Are out in the wild, although the US site hasn't put them up yet. ; A33/55 users have more options to customize buttons/menu, and get the new picture effects. NEX users get the picture effects and manual focus peaking options. ; The last one is really cool - you can customize a colored (your choice of colors) "halo" to appear around the area most in focus. ; Think this will work with all old lenses too!
Indeed MF Peaking works on old or new lenses, via adapters or native mount. ; It's a nice feature allowing quick manual focusing without having to zoom in for focusing detail, when you need to attain focus more quickly. ; Zooming is lovely for manual focus work when on a tripod or with all the time in the world, but if you need to manually focus fast, in a few seconds or on impulse, trying to keep the subject in frame and still while working the focus ring can get difficult. ; With peaking, no need to zoom - just watch for the color fringing around any contrast edges which are in the focus plane - not only does it show the focus area, but it also gives a good representation of the depth of field since the peaking color fades away as it leaves the in-focus area, fore and back of subject. ; The peaking line width and outline color are changeable to taste, as well as the strength of the peaking. (I actually haven't loaded firmware 4 yet, until I get home tonight - however I had 'MF Peaking' on a past Sony camera years ago and used it often).
The NEX-5 page is here. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=NEX5 I'm performing my FW update on the 55 as I type this.
I hope to do the NEX firmware tonight or tomorrow. ; I've been without internet at home the past 2 nights when my modem/router died...waiting for the replacement to ship to me!
Mine was relatively painless. ; It's nice to have the option to reconfigure the DRANGE button but what to set it to is the question. I like the new picture style options. ; If I ever have a want to do in camera JPEG selective color they will come in handy!
