After breaking up with the lovely Fuji XE-1, I wasn’t looking for a fancy rebound. What I needed was to be in a stable, reliable relationship with my camera. I was almost considering going down the DSLR road. Canon 80D looked like a fantastic option. Then they launched the CANON EOS M5, a mirrorless camera mirroring the 80D, albeit in a bite-sized body. Mixed reviews had me doubting my decision. The touch-screen was alluring. But the autofocus was again questionable. This time around, I couldn’t afford to take any risks, quite literally couldn’t afford. So, I turned my head to the reliable workhorses from Sony – a6000, a6300 and a6500. 6000 was available at a steal. The 6500 was costing almost twice as much, and the touchscreen wasn’t the best from what I’d read. So, the one in the middle seemed to be the best bang for the buck. It had everything going for itself. Weather-sealed body, blazing fast autofocus, ever growing system for lenses, 4k, and a massive vote of confidence from the world. At ₹64,000, it seemed like the perfect deal. I’ve used it extensively in just over a month. But 5000 images and 100 videos later, I can make a fair assessment of it.

JACK OF ALL TRADES. MASTER OF ONE: FOCUS.
0.05 seconds. That’s how fast it takes to focus. If numbers mean anything to you, it has 425 phase detection points. When it was launched, it had the world’s fastest autofocus, at least on paper. Now if you’re not a numbers person, and would just like to know how fast it, well, it’s blazing fast. You’d never miss a shot in decent light. Even in low light, it’s pretty snappy. But the auto-focus system of this little beast doesn’t stop at speed. It has eye detect focus, and it’s pretty damn accurate. The one feature that’ll blow you away is continuous autofocus in video. It locks on to the subject like a bee does to honey. It’s like the camera is doing all the work for you, so the only thing you can focus on, is the story.

NO GREAT SHAKES. JUST GREAT PHOTOS.
There’s a nifty little feature in the camera that ensures you have shake-free photos forever. Once you’ve set an AUTO ISO mode, you get to set the minimum shutter speed. Lock it at 250, and you’ll get shake-free photos irrespective of the light. But there’s a trade-off, that of noise. At high ISOs, you’ll get a lot of noise, but a blur-free picture nonetheless. And if I have to choose between a noisy picture and no picture, it’s noisy picture any day of the week.

THE LCD SCREEN THAT STICKS ITS NECK OUT.
It was a relief to go back to the tilty screen from the fixed screen on the Fuji. Would I have loved it to be a fully articulated screen? Of course, but that's not a deal breaker. I welcomed back low angle photography with open arms. The screen is bright and in many instances, it’s come to my aid. It also comes in handy when you have to capture images in a crowd, when the LCD screen becomes your eye for events transpiring in front of you. This actually helped me in capturing videos at Disneyland, Paris.

THE 'DO NOT DISTURB' MODE.
This is actually more from the onlooker’s perspective. My favorite feature of this camera is its ‘Silent Shutter’. It’s like the camera’s gone to church. You can see it watching you, but it’ll never say a word. Almost like it’s godsend. The Silent Shutter is excellent when it comes to street photography. You can discreetly capture stories without interrupting the moment. I wonder why all cameras do not have this feature.

VIDEO LEVEL: AWESOME
4K lives up to its name. It’s awesome. It’s future-proof. Enough said. But what makes the video feature awesome are two things. The slow-motion video at 120fps is butter. It’s smooth with a rhythm that’ll draw you in, it is mind-blowingly awesome. But the standout feature here is shooting in S-LOG, which essentially means shooting in a flat profile. Think of it like RAW for your video. It shoots flat and has all the information stored in it. This feature comes most handy when you are shooting at multiple locations in varying light. This allows you to later put a grade on all the footage, so when it's stitched together, all of it looks like one video, and not a mash of differently lit ones. In all, the video on Sony a6300 is awesome.

So, is this the perfect camera? Not by a distance. The battery is abysmal, the menu systems are too complicated, there is rolling shutter, and an articulated touch screen would help. So, no, this is not a perfect camera. But then, no camera is. Whatever it is, it’s bloody good. Very rarely would you get such good handling, such advanced features, great image quality at this price. If you need to get one camera, this would be it. This one’s a keeper.