The Sony NEX-5 looks like the result of an experiment in grafting an SLR lens onto the body of a point-and-shoot camera. This $700 camera eschews the usual mirror and viewfinder arrangement of the standard SLR, using the APS-C sensor and large LCD screen to capture and preview the image. This arrangement means that there is no viewfinder, but it also makes the system much simpler and smaller. So, the camera body is the same size as a small point-and-shoot (at just over an inch thick), making this the smallest interchangeable lens camera on the market. The 18-55mm zoom kit lens is bigger than most SLR lenses, though, and is nearly as big an heavy as the camera body. The advantage over a point-and-shoot is that this lens can be swapped out, and Sony offers another version of the standard kit that includes a much smaller fixed length 16mm lens if you want to go all-out for compactness. The lenses use a new mount (called the E-Mount) that is not compatible with other lenses, including those made for Sony's own SLRs, and at present the kit zoom and 16mm are the only ones available. An adapter for these Sony A-mount lenses is available (at a cost of $250), but you have to focus the lens manually.

The highlight of the small, slim camera body is the 3-inch LCD screen on the back, which has an impressive 921k pixel resolution. This is a very bright, sharp screen that almost makes up for the lack of a viewfinder. It does get rather dim in bright sunlight, but is still usable. It can also be tilted up and down, which is great for shooting from above or below.

Performance (read in-depth performance coverage at DigitalCameraInfo.com)

We were not overly impressed with the performance of the NEX-5: we found that it produced photos that had slightly inaccurate and oversaturated colors in all of the modes. You might be able to tweak this oversaturation down to some degree with custom settings, but Sony has definitely decided that saturated is better with the color modes on offer. We also found that images were a little soft, especially at the edges of the frame at the widest and smallest ends of the zoom and aperture range for the 18-55m zoom lens. We also found that the image stabilization system for this camera (which moves an element in the lens) didn't make a lot of difference: images with it turned on were not much sharper than with it turned off.

The NEX-5 offers an incredibly wide ISO range, going up to a maximum sensitivity of 12800 while most other cameras top out at 3200 or 6400. However, this comes with a caveat: noise. Although the camera does do some processing to reduce the noise in the image, it becomes very visible at ISO levels above 1600. This means that the higher ISO settings should be approached with caution: the image becomes noisy and there is a definite loss of detail. But, to be fair, the noise in images shot with the NEX-5 was significantly less than images short at the same ISO levels in cameras that use the rival Micro Four-Thirds format, which use a smaller sensor that is more prone to noise.

Comparisons (read in-depth comparisons at DigitalCameraInfo.com)

There are a number of cameras that offer similar features to the NEX-5, purporting to offer the same features as an SLR camera but without the bulk. The Olympus E-PL1 has a slightly bigger body, but has a smaller kit zoom lens. We found that the Micro Four-Thirds format E-PL1 took images with superior sharpness and color, but there was significantly more noise in them. The E-PL1 is $100 cheaper, though. The Panasonic GF1 is another Micro Four-Thirds camera that offers superior color and sharpness, but again the images are noisier. Samsung decided to go their own way with the NX10, which uses yet another proprietary lens format, but we found that the images it took were not as good as the NEX-5; we found that the images had even more inaccurate, oversaturated color than the Sony. The NX10 does offer an electronic viewfinder, though, which is much more comfortable to use in bright light than the screen of the NEX-5.