Electronics and game manufacturer Sony, based in Tokyo, Japan, has unveiled the Alpha 5100, a highly compact mirrorless interchangeable lens camera.

The new camera's specifications let it sit between the existing A5000 and A6000 and would replace the NEX, which the company names after its compact system cameras. While the A5000 and A5100 have the same demographics of photographers - new users that are upgrading from smartphone or compact point-and-shoot cameras and stepping up from the basic digital single-lens reflex cameras - the newly introduced compact camera has similar hardware with the A6000.

Like Us on Facebook

Both the A51000 and the latter sport the same Bionz X image processor, 24-megapixel APS-C sensor and hybrid autofocus system, which uses both phase-detection points and contrast-detection to focus to the subject being photographed in 0.07 seconds, according to Digital Trends.

The new compact camera also supports autofocus features such as Flexible Spot AF area, Eye AF, Lock-on AF and AF-A mode, which lets the camera switch between autofocus-C and autofocus-S. Although the A5100's ISO maintains the same maximum of 25,600, it has a slower continuous shooting speed of six frames per second, compared to the NEX-5T's 10 fps and A6000's 11 fps.

The camera's manufacturer said that the sensor on the A5100 is a gapless on-chip lens design made for corners, letting it capture sharper images by allowing a very even light distribution in the image.

The camera is equipped with a built-in flash, and a 3-inch 921-kilopixel touchscreen liquid crystal display that can tilt by 180 degrees, which is absent on the A6000 and A5000.

For the aspiring directors, the camera has features that would interest movie recordings. The A5100 lets users record with Full HD 1080 resolution at 60 frames per second in the XAVC S format, which records at a higher data rate at 50 megabytes per second with compression that preserves the high quality of the video.

Tagssony, camera, HD camera, 1080p, LCD, A5100, A5000, A6000, technology, Tech, Tech News