We got to have a quick hands-on with Sony’s A6400 and 18-135mm lens during a spot of clay pigeon shooting – as you do when up in Gleneagles, Scotland, also the location for the company’s launch of its 135mm f/1.8 G Master series telephoto lens.

One image can change us.

A picture, a moment can change the way we feel. Change how we see ourselves. Change our understanding and change the rules. Provoke and change history.

MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth. Sell the kit you’re not using to MPB. Trade in for the kit you need to create. Buy used, spend less and get more. Buy. Sell. Trade. Create.

Sony Alpha A6400 Features

As noted upon its announcement at the start of this year, the compact system camera features a 24.2 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor plus a 425-phase detection and contrast detection AF points, covering approximately 84% of the image area.

It also comes with what the manufacturer has termed Advanced Real-time Eye AF, plus Real-time Tracking for moving subjects. Selfie obsessives will also find the 180° fully tilting LCD touch screen of use, while 11fps continuous shooting, 4K video capture and time-lapse movies are also on board.

Using the Sony E-Mount you can use APS-C and Full-Frame lenses. 

Key Features

• 24.2mp APS-C Exmor CMOS image sensor
• Latest-generation BIONZ X image processor 
• 0.02 seconds AF acquisition speed
• 425 phase-detection and contrast-detection AF points covering approximately 84% of the image area
• ISO up to ISO102400 (Multi-frame NR)
• Advanced Real-time Eye AF
• New Real-time Tracking for object tracking
• 180-degree fully tiltable LCD touch screen for self-recording
• 11fps mechanical shutter / 8fps silent shooting with continuous AF/AE tracking 
• High-resolution 4K movie recording with full pixel readout and no pixel binning, plus advanced AF speed and stability
• Interval recording for time-lapse videos

Sony Alpha A6400 Handling

It’s a testament to the camera’s user-friendliness that the loud crack of a shotgun going off every 10 seconds didn’t totally throw us. Sony has claimed the world’s fastest autofocus for the A6400 on launch – incredibly, it’s able to acquire a subject in a mere 0.02 seconds – which, in practice translates as this being a camera that you can pick up and start using without thinking too much about what either the camera or your hands are doing.

Indeed, because we weren’t made to feel aware of what the camera was doing – operation itself feeling almost effortless once settings had been implemented via the rear screen – we were freed up to be able to totally focus (pun intended) on our subject. Which is useful when there are shotguns involved.

We were utilising the camera with the 18-135mm zoom, offered to consumers as part of a bundle deal when buying the body, which we were glad to discover doesn’t feel too front heavy when gripped in the palm, or cause the camera itself to topple forward.

Lens and camera just, in fact, feel right in combination – being neither too heavy nor too light, while overall the camera feels substantial and well constructed with it. In other words exactly what we’d want or expect of a camera body retailing at around £950 in the UK (or an approximate total of £1,300 with the lens we were using). There’s also a 16-50mm lens kit at £1,000. Yes, we get an APS-C rather than a full frame sensor to differentiate it from Sony’s A7 series, but not everybody wants or needs a full frame sensor. Or perhaps doesn’t need one as much as they think they need one.

Sony Alpha A6400 Other sample images

With the subject we were shooting being almost constantly in motion the camera did well in coping, its real-time AF tracking resulting in very few if any soft results when taking photographs in ideal daylight conditions. Our first impressions are that the A6400, therefore, seems like a good everyday/travel camera option for a variety of subject matters, but we’ll be able to give a fuller impression when we get the camera in our hands for a full review and can drill into the detail more.