I finished up a day that saw all of my will bent toward marketing my services as a photographer. Wow. That sounded dedicated and diligent. Actually, I did a swim practice first, from 8:30 to 9:30. Then I dropped by Starbucks to drink coffee and check my e-mail. I worked for a couple of hours doing marketing and thinking about cold calling before I headed out to eat some really good Tex-Mex food for lunch. After lunch I headed to a medical client's office to make sure my LED panels could be corrected to match their florescent fixtures. Then I can home and did a bit more marketing and by 6;00pm I was all wound up. So I grabbed the newbie a57 camera from Sony, wrenched an 85mm 2.8 Sony lens on the front and headed through the random chaos theory of traffic and went for a walk through downtown.
I walked through Whole Foods, tasted some wine and shot all of these food shots with the camera set to ISO 3200. Click on them. Look for noise. It's really wonderful. When I looked at the rounds of cheese somewhere below I almost cried because the files were so clean. The lemon tarts are marred by the reflection. Or, I intended the diagonal reflections to be there as an indictment of expensive tarts........Can't quite decide on the right manifesto. So I ate one instead.
Also 3200 ISO. Jpeg. Fine.
The three images above are also 3200 ISO, f2.8 with the 85mm.
These are Jpegs I can be proud of. The colors are great and the sharpness is high. Very high. The Auto ISO kept the camera around 100.
Ditto.
This is Todd Williams. He is a very well known fine arts photographer. And a workshop instructor at the Sante Fe. Workshops, among other places. He is not homeless.
Like a venal paparazzi I captured him outside the entrance of his tony, downtown gym.
Click on the images and look at the skin tone. Everything automatic. Right down to the ISO.
When I started shooting the a57 any reservations I had about the quality of the EVF image or the low noise attributes of the sensor just slinked away and ceased to even be relevant. This camera is the perfect adjunct to the a77. One is the finest low ISO/Super resolution camera (the a77) and the other is the high ISO camera Sony's been looking for. And a damn good "all-arounder" for just about any kind of shooting I can think of. And, oh. Yes. The 85mm 2.8 is amazing. More so when you consider that up until two weeks ago it could be had new for only $249. I should have bought more.
That's my first full day of shooting with the camera. I had my doubts. When I saw the files I was sold. End of story.
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