Photo Jottings

12/5/10

Landscape and interior shooters, now is your time! For all you landscape/interior shooters that are on a tight budget, and looking for a high resolution, cost effective, great performing camera outfit to buy today, look no further than the Sony full-frame A850, which is priced to sell (for $1899-$1999) at all legit outfits including my favorite; B&H photo. If you’ve been thinking of jumping to a Sony full-frame, now is the time. Don’t wait for a 30+mp camera that’s still on the drawing board, and might (or might not) be available in a year or two; the Sony A900/850 will be considered high-tech and formidable for several more years. Whenever I get out my (now two year old) A900 for a shoot, I’m still amazed at the resolution and overall image quality, especially when using a really good lens. Don’t worry about trivial things like “better” high ISO noise reduction, movie mode, HDR or any number of other foolish gimmicks, if you want a straight-forward camera, with great image quality, at a great price, the Sony A900/850 full-frame cameras fill that niche perfectly.

Another morsel of truth; unfortunately most people don’t realize it, but the (over three year old) A700 is still a very good camera, offering professional features and build quality that even the latest and greatest Sony DSLRs don’t have, and is still superior to the new a33/55 translucent mirror cameras in image quality, I’ll prove that to you in a few days with a comparison page.

Sony A850, now $1899 at B&H Photo and other places.

Low cost, but great performing lenses for Sony full-frame:

Sony 20mm F/2.8 $600 Great super wide-angle, but trim your focus at small apertures for best results.

Minolta AF 28mm F/2 $450-550 used. Great in daylight stopped down, but has strong coma with a wide aperture.

Minolta AF 35mm F/2 $500-600 used. Has same qualities as the 28mm F/2.

Sony 50mm F/1.4 $370 Very sharp across the frame from F/8-11, strong coma wide open.

Sony 85mm F/2.8 SAM $225 Very sharp across the image frame at F/8, but color fringing along the sides.

The lenses above have high quality optics, and are exceptional performers stopped down. They’ll make a very good match for a 25mp sensor. All are relatively inexpensive, and the Sony 20mm and 50mm can be purchased used, with a Minolta name, at sometimes half the cost of a new Sony!

If you’re on an extremely tight budget, look carefully at the Sony A850 and excellent Tamron AF 28-75mm F/2.8 zoom lens, (check price here), get both for around $2400.

12/2/10

Check out the new “Reader’s digest page,” yes, it’s a total rip-off of this, but it fits so well I had to use it. The new page (now located on the nav bar on the left side of the site below lens comparison page) will have questions and answers from website reader’s starting with the newest entries at the top.

I’ve already posted a few answers from the first “batch” of questions, and if you wrote and don’t see your question, it’s probably because I haven’t had time to post it yet, or it’s similar to another question. I appreciate the people that take the time to write.

Sony full framers beware! A new firmware update is available for your A850/900. It’s mostly exposure compensation, now ±5! and “release without lens.” If you really like the way your camera works now, you may want to wait for other people to download it and see if anything gets screwed up by the new firmware, like Canon did with the 5DII update.

12/1/10

I’m going to put up a constantly running page with questions from my visitors, and try and answer them to the best of my ability; (please don’t confuse “ability” with knowledge or accuracy). There are a lot of good questions from visitors, and other readers might benefit from the dialog and different threads that will inevitably result. I’m still hesitant to put up a normal “forum” or “discussion page”, for fear of it getting out of control and the name calling etc gets going. If anyone’s going to spew hate, it should be me; well, not really, but you know what I’m talking about.

Wanna do it? Here’s how it will work; you send in the question. You can use a fake name and location if you’re shy, or if you want to opt out, just let me know and I won’t post your question, as sometimes private information is included. No email or last names will be used so you won’t fear embarrassment from a dumb question, although I may give a dumb answer from lack of knowledge, but I won’t be embarrassed. I’ll answer all questions that I think are pertinent to Sony, cameras, lenses, general photography, etc, and post them once a week or so, depending on how many questions I get, and my spare time. Let’s get started on the first batch of questions, so send your mail here!

11/29/10

Sony 85mm F/2.8 SAM review is up and running! The Sony 85mm F/2.8 SAM is another stellar performer from Sony’s “easy choice” series. It was almost boring to review because I couldn’t elicit anything bad from it, and the sharpness crops are nearly indistinguishable from one aperture to another,including the corner crops. Other attributes include: very little distortion or light fall-off, even on a full-frame camera, long manual focusing throw, which is more precise than the typical Sony MF ring rotation, and a good macro shot. The only slight negatives are; color fringing, but that’s about average based on the rest of Sony and Minolta lenses, and flare, which is manageable with included hood or a hand-block. Lastly, the Sony 85mm F/2.8 performs almost as well on a full-frame camera as it does on an APS-C camera, which is another indication of great quality!

I decided to include a complete sharpness crop set for the full-frame section, which shows sharpness variations a little better than the APS-C crops, although you have to look carefully to see any differences!

The 85mm F/2.8 is a medium telephoto lens, suitable for portrait work, and based on performance, may spoil some of the sales of the super expensive Sony CZ 85mm F/1.4. If you don’t need the extra two stops, or don’t have $1370, I’d highly recommend the new 85mm F/2.8 lens; it’s currently discounted at B&H Photo for a very low price of $224.99 until the end of the year.

Click for review page

11/22/10

Sony and their mysterious ink. An astute reader named Joe (from parts unknown) pointed out that I’d missed something in the Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM review. Apparently, Sony’s new “easy choice” lenses are being given the full, high dollar pearlescent ink treatment, which looks great when viewed under a microscope. Unfortunately, I don’t think most people will be doing that, so I’m speculating that Sony is not properly marketing this feature. Of course, I don’t know much about marketing in general, so I could be missing something important.

The top photo (below) shows the sparkly paint/ink that is used on both the 35/18 and 85/28, but only on the lens name, focus distance meters scale, and the Sony name on the side. The AF/MF is non-sparkly standard white, and the orange numbers are not sparkly either.

I checked the DT 30mm macro, and that lens has no sparkly paint/ink, or whatever is used, so apparently it’s new to the “easy choice” lenses for some reason. Could it be that Sony is using this type of paint/ink as a quick way to try and identify the product authenticity and/or origin? Does this apply to the global market, or only in the US? Owner’s of these lenses in other markets might want to check your copies out just for fun and let me know if they’re different. Why would Sony change the type of ink used (standard white), when nobody will notice the difference when viewing the lens during normal handling? The sparkly stuff is only visible when you’re trying to look for it with a strong light and a magnifying glass.

The photos below of the Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM numbers and letters where taken with the sony 100mm macro lens, with the same light at the same angle. The black background looks like a deep field image from the Hubble for some reason, and is not dust.

Detail of Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM lens numbers

Detail of Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM AF/MF lettering

11/14/10

Check out the full review of the new Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM. This lens is superb, and based on price vs performance, is easily the best bargain in the Sony lens line-up. It’s also on sale now for $175!! with free shipping (in US), up ’till the end of the year.

The Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM is a lens to get excited about. It’s small, light-weight, inexpensive and fast! It’s also sharp in the centers wide open, and stopped down to F/5.6-8 is sharp enough over the entire image to please the fussy, pixel peeping landscape shooter. In fact, in some ways, it
out-performs the Sony 35mm F/1.4 G that sells new for $1369! See the conclusion for details.

Some readers are wondering which lens is better for them, the new Sony 35mm F/1.8, Sigma 30mm F/1.4, or the Minolta 35mm F/2. I don’t know which one is best, it all depends on what’s important
to you, but here’s my quick take; my review copy of the Sigma 30mm was pretty sharp in the centers, but very soft along the sides, even stopped down; It’s also 2/3 of a stop faster than F/1.8. The Minolta 35mm F/2 is sharp all over, but suffers from poor ghosting control, and is much more expensive than the Sony 35/1.8. If high optical performance with a low price tag is important, the Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM is a no brainer.

Although the DT 35mm F/1.8 makes a great walk-around lens, Sony is mistakenly marketing
it as a “wide angle.” On a full-frame camera 35mm is wide angle, but the APS-C crop factor makes this lens equivalent to 52.5mm, that’s not wide angle, but is much more appropriate for everyday use in my opinion than the recently released Sony DT 50mm F/1.8 SAM, which is being marketed as a “portrait” lens.

Click for review page

11/10/10

So far, the Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM is turning in a very good review. I should have it ready by the weekend, so check back soon. Speaking of this lens, it’s now available at a discounted price of $175!! There are also discounted prices on other Sony lenses through the end of the year, such as the: Sony DT 35mm F/1.8 SAM, 174.99, Sony 85mm F/2.8 SAM, $224.99, Sony CZ 24-70mm F/2.8 now $150 off, $1449.99, and the new Sony CZ 24mm F/2 is now $1149.99.

More lenses have been discounted, just click this B&H photo link to see the Sony lens page

11/5/10

Fun with the Kodak Duaflex IV! I burned through a roll of Fuji pro 160C (120) atop Mt Lemmon a couple weeks ago. The images below show about as much fall color as you’ll ever see here in southern Arizona, with mostly Aspen providing the yellow. The top three shots were taken with the Kodak Duaflex IV with front focusing F/8 kodar 72mm lens, set at F/16. The last shot was taken with the Sony C905a camera phone. The photos with the Duaflex are fairly sharp, and look good printed out at 3½ x 3½, or possibly 5 x 7, but that size is pushing it. The Sony camera phone is much better optically than the Duaflex, and of course cheaper and more convenient. One thing I’d like to mention; if you get your 120 film scanned, make sure you tell then to take the film out of the clear plastic sleeve before scanning, otherwise you’ll wind up with marks along the side where the sleeve flap is. My local processing lab (Jones photo) seems to think it doesn’t matter, and they don’t bother to do what I tell them, so I’m not going to use them anymore. I’m not really big on film at this point in life.

If you want to use 120 film in a 620 camera, such as the one mentioned above, you can simply trim the spool ends, and use sand paper to shave off the amount needed on the ends to make the length the same as a 620 spool. Google it if you’re interested. I may post a how-to at some point.

Kodak Duaflex IV with kodar F/8 lens, set at F/16.

Photo Jottings

12/5/10

12/2/10

12/1/10

11/29/10

11/22/10

11/14/10

11/10/10

11/5/10

December 5 2010

12/5/10

December 2 2010

12/2/10

December 1 2010

12/1/10

November 29 2010

11/29/10

November 22 2010

11/22/10

November 14 2010

11/14/10

November 10 2010

11/10/10

November 5 2010

11/5/10

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