The Sony Alpha NEX-5 holds a record among digital cameras as the smallest interchangeable lens compact camera available in the market.

This compact camera from Sony is feature rich and carries a 14.2MP Sony APS-C sensor which makes the photo shoot the best in quality. The Sony Alpha NEX is rectangular shaped and is made up of magnesium alloy and comes in silver and black versions.

Well designed ergonomics and control structure is another highlight of this compact camera from Sony.

For professionals, Sony NEX is not another alien as it has capability to mount on a tripod. The camera doesn’t have an inbuilt flash which is a considerable drawback compared to competing products. The control buttons on this camera are limited to three and all functionality are covered using these buttons. Sony NEX is capable of capturing 1920x1080 video in AVCHD and MP4 formats.

Multiple shooting modes offered by this camera makes it a hot pick for users who take photos from multiple and diverse environments. The only external controls on the camera are the power switch, replay, shutter and dedicated movie capture buttons on the top of the body. The Sony Alpha NEX has six menus including shoot mode, camera, image size, brightness and color, playback and setup.

The shooting mode of this camera from Sony carries all the necessary functionality required by an amateur as well as veteran user. The automatic and scene-specific options and manual exposure controls are defined to help the user to produce high quality images.

The intelligent mode settings stands out among the user friendly features and it selects automatically for the user a scene mode from night view, tripod night view, night portrait, landscape or macro. The Sony camera also features Anti Motion Blur functionality for shooting in dim light without flash.

The camera will automatically set image quality to fine and fire the shutter six times to capture the image. The LCD monitor of this camera is adjustable to five levels of illumination manually. Compared to competing cameras in the same segment, the Sony Alpha NEX-5 is one of the best performers for outdoor photography and image composition.