What you're holding
A 26-megapixel APS-C body with a brain built for tracking — and what its 1.5× crop does to your two lenses.
- Explain what the 26 MP APS-C sensor and BIONZ XR processor give you
- Convert any focal length to its full-frame equivalent with the 1.5× crop
- Read the a6700's headline specs without reaching for a manual
The a6700 is small, but almost nothing about its imaging is. Before you touch a single setting, it helps to know what the body is actually doing when you press the shutter — because every later decision leans on it.
A sensor and two processors
At the centre is a 26.0-megapixel APS-C Exmor R sensor, 23.3 × 15.5 mm of back-illuminated silicon. Behind it sit two chips: the BIONZ XR image processor and a dedicated AI unit whose only job is to recognise subjects — to understand that the shape in the frame is a human eye, a bird, or the nose of a car, and to keep focus locked to it. You will feel that AI unit constantly in Part I’s focus lessons; for now, just know the intelligence is baked into the hardware, not bolted on.
| Sensor | 26.0 MP APS-C BSI CMOS |
|---|---|
| Sensor size | 23.3 × 15.5 mm |
| Processor | BIONZ XR + AI unit |
| Crop factor | 1.5× |
| ISO (stills) | 100–32000 (50–102400 ext.) |
| Shutter | 1/4000 mech · 1/8000 elec |
| Stabilization | 5-axis IBIS, ~5.0 stops |
| AF points | 759 phase-detect |
| Burst | up to 11 fps |
| Viewfinder | 2.36M-dot OLED |
| Screen | 3.0" vari-angle touch |
| Video | 4K60 · 4K120 (1.58× crop) · 10-bit 4:2:2 |
| Storage | Single SD (UHS-II) |
| Battery | NP-FZ100 |
| Weight | ≈493 g with battery + card |
The numbers you'll actually cite. Everything here is fixed hardware — the rest of this guide is about the choices you layer on top.
The 1.5× crop, made concrete
APS-C sensors are smaller than a 35 mm “full-frame” sensor, so they see a tighter slice of what a lens projects. The shorthand is a 1.5× crop factor: to find the full-frame-equivalent field of view, multiply the focal length by 1.5.
This is not the lens changing — a 50mm lens is still a 50mm lens — it is the sensor cropping in. For your two lenses it works out cleanly:
- The Sony 10-20mm frames like a 15–30mm would on full frame: genuinely ultra-wide.
- The Tamron 17-70mm frames like a 25.5–105mm: mild wide-angle through short telephoto, the classic walk-around range.
Whenever another photographer talks in full-frame numbers, that ×1.5 is your translation key.
Why the crop is a gift here
A smaller sensor is often framed as a compromise, but for learning it is an advantage. The same aperture yields a bit more depth of field, so your focus misses are more forgivable. The lenses are smaller and lighter. And the 26 MP files are big enough to crop into and print from, without filling cards at the rate a 60-megapixel body would.
In the field
Set the Tamron to a few focal lengths — 17, 35, 50, 70 — and say the full-frame equivalent out loud before you look it up. Do it until the ×1.5 is automatic. That single reflex makes every focal-length conversation in this guide land faster.