Strange.

There’s an old Wall Street mantra of which I have long been a fan.

The subject is Loyalty and it goes like this:

“If you want Loyalty, get a dog.”

So when a new way of thinking in camera design comes along, I am more than interested. And I have no loyalty.

In this regard, I am worse than the common whore. If it works for me, I’ll go for it and dump yesterday’s infatuation.

What’s that, you say? You were with Leicas for over thirty years? Yes. Guilty as charged. They worked for me, for what I wanted to do, which was to take street snaps.

But then along came fast, small and automatic, with better image quality to boot, and like the street scrubber of old, I crossed the road to the better lit lamppost.

That lamppost was the Panasonic G1 for me. You can choose your own poison. Suffice it to say that there is no way I am going back to manual-anything. No, siree. I just want to press the button and get the instant gratification that we street denizens crave. A sharp moment of time.

So when Sony announces the NEX-5, I pay attention.

The Sony NEX-5 – APS-C in a very small box.

It’s an interesting piece. No viewfinder, of course. And an APS-C sensor. Though they still don’t get it – to make the lenses small you have to make the software fix the defects, not the gargantuan hardware they have opted for. But it is thinking outside the box as regards the body. Well done!

Sony may have lost its way in the last few years as their core competencies have become mass marketed and readily available. “It’s a Sony” now largely means “It’s overpriced”.

I rather doubt whether this ugly duckling will catch on, but I laud Sony for trying.