The scroll wheel encircles the mode dial, and its function is dependent on the mode you’re in. When the top wheel set to Aperture priority mode, scrolling the bottom dial changes aperture; same goes for shutter in S. In Manual mode, the dial controls aperture, and shutter speed is managed by the wheel on the back — that one can take a minute to figure out, but is totally intuitive once you realize the back wheel spins. The mode dial itself is a little hard to spin, and really requires two fingers to move properly, but that's for the best since changing shooting modes by accident can cause huge problems.

The control layout is the best Sony's ever put on a NEX model, full stop. It's better than the unmarked wheels on the NEX-7, which are remarkably powerful but occasionally confusing and unintuitive — having a mode dial and two control wheels is what most photographers are used to, and for good reason. Even some more advanced controls like ISO and exposure are accessible via the hardware buttons on the back, and I found myself almost never having to go into the menu system at all. If you ask me, that's the goal with a camera — the less I have to scroll through menus and options, the better. The UI is the same as it ever was, by the way, a functional camera interface that occasionally tries too hard to hold your hand and teach you how to use the device.

While Sony's figured out how to put DSLR-like controls on a much smaller camera, it unfortunately can't achieve the physics-bending required to get an optical viewfinder onto a mirrorless camera. (The mirror on a DSLR is used to deflect light into the viewfinder, and then it flips up when you hit the shutter so light can get to the sensor — that's why the viewfinder goes dark while you're capturing a shot with a DSLR.) Instead the NEX-6 has an electronic viewfinder, made up of a 2,359,296-dot OLED display — the EVF is probably the most obvious differentiator between Sony's high- and low-end cameras. Sony's EVFs are easily among the best on the market, with sharp and clear screens, and electronic viewfinders are able to show information and options that an OVF can't — you can scroll through menus and change options without ever taking your eye off the viewfinder. But it's like looking at the world through a TV versus looking through a window: the picture looks nice, but it's not the real scene. The EVF makes pictures out to be slightly brighter and higher-contrast than they actually are, and gives everything a slightly cartoony feel. I eventually learned to compensate, and could figure out what a shot would look like, but it's really hard for me to get over the fact that what I'm seeing in the viewfinder isn't what the scene looks like, or how the camera will capture it.

The sharp, 3-inch, 921,600-dot LCD on the back of the camera gives a much more accurate picture, and as with most NEX cameras it quickly became my default way of using the camera — I'm a die-hard viewfinder user in general, but I didn't mind it too much in this case. The screen articulates so you can hold it above your head or below your waist and still see the display, though it's not as versatile as the NEX-5R's 180-degree tilt that lets you take self-portraits. Also unlike the NEX-5R, it's not a touchscreen. That's mostly an insignificant loss, especially since the NEX-6's controls are so robust already, but I did miss being able to tap to focus — it's a handy way to get more control without switching into fully manual focusing mode.