It was a nice, brisk day in Austin in late November. I needed to deliver some image files to the college of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas. Good luck finding parking anywhere near the side of campus that contains the Petro complex, with 50,000+ students looking for parking every day you may as well be looking for $20 bills scattered on the ground. I used to teach at UT so I know the drill: Take the first open space on your journey in that coincides with your comfortable ability to walk. But when you walk a mile to your final destination be sure to bring along a camera in case you see anything that you need to photograph.
I had a Sony Nex-7 with me and it had an adapter that let me use "A" lenses from my bigger DSLT Sony cameras. I had on one of the cheap Sony 50mm f1.8 DT lenses because I anticipated doing some casual portraits later in the day. With a 75mm equivalent focal length it wasn't quite the "standard" lens for shooting a bit of architecture. But as artists, sometimes we have to make due.
After I delivered my flash memory stick to the right person I turned around and headed back towards the car. I walked down a street called Speedway and I was amazed at how many new buildings had popped up since my last walk through campus. Some of them looked quite striking so I set the camera the way I wanted it for a sunny day and started snapping away.
I was using the sharpest, middle apertures of the lens and trying to hold everything steady. I think the files are fun and that the Nex 7 is really a sharp camera when used correctly. While the kit zoom is reasonably good prime lenses are even better.
I'm equally happy with the performance I'm getting out of the Nex-6. So yesterday I spent some time packing a small Nex kit to use for most of my fun work. It consists of a Nex-6, a Nex-7, the kit zoom (mostly for the widest angle), the Sigma 19mm, the Sigma 30mm, the Sony 50mm 1.8 OSS and the lens adapter for Sony "A" lenses. I've also added a Metz 36 flash, dedicated to the weird and proprietary Sony hot shoe. I've got four extra camera batteries and four extra 16 Gigabyte Transcend SD cards packed as well. All in all it seems like the perfect little travel system when it's all packed in the little moss green Tenba backpack I bought earlier this year.
When everything is packed together I can just grab it and go. It's the counterpoint to a more extensive system I'll be using most of next week...
