEO

The C3’s video mode is among the best to be found on any camera. As with SLRs’ video modes, it excels for low noise levels when shooting in low light, and the shallow depth of field gives a sumptuous film-like quality, throwing the background out of focus to draw the eye to the subject. However, while the current crop of SLRs struggle to update autofocus while recording, the C3’s autofocus is smooth and entirely silent. The lens’s zoom ring is a step up from the norm, too. It’s superbly weighted and damped to deliver smooth zooming while recording videos.

The bad news is that videos are limited to 720p resolution, which equates to half the pixel count of 1080p video. That’s disappointing, but the NEX-3 was the 720p budget model to the 1080p NEX-5, so presumably there’ll be a 1080p NEX-C5 along shortly to plug that gap.

You can see the dedicated movie button from this top angle

Various DSLRs from Sony and others have suffered serious problems regarding their sensors overheating during video capture, with clips lasting as little as a couple of minutes before the camera switched itself off. The C3 recorded 102 minutes of video (albeit with breaks every 30 minutes to avoid an an import tax hike) before it overheated. That’s probably long enough to not be of any practical concern, but it could prove to be a more pressing issue in hotter climates (we tested at 22 degrees centigrade ambient temperature).

Another disappointment is that the C3’s autofocus settings were ignored when recording video. Accurate focus is critical because of the shallow depth of field, but picking a particular part of the frame to focus on isn’t possible. The Panasonic is much better in this respect, with spot and tracking focus effortlessly controlled via the touchscreen. It also records at 1080p, and to the best of our knowledge, no G-series cameras overheat.