Time To Fortify

Sony Alpha 6400 75,990

- Sujith Gopinath

Sony has consolidated itself on top of the 35 mm Full Frame mirrorless camera segment, thanks to lenient competition. Now to stabilize the perch on top, the company seems to be reinforcing the cropped-sensor segment too, by improving the Alpha E-mount cameras in this segment. The Alpha 6400 is an upgrade to the Alpha 6300 with better AF performance and improvements in video.

Design and Build Quality

The Alpha 6400 is constructed with a mix of metal and plastic. While the chassis, top cover and front cover use a light but sturdy magnesium alloy, the other parts are fabricated in engineering plastic. The camera incorporates dust and moisture resistance in the form of an interlocked double-layer structure for casings along with sealing for major dials and buttons. The camera has a broad hand grip with a textured rubber finish, which provides excellent grip. Our only grouse is an exposed connector cable in the flash assembly. We are not great fans of cables that are accessible to the user in an otherwise sealed camera.

Key Features

The 24.2-megapixel Alpha 6400 uses an APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm) Exmor CMOS sensor. The camera uses E-mount and accepts all E-series lenses without an adapter and FE-series Full Frame lenses with the help of an adapter. The camera uses charge protection coating along with ultrasonic vibrations to keep dust off the sensor. Still, images can be captured in JPEG or Raw format with maximum dimensions of 6000 x 4000 pixels. There is an option to record both formats simultaneously. JPEG images can be recorded in Extra Fine, Fine or Standard compression. The camera lets you shoot videos in XAVC S and AVCHD formats with up to 4K (3840 x 2160), 25p quality.