Sony a99 notes from the bleeding edge...

Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. On stage at Dell World 2012

I love big, action packed, corporate showcases and no one does it better than Dell, Inc. I have been photographing the action at Dell for over 20 years and there's always something exciting going on. It was no different this year at their Dell World 2012 Conference. They brought together nearly 7,000 employees, vendors, partners, and customers for three days of concentrated concentration about what lies ahead for the world of IT. And I was the there to capture the high points of the conference with a bag full of Sony.

I didn't have a pedometer on my belt but I'll estimate that I walked at least 10 miles each day with a fully loaded, black canvas, Domke camera bag hanging over my shoulder. By the time I dropped into my office chair yesterday evening I was whipped. Bone tired. But kind of elated. The show was so much fun for a photographer.

What I'm going to write about today is how the gear worked out for me. While I'd broken in my new Sony a99 at a long dress rehearsal shoot for White Christmas at Zachary Scott Theatre the week before, and I'd taken the camera out for a few walks, this was really kind of an under pressure test of the whole system.  And any time you shoot a bunch of short deadline, available light under wildly varying circumstances, with world class celebrities who don't have time for "do overs" you really get to know what you like and what you don't like about your gear....quickly.

I used the a99 for most of my shooting. I brought along an a77 but about 80% of all images came from the a99.  Tuesday evening was my first test of flash with the a99. This has always been a weak point for the a77 and is one of the key reasons I went ahead and upgraded to the full frame body. I wanted more predictable/reliable flash performance.  I bought the new, HVLF 60 flash. It's big and hefty but it mates perfectly with the a99, provides weatherproofing in conjunction with that body and has a wonderful GUI on the rear screen. No mystique function numbers as in the HVL 58, just straightforward words that mostly make good sense. The flash is also equipped with LED lights and they can be turned up or down, seamlessly, with the center control on the back of the camera. Seemed gimmicky till I used it to shoot some quick video on a dark loading dock and then I got the whole hybrid concept and the fact that not only did Sony make a nice hybrid still/video camera but also a hybrid light source to go with it...

I shot a bunch of candid stuff at the Austin City Limits venue where Dell was hosting an opening reception for the attendees of the show. The flash had its first real test when I went backstage before the main show to photograph the lead band, Camp Freddy, with groups of VIPs. The flash was.....perfect. Bouncing off a concrete ceiling with the white (supplied) diffusion cap in place the camera and flash provided perfect white balance, a very even spread of light and enough power to give me fast recycle (while bouncing off a high, non-white ceiling) to get f8 at ISO 200.  Good performance in my book. With fifty shots in about five minutes I had no issues with overheat, misfires or bad exposures. The camera was set to M and the shutter speed locked in at 1/125th of a second.  I tried to buy the flash locally but it wasn't in stock yet. I had to order it quickly from Amazon and they had it to me overnight. I won't say it's the best $600 (including shipping) that I've ever spent but it's a damn good flash and easily on par with the Nikon flashes I've used. 

(Technical note: When you use the dedicated flash the camera switches from Setting Effect On to Setting Effect Off. This gives you a bright image in the finder all the time. If you want to see the real effect of the ambient light you'll need to toggle the flash off and the camera will go back to showing you what the scen will look like with your settings).

If you do hybrid imaging the LED light is pretty workable. It's got a good color balance and comes with a fitted filter for conversion to daylight. Nice. The flash feels sturdy and the menus are the easiest to navigate that I've seen on any speed light. Much more transparent than using a Canon flash. No one will require a Syl Arena book on the Sony to be able to use it quickly.

On to the camera. First caveat: Do not buy this camera if you mostly shoot fast moving sports. While I am a huge, huge fan of EVFs (and this is the best one on the market) the frame to frame response of the camera is too slow for fast moving tracking. I turned off the preview altogether and when I set the frame rate at 5 or 6 fps the finder image has just enough delay to make it a bit disconcerting. I would love to say otherwise but that's the truth. I would not want to use this camera to follow my kid whipping by in a cross country race.  While the focus locked on tight like a badger it's the finder image that makes the viewing process more difficult than shooting with an OVF. That's it. That's the only stumbling block I came across in my use of the camera this week.

A caution: If you shoot corporate events  you will probably be shooting, randomly and somewhat intermittently, for the better part of 12 hours a day. And you'll shoot lots of different subject matter; from decor to signage to people networking to people taking training in small dim rooms. But the thing that requires the most frames is capturing a great shot of speakers. You need to anticipate the action but you'll still want to hedge your bets by shooting a lot. And if you do that you'll want to bring at least one extra battery with you each day. I'd generally get to around 2:30 or 3:00 pm and look down at my battery meter only to see that we were dropping under 20% remaining. That's when I normally switch out batteries. This camera is a battery hog, even compared to the a77. It's the constant live view. There's always current running through the sensor and current running to one of the two viewing screens. And you can't judge by frame count. The real metric is how many minutes of fun time. I have three Sony SLT cameras and six batteries. When I packed for the show I packed two bodies and all six batteries.

The camera is smaller and lighter than its counterparts from Nikon and Canon but the image quality is highly competitive. I used to drop the contrast in the styles menu when shooting jpegs at stage shows and in big, top lighted venues but not with this camera. It's very high dynamic range is apparent even in the jpeg files it produces. At any ISO up to 3200 the balance of shadow and highlight performance is excellent. By that I mean that the highlights resist blowing out while the shadows resist blocking up or exhibiting noise. 

It feels perfect in my hands and in the space of the last two weeks the camera and my brain have colluded so that I can hit all the major buttons and controls without looking; almost without thinking about them. There's one control that I initially thought to be a little silly but now I love and use all the time. It's the dial on the front of the camera which can be configured to do many different things. And it's not click stopped so it's silent in the video modes.

In the still mode it can, with the push of its center button, bring up the focusing menu, the drive menu and a few others. Holding the button lets you toggle through the different configurations. I leave it set for one thing: Exposure Compensation. Since you control the dial with your left hand your right hand never has to leave the shutter button to make changes to exposure. With the EVF and the camera up to your eye you can go straight into the control dial and make minute corrections to the overall exposure while you watch the effect on the screen. Amazing. Incredible control when compared to traditional cameras and more so because it's all in real time.

So, I would be tightly focused on a speaker on stage and I'd notice that he might have walked into a slightly brighter pool of light. The EVF cues me, by showing me exactly what will be recorded, that the light has changed and I correct exposure on the fly without having to move my right index finger from the shutter button. I wish every camera I owned had this one control. It's hard to describe in words on a blog just how big an evolutionary handling step this is.  In the days of old our only cue for light changes was to keep one part of our conscious mind riveted on the meter read out and that might require going to spot metering and having to reframe over and over again for confirmation. Not anymore. Your under exposure or over exposure is immediately and accurately apparent in the finder.

What this really means is that your hit rate is much higher which in turn means less post production fewer images upon which to do post production.  If you have the 2 second review set for the finder you can review each image you shoot. See the one with the perfect expression and you can stop shooting that person and go on to the next thing on your check list. With an OVF camera you'll have to stop and chimp through the images (missing the ones in the present) in order to confirm that you did indeed get something workable. It's night and day for an event shooter.

The other control that I pooh-poohed when I first put my greedy paws on the camera is the Smart Teleconverter.  This is a button that gives you a 1.4X and a 2.0X magnification of the image in the finder. When you push the shutter button you get that frame. And its magnification. But the camera drops the pixel count down to 10 Megapixels.  I studiously ignored this and thought of it as a gimmick until I realized that 10 megapixels was more than enough for stage shots and.....getting this sizing baked into the Jpegs meant I'd have to touch fewer files to go in and crop, which would probably get me down to the same 10 megapixels.

Well...I was photographing Stephen Dubner from as close as I could get to him and I still couldn't get as tight a shot as I wanted. So I bit my ego and pushed the button. The framing got tighter and Stephen got bigger. Another push of the button and we got the image you see at top which is the equivalent of a 400mm lens shooting at f3.5.  Glad I don't have to carry one of those around in the bag. What makes this magic possible?  The EVF, of course. Can't do this kind of magic with the optical finders.  You could do it in live view but good luck focusing with contrast detection AF at this extreme focal length. And good luck handholding a 400mm steady with the "dirty baby diaper hold."

What features does the Sony lack that I wish it had?  Hmmmm. One this I miss that Canon and Kodak implemented well was variable sizes for raw files. When shooting events I think that a 24 megapixel raw files (somewhere north of 30 megabytes per file) is a real show stopper.  Especially when it comes to post production. While SD cards are incredibly cheap now and just about anyone can afford a pocketful, the backend is where everything goes to hell. 

One this show I hired a second photographer to cover things I couldn't since many of my assignments within the show were to provide imaging services in conjunction with VIPs and top execs.  I would be totally at the mercy of their schedules and never vice versa. Even so, over the course of three days I generated about 1500 images, all of which would have to be corrected in some form or another and then converted to Jpegs for deliver and then both the RAW files and Jpegs would have to be stored. When I added up the amount of space the RAW files would take up and the time required to work with them I made the decision to do a better job in camera and shoot Jpegs instead.

If I had been able to shoot compressed, 12 megapixel RAW files instead I probably would have considered that. At least for shots with high profile people. But early on my second photographer and I opted to go with Jpegs at the extra fine setting. For a lot of documentation we dropped to "half power" but when a Michael Dell, Bill Clinton or Mike Shinoda (of Linkin Park) was in the frame we bumped back up to full size, just in case.

What else about the camera? I have mixed feelings now about the differences between the a77 (24 megapixel cropped frame) and the a99.  The a99 is a slower camera. You can't argue with its class leading image quality but most cameras are really, really good performers today and there's a lot of "touch and use" issues that make one either happy to use a camera or indifferent... or even resistant to using the camera.  It may be that I'm just more used to the a77 but it seems to operate more quickly and decisively. The frame rate is much faster and the finder image more nimble when the review is switched off. In many situations I like shooting with digital APS-C lenses and I'm used to those focal lengths and the way they render images.

But then I look into the finder and I can see that Sony has tweaked the EVF. It's a generation better than the EVFs in the a77 and the Nex7 even if there is no change in specs. The finder image seems much more color neutral and much less contrasty. Not that the finder image if of low contrast, rather Sony have changed the tonal response to help prevent blocked up shadows and clipped highlights that don't appear the same in the final files. The EVF is almost exactly like looking at an optical finder under nearly all lighting conditions.

What do I want, lens-wise, for the a99?  I am perfectly happy with the 70-200mm so those focal lengths are off the table. But I'm not happy with the performance of the Sony 50mm 1.4 on the Sony at critical aperture points (2, 2.5, 2.8 and 3.5). The communication between the 50 and the camera seems off, somehow. Many of my exposures ending up being too bright and too blue-ish compared to the rest of the lenses I used. It could be that I just need more experience with the combination but time will tell. I may look at the Sigma 50mm 1.4 or I may just practice more and see if I can get a handle on what's going on in the 50mm's brain....

I'm happy with the Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 for the Sony. It looks sharp and crisp almost anywhere in the focal length range and, while there is a hefty amount of barrel distortion at the wide end it's a simple distortion instead of a complex multi mustache type and very easy to correction in Len Correction in either PhotoShop or Lightroom.

I do want to find the right ultra-wide angle for this camera. I'll look at the 16-35mm lens for the system but at nearly $2000 I think I'll wait till after the holidays. I don't have a pressing need at the moment...

The best combination of the week was the a99 body with the 28-75mm lens. They are both lighter than their competitors and a bit smaller. Both are major plusses for those times when you have to spend lots of quality time with your cameras. The combination rarely left my body for 12 hours a day. Even at lunch and dinner. You want to get to know your camera well? Nothing beats a total immersion. Nothing. No workshop, no DVD, no series of YouTube videos. Just pick the damn thing up and use the hell out of it from breakfast until you brush your teeth to go to bed. 

My biggest compliment to the a99? It never let me down.  Not on a single frame. Not in any setting. Not even with a brand new flash. It is, hands down, the best digital camera I have ever shot with for work.  That said, I think I'll give my back and my arms a rest and spend some quality time with my slinky, little Nex 6.  Delightful in so many ways....

Stay tuned. Tomorrow I think I'll write about my experiences photographing former president, Bill Clinton, and 60 very nice people. One at a time... 

It was a wonderful corporate show and Dell is to be congratulated and pulling off a perfect three days of knowledge sharing, paradigm shifting and fun. Thanks to all, included my other photographer, Matt Lankes.

Continuing in a theatrical and retro vein...While Christmas.

I was shooting in the temporary Zachary Scott photo studio a few days ago and we needed to create a photograph for the musical, White Christmas. This was one of the shots I created and I wanted the lighting and the general feel of the image to harken back to the 1940's when so many images were lit with big, pan reflectors and lots of fill light. Our one formalist constraint was the white background, which became a leitmotif throughout the two days of shooting. To light the actors I used a large dish reflector just to the left of center and a large umbrella fill (one and a half stops down) just to the right of the camera. But, of course, the expressions make the shot for me.  It's always a collaboration.

Later, back in the studio, I was playing around with the image in SnapSeed and ended up with the image below. In retrospect, this is one occasion on which I should have considered a little bit of hair light.  I'll try it next year.

Camera: Sony a77, ISO 160

Lens: Minolta 24-85mm 3.5-4.5

Lighting: Four Elinchrom monolights

White Christmas will open on the stage of the new Theater later this Fall.

A continued appraisal of the Sony Nex 7 and the cult of the mirrorless.

The lunch special at El Arroyo Restaurant at the ditch.

Cheese enchilada with chili con carne, rice, refried beans and a beef taco.

I've spent the last few blogs talking about the relevance of apparently disconnected photographs so I thought I'd take a mental rest break and talk a bit more about a camera that I'm really enjoying, the Sony Nex 7.  Some photographers are making the claim that there's a giant, mirrorless camera revolution going on right now and I'm not sure I disagree with them but I think the new revolutionaries are missing an important element and that is the electronic viewfinder, a relatively new development in cameras aimed at advanced photographers and one that I think was instrumental in hastening the onset of the revolution.  I first experienced electronic viewfinders in the eyepieces of video cameras I used back in the 1990's. They were black and white and rudimentary but they worked well and they gave videographers lots of critical feedback concerning exposure settings.  My first brush with EVF's in serious still cameras was the EVF in the Sony R1 (an amazing camera) and while that screen can't hold a candle to the current screens on the market it worked well when I would go out into bright sunlight to photograph buildings and people for advertising projects. I also loved the amazing articulated LCD screen.

While I enjoyed the different Olympus Pen offerings and several cameras from Panasonic the Nex 7 seems to be a tour de force that rendered all the other mirrorless contenders irrelevant for me. Three reasons: 1. A really detailed and richly color accurate imaging sensor.  2. The best EVF currently on the market. 3. The logical and straightforward operation facilitated by the Tri-Navi system of two control wheels and one meta-menu selection button. Basically, from both a file quality and an operational standpoint the camera is the best of the breed.

I've spent about a month with the camera. At first I found the menu a bit daunting but in reality it's pretty well configured for a shooter who uses the camera in pretty much the same configuration most of the time. I operate mostly in the aperture priority or manual modes and what this really means is that I only have to master the two control knobs that sit on top and protrude to the back of the camera. When I shoot in manual one control changes the shutter speeds while the other control changes the aperture. You are free to over expose or under expose as you desire but you can always check your exposure against the camera's recommendation on an exposure scale visible in the EVF or on the back screen (if you are doing "stinky baby diaper" camera hold).

If you are shooting in the aperture mode the left most control knob changes the aperture while the right knob becomes an exposure compensation control. 

The third leg of the stool  for the Tri-Navi control is a button positioned on the top right of the camera, just in front of the right hand control knob; it's just to the right of the shutter button. This button, in its default configuration, calls up several control screens. One push gets me to a screen with which I can reposition the autofocus sensor anywhere on the entire screen. I mostly use a single autofocus point so having the facility to use it everywhere comes in handy. The screen adapts depending on which focusing method you have selected. If you have it by group the screen allows you to move whole groups, etc.

The next screen that pops up when you push the Tri-Navi button again, is the white balance settings screen which gives you fine tuning control over warm/cool and green/magenta (hue balance). This is great for critical images that can use a little tweak.  It also allows you to set the color to your taste for global shooting.  Another push of the button gets you into the D-range settings which gives you quick access to in camera HDR (either "auto" or in six strengths, from subtle tonal enhancement to technicolor vomit) as well as the camera's user adjustable DRO menu which holds onto highlight detail while boosting shadow detail and levels. You get can set "auto" or six different strengths here as well. Finally you have a creative styles menu.  This allows you to fine tune any set imaging style (vivid, portrait, standard, etc. ) by giving you control over contrast, sharpness and saturation.

I understand that the button that controls these menus can be reconfigured with different combinations that call up different setting controls but I think Sony made some good choices for me so I haven't changed anything yet.  My two most used controls are ISO settings and WB settings and when I start to modify buttons I'm sure these two will be configured in. I'm coming from the Sony a77 DSLT cameras so much of the menu uses the same nomenclature and logic. After about a week of intermittent use I felt pretty much at home.

There is one other control that I find myself using when I shoot under low light. That's the switch on the back of the camera that chooses between AEL and AF/MF.  In the center of the switch is a button and when the switch is set to AF/MF you can push the button to toggle between manual focus and auto focus. When you choose manual focus turning the focusing ring of a Nex lens brings to bear both a magnification of the frame to facilitate fine focusing as well as the focus peaking indicators.  Your ability to accurately fine focus both manual lenses and what are usually AF lenses is very much enhanced. Buried in the menu is the ability to toggle or hold your switch between AF and MF. A toggle means on switch gives you one frame and then reverts to the preset configuration. Hold means it sits there on the configuration you've chosen until you hit the button again or turn the camera off and back on again.

With the inclusion of focus peaking into the Nex 7 it becomes, among the mirrorless offerings, the ultimate camera to use with legacy and current manual focus lenses from Leica to whatever. I've been using the camera extensively with several of my favorite Pen lenses and it's very easy to achieve accurate focus. Much easier for me that the process of enlarging the frame, fine focusing and then reverting to the shooting frame as on the Olympus and Panasonic cameras. The speed comes in not having to enlarge the frame but in being able to trust the focus peaking indications in the EVF. The only downside when using non-Nex lenses is the loss of image stabilization which, in the Sony Nex family, is built into the lenses.

El Arroyo corn chips.

In its basic configuration the camera is both a perfect "take anywhere" camera and a solid commercial tool. It's small size and all black treatment, with the kit lens, give the Sony Nex 7 a small and discreet profile. When I'm in the coffee shop or on the street the people that I meet and photograph seem to think it's just basic "hipster" photography and they are happy to be included, for the most part. But I've used the Nex 7 side by side with my DSLT a77 cameras and they are both equally good in getting professional quality shots of food, portraits and architecture. In fact, with an inexpensive lens adapter or one of the Sony adapters you can use most (if not all) of the Sony Alpha lenses on the Nex 7.  

The cheapest way to go with with an adapter from Rainbow or Fotodiox. These are pretty much the same product and are available for under $30. The allow you to focus right on out to infinity but you lose auto focus and automatic diaphragm control. If you use the camera in "A" it will still automatically figure out corresponding shutter speeds for you. You stop down or up up the aperture with a ring on the adapter that interfaces with the stop down lever on the Alpha lenses. It's nice not to have to buy duplicate lenses for focal lengths that you might rarely use on the Nex but which are used daily on the DSLT's. 

A pricier option for mounting Sony Alpha lenses on the Nex is the Sony LAEA-1 adapter. This unit will give you total exposure automation when using the Alpha lenses but it lacks any ability to autofocus any lenses (not usually a hassle given the value of focus peaking).  If you want full bore automation and you'd like to supplement the slower contrast detection AF of the Nex system with the aggressively fast phase detection AF of Sony's mirrored cameras you can get a Sony LAEA-2 adapter for under $300. This adapter contains a fixed pellicule mirror and the required electrical interfaces to give you full bore, fast PD autofocus with selected Sony Alpha lenses. The only lenses that won't AF with the lenses are the older lenses that use the little screw driver connection between bodies and lenses to effect AF.  It works well with the SAM lenses I've got.

But focusing on getting Sony's bigger AF lenses to work on the small body isn't nearly as cool, in my mind, as using adapters to couple weirder lenses to the elegant little black body. On my desk right now I have the camera set up with an adapter ring and an Olympus Pen 40mm 1.4 lens. It looks cool and performs very well once I've stopped it down one stop or more.  Michael Reichmann did a comparison between the Nex and the Leica M9 that's interesting.  His point? Now you have a choice of two top resolution cameras on which to mount your collection of M series lenses.  

So, if the performance of the camera was no better than similar offerings from Panasonic or Olympus then my transition to the Sony system (and this article) would be pretty much meaningless. But here's the deal, if you shoot the way I do you'll likely find the performance of the Nex 7 better. I shoot a lot of controlled stuff. I'm happy to be in control. It means I can use the sweet spots of the cameras I choose. And for the most part I'm selecting for high resolution and high sharpness with rich color and low noise.  And no matter how you slice it low ISO's and careful technique beat the image quality of most other working methods. One of the reasons I embraced and still use the Sony a77 for my portrait and food work (hell, almost all of my work) is the fact that the camera does ISO 50, 64, 80 and 100.  And if I read the charts and graphs on DXO Mark correctly the ISO's under 100 are not "pulled or faked" ISO's but provide meaningful reductions in noise with no change in dynamic range. Go look for yourself before you slavishly believe what you've read elsewhere...). 

You'll see the difference in the choices camera designers make if you put competing cameras on good tripods and make use of some of the slower shutter speeds. At ISO 100 the files from the Sony look better, in terms of color and dynamic range, that what I've seen from my old Canon 5D mk2 files at the same magnifications.

The heart of the Sony Nex 7, beyond looks and ergonomics, is that sensor. Many argue that cramming 24 megapixels into such a small space was a mistake and that Sony should have chosen a 16 megapixel sensor instead. If your overarching metric is low noise over ISO 1600 I guess I'd have to agree but if your tastes lean more to "just how good can a file be..." than I disagree. I guess different people are attracted to different cameras for a reason.

The 24 megapixel sensor in the Nex 7 is apparently the same on that sits in my a77 cameras and I find the performance in the Nex 7 to be outstanding. The noise is manageable up to 3200 and the lower ISO files are wonderful.

Lenses: This is an area where I don't have much depth of experience in the Sony Nex system. I've been told by anyone (except Trey Ratliff) who can grind out a review of the camera that the "kit" lens is unbearably bad but I haven't found that to be the case at all.  At all the middle apertures it seems sharp, well behaved and color rich. One disconnect is that camera users tend to focus on things (real photo subjects)  between 100 times the focal length of the lens and infinity and they mostly shoot three dimensional objects while lens testers tend to shoot flat, two dimensional, charts from three to five feet away... That basically means that testers and users are applying to totally different sets of demands to every lens. 

The 18-55mm is supposed to be sharp to very sharp in the center areas of the frame but is supposed to be icky in the corners and on the extreme edges. Really?  I find it convincing over most of the frame for the stuff I shoot and even at 100% enlargements (which are huge, relatively speaking, with a 24 megapixel camera) I see good detail and sharpness in the critical parts of the frame.  If you require a flat field lens you might be in the market for a macro lens. Unlike general purpose lenses they are constructed to shoot flat objects. That's why they uniformly test well in the tester world.  In his review of the camera Mr. Ratcliff seems to agree that the lens in question is in no way a "dog" of an optic...

I like the 18-55mm because it is a good universal lens but I also like it because, in black, it looks so good on the black Nex 7 body. But when I shoot portraits I have a new favorite. It's the Sony OSS 50mm 1.8. I couldn't find a black one but by this time I just don't care anymore because I like using this one so much I wouldn't want to take any chances on a different sample...

The lens is nicely sharp as opposed to "bitter" sharp. It feels like it's resolving more layers of stuff that I see on the "surface" of the files. I think of it as a portrait lens but many times I leave the house with just this one optic for the day. Some people gravitate toward wide angle lenses and some to short telephotos. I think the ones who choose wide angles have problems distilling their vision down to the essentials...(that was meant to be a joke.) I always want to get in tighter and tights.  Along the same lines one of the Pen lenses that seems to really resonate for me on the Nex 7 is the 70mm f2.  While the lens has some "old school" optical characteristics the focal length is very satisfying for portrait work.  The full 35mm frame equivalent of a 105 mm lens.

There are two things about the Nex 7 that are almost universally unloved.  One is the movie actuation button on the upper right side of the back of the body. It's mentioned everywhere. I've hit it a couple of times but it's so obvious that you've done so in the viewfinder that I can't think people are letting the movie recording go on for too long. Some have tried "fixing" the problem by glueing rubber grommets around the button to ward of their errant thumbs. I spent some time doing thumb exercises to prevent unintended thumb actuation. You'll have to find your own approach.

The second fault of the camera will most likely only resonate with people who use shoe mount flashes or need a universal hot shoe for radio triggers and the like. Here's the deal: All the current Sony cool cameras still use a Minolta hot shoe that came in to being when they launched their Maxxum AF cameras back in the 1990's. No one else uses it. No one. Sony should have changed this the minute they bought the company but sometimes Sony soldiers on with odd crap. You can still use many Sony cameras with a Sony Memory Stick. Kinda nuts. But for only $11 you can buy a Seagull branded converter  that turns your propriety Minolta/Sony hot shoe into a universal shoe. The converter has a handy lock so it doesn't slide off and it also gives you a PC plug on the side for sync cords. Remember those?  Order four or five and keep them in all your camera bags. Or reconcile yourself to the idea that you use flash with other cameras and creativity and ingenuity with the Nex 7....

Lately I've become aware of just how "last century" my way of thinking about cameras usually is. Here I am focusing manually and exposing manually even when I have in my hands a camera with enough computational power to do a lot of day to day stuff for me with a high degree of proficiency. So I let go of my control freak ways and set the camera to the dreaded "green zone." Sony calls this setting, "intelligent auto."  It takes away almost all of my decision making power. No compensation, no control over AF areas, etc. I walked around and shot stuff for about an hour yesterday afternoon just to see what the camera could do and.......I was fairly impressed. It's an alternative methodology for street shooting.  If you set the camera to use "eye start AF" the camera will start focusing the minute you bring the EVF up to your eye. The computer in the box examines hundreds of areas within the scene and makes a series of educated guesses, most of which turned out to be right. I find it very usable in good light. Where it falls down is if you need to focus on something that isn't necessarily in the center of the frame or the closest thing to the camera. 

And I figured that, while I was at it, I might as well play with and report on the various "picture effects" in the menu. The one above is called "posterized." It's pretty obvious and not one I'd use a lot. Especially not for portraits, unless I was trying to go all "Warhol."

I'm not a very organized tester so I don't even recall what this one (above ) is but it doesn't hurt my brain too much... (just figure it out; this is "pop color").

This one (above) is, of course, "toy camera." Hmmmm. Seems like we just went nuts with the vignette menu in Lens Correction...

And where would we be without "contrasty black and white."?

I skipped "soften" and "high key" but I did want to see what "retro" looked like (above).

Those settings are different from the menu called, "creative style" which includes what I would basically call "camera profiles".  We have all the usuals like, standard, vivid, neutral, portrait, landscape but there are also some called, clear, deep, light, sunset night scene, sepia, and black and white. But the one I am drawn to, as much for it's prosaic directness is "autumn leaves." Autumn Leaves does something to the camera to make it sharper, crisper and warmer in certain color areas.  Silly, but I really like it.

The real power of this camera is that it can be small, unobtrusive, and  and at the same time immensely powerful for real image making. No excuses image making. No more, "isn't this a great picture from such a tiny camera?" In the guts of the camera is an unhobbled 24 megapixel sensor that I consider to be state of the art. When the camera was tested by DXO in April they judged it to be among the top ten or eleven camera sensors they had tested to date.

If your technical and aesthetic skills are up to it the camera will match you. From ISO 100-800 it's all you might want in a digital file. I can see noise start to creep in after that but I still think it's usable up to 3200 with good results if you use noise reduction in Lightroom or PS. It will give you the flex to shoot just about anything you need, with two caveats: I wouldn't feel comfortable shooting field sports with it. The CD AF is good but when it comes to following fast action and offering some level of predicative AF I just don't think it's ready to go toe to toe with PD AF cameras like its sibling, the SLT a77.  If action runs parallel to the camera there's a lot to be said for its burst speed; it will do 10 fps for a second or so... But life on the big playing fields is too random and kinetic for the current AF tech in mirrorless (non-PD) cameras. This will all change this year as hybrid focusing system cameras hit the market. The Nikon V1 led the way in that regard.  

My second caveat is one that I don't care about but thought I would mention: If you shoot weddings you won't be impressing cousin Sheldon or uncle Frank with your shooting rig. They will most probably best you in both weight and cubic inches with their tog tools. We've stopped thinking about that in the advertising world. The machine either works or it doesn't.  

I used this camera recently on a shoot with the very art director who moved me from an Olympus E-3 to the Canon 5Dmk2 several years ago. We did a shoot and, plainly, the small, overly AA filtered, small pixel count encumbered E-3 just didn't resolve enough detail for a big output. When we shot with this little camera on the most recent shoot he was flat out impressed. 

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of August, I took the camera out with me for a long and dusty walk. I ended up getting my sweaty hands all over the camera and I felt like it needed some more protection. Now, in the old days I always thought the little cases that fit over cameras, which were called, "Ever Ready" cases, were dorky and unnecessary. Oh judgemental me. How my point of view has changed. I went on line and started looking for a cool case, passed by the "must be gold plated" incredibly expensive Sony case and found a "no name" case on Amazon, here.

I got some sort of lightning deal price and the case came out to a whopping big $10. I love it. I keep the bottom of the case on the camera and it enhances the feel of the system. I pop the top on when I'm heading out for a long walk to give the camera some protection from the heat, dust, rain and the perspiration of its intrepid owner.  Never thought I'd own one. Now I'm thinking about getting them for all my cameras....

Last week I was a guest at the first preview of the new Mort Topfer Theater at Zachary Scott Theatre. I took along the Nex 7 and the kit lens. I was seated up in the middle of the house and I took images of some of the short previews. This one is for the upcoming show, Rag Time. I was shooting at ISO 400 and nearly or at wide open on the lens. I include this because I was happy with the 100% crop below.  You can click on any of these to see them bigger, in their own windows.

To sum up this chapter of my flowing and intermittent reviews of the Sony Nex7:

Better overall image quality than all the other digital cameras I've owned up to this point in time. Slightly better high ISO image quality than my workhorse Sony a77's.  Not a high ISO champ but certainly better than the middle of the pack. 

If I'd shot with this camera before trying the a77's I would probably have been quite happy going with two Nex 7's, a small shoebox full of lenses and nothing else. I can do and have done demanding and professional work with this camera!  I can hardly wait to see how Sony improves it.

A celebration of silliness. Jill Blackwood stars in Zach Scott's Presentation of Xanadu.

http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/xanadu

Zachary Scott Theatre never does anything halfway. When they do a campy musical they pull out all the stops and rev up the camp. This week the Theatre opens their version of Xanadu.  This isn't your 1980's movie version either. This is a magnificent spoof-musical that made me laugh so much the image stabilization in my cameras was working overtime. 

Last night my trusty video producer, Ben Tuck, and I headed over to Zachary Scott Theatre to do some work.  Ben was there scouting locations for a video project. He was also shooting some general "B" roll during the dress rehearsal.  I was there to shoot images for the local newspaper and for Zach Scott's marketing department. I ended up with about 1855 images but many of those are similar shots with different gestures and expressions. That's why shooting people, portraits and events is so frame intensive...you might like one sort of expression and the art director might prefer another.  You shoot both.  And while you're shooting you get the expression in front of you because it might be the best one, until the next one happens and you get that one because it's even better (and on and on).

While I covered all the actors in the show I decided I'd show only Jill Blackwood in this set of blog selections.  Jill is wonderful on stage and her singing and incredible action made the show for me.  In this role she is the team leader of the original Greek muses who ends up falling in love with a mortal artist.  A big, Mount Olympus No-No.  I love the way Zach's Xanadu is propped, lit and costumed.  

Ben shot his video with a Sony a57 with the kit 18-55mm lens and his Gitzo tripod with Manfrotto fluid head.  I shot with two Sony a77s.  I used one with the 16-50mm lens (which, along with the cheap 85mm, is my current favorite optic).  On the other camera I shot with both the 85mm 2.8 and the 70-200mm G 2.8 lens.  The lighting on this production was fairly bright, with lots of follow spots on Jill, so I was able to keep the ISO in the range of 400 to 800.

Everything I shot was handheld. Everything you see here is straight out of camera with no PhotoShop chicanery or lily-gilding.  

I love the musical and all the 1980's music has gone from nostalgic to kitsch and now is just flat out funny.  Yes, I'll line up for tickets.

One more thing.  Shooting theatre with a big, bright, detailed EVF is the only way to go.  Believe me, I've done it both ways....

Auto Focus Micro Adjustment and the Sony a77

I couldn't really adjust for this lens but that's okay, 

I know from recent experience that it's "wicked sharp."

As I work more and more with the Sony a77 I find lots of things to like about the camera and very few disappointments. One of the reasons I chose to go with the a77's as my primary shooting cameras ( in addition to the brilliant EVF and really nicely implemented video) was the Auto Focus Micro Adjustment control.  I've been pre-occupied with other camera controls in my quest to really master the camera and I left lens adjustments to last.

But recently I've been working nearly wide open with the 50mm 1.4 lens and I noticed that it would routinely back focus. This led me to jump into the menu and get busy.  I also noticed that my 70-200mm G lens (a whopping $2000) wasn't as sharp as my previous Canon and Nikon zooms so I thought I'd take a crack at that one as well.  In the end I tried every Sony lens I owned on both bodies and now, after hours of being really compulsive and fastidious, I am even happier with my little Sony system than before.

When I first accessed the control the ability to adjust was greyed out on the menu. I finally decided to push the "clear" button and a message came up telling me that 30 lenses had already been registered and that I would lose all those settings if I continued.  Since I'd been using the camera with this control deactivated anyway I decided that it would be "no skin off my nose" to go forward.  I pushed clear.  Now I could make adjustments to any of the Sony branded lenses I put on the camera and it would save up to thirty lenses of my choice.  Do I think the camera was used before me? Decidedly not. I think the camera comes that way by default.

I actually kept notes as I worked.  The 50mm needed a "minus 8" correction.  The 70-200 needed a "minus 6" correction and the 50mm 1.8 DT lens needed a -3 correction.  Most of the lenses were right on.  The little 85mm 2.8 shocked me.  I've always used it to shoot portraits and nothing with sharp lines or edges. When I blew up my test file with the LensAlign it was so sharp wide open that I was temporarily giddy.

I tested all my lenses at 2.8.  I figured most gaussian lens designs will have a bit of focus shift from wide open to 2.8 and that trying to get them just right at 1.4 was perhaps a futile endeavor.  Happily, once I adjusted the 50mm 1.4 at 2.8 I went back and checked it wide open and was happy to find the same correction needed.  At least the lens is consistent.

I tested eight lenses and I did this on two bodies and there were mild differences between bodies.  I almost messed up the test entirely as I had inadvertantly set the focus mode to local which allows the camera to choose between a little cross of squares.  When I aimed at the target I would get different readings each time and when I tested at different distances I needed different numerical values as well.  Once I realized my mistake and set the  camera to center spot AF everything fell right into place.

The 70-200mm is now very sharp wide open and wickedly sharp one stop down.  I took the time to re-test at every marked focal length and found that, once you've set the right value, it tends to be the same for all.

In addition to the stellar performance of the 85mm 2.8 I was also amazed at just how sharp the 16-50mm 2.8 lens is.  It's the sharpest wide to short tele high speed zoom I've ever played with. I can go out shooting now with a sense of assurance that I'm getting the ultimate performance for myself and my clients.  And it was a bonding experience for me and my camera.

Hello Sony !!!! Where the heck are your wide angle lenses for the a77 and a57 APS-C cameras ?????

Image taken with the Sigma 10-20mm 4-5.6 EX DC

I mostly shoot portraits so when I switched camera systems to the Sony a77 and then added the a57 I made sure all my portrait focal lengths were covered.  I bought the 16-50mm 2.8 zoom lens and I think it's marvellous; sharp and snappy at all focal lengths.  I also bought the 70-200mm 2.8 G lens and it's capable of making great images as well.  Then I went in and backfilled with some inexpensive but surprisingly good single focal length lenses such as the 30mm DT macro, the 35mm 1.8 DT, the 50mm 1.8 DT, the 50mm 1.4 and the 85mm 2.8.  All of them have proven to be good lenses for the system.  All are capable of professional results.  But there's a blind spot in the Sony APS-C lineup. The only lens wider than the 16-50mm (FF equivalent = 24mm to 75mm) is the 11-18mm.  The focal length range is right what I'm looking for but the lens is obviously a re-badged Tamron 11-18mm zoom lens and I've been down that road before.  I owned the Canon version and it was barely usable, at best. 

I didn't think much of it until a client asked me to shoot a new architectural project he'd just finished.  It's a grocery store for a well known, national chain.  We need to photograph multiple shots of the exterior and, a few weeks from now, multiple shots of the interior.  In the Canon shooting days I could rent a 24mm shift lens and do most of my work with that.  I'd round out the mix with the old 20mm lens.  But the Sony catalog doesn't include any tilt/shift lenses and since it's not a big part of my business I am loathe to buy them.  Especially when I can do most of my corrections in PhotoShop.  But I do need a clean, sharp lens to start with.  That, and a good ladder...

I shot all the exteriors with the 16-50mm lens.  The profiles in DXO and in PhotoShop CS6 both work very well. The image files come out with a high degree of sharpness and no discernable geometric distortion.  If I shoot from a ten foot high vantage point I don't need to do a lot of "keystone" correction either. When I'm shooting the exteriors and need a wider view than that offered by the 24mm equivalent focal length of the 16-50mm I can always move back to get in more.  But when I head inside it's another story.  I want to be able to go as wide as a standard 20mm or even an 18mm to do justice to the interior space.  

I've been reading up on various alternatives to the Sony 11-18 and I was optimistic about a lens made by Sigma.  It's a 10-20mm f4-5.6.  I headed over to Precision Camera to see if they had one in stock and not only did they have the lens but the Sony rep was there for a promotional event so I gave him and earful too.  He readily agreed that the current lens wasn't an earth-shaking game changer but suggested that Sony is hard at work making their own lens and that all indications are it will be good.  Nice to know but it won't be available for a while  and certainly not by next week when I need it.  I conferred with my personal sales associate, Ian, and ended up walking out the door with the Sigma 10-20mm.  Ian told me I could bring it back within 30 days for a refund, if not thoroughly satisfied (another reason I shop there....).

I had three hours before I was expected home for dinner so I put the lens on the front of the a77 I had in the car and started walking through downtown.  (I did stop at the big, Whole Foods headquarters to have magic almond bar and a good cup of coffee before I got down to lens testing business.  A man has to have priorities).

The handling and build quality of the Sigma is as good as anything out there, short of a Leica or Zeiss lens.  The lens yields sharp images when I focus in the right places and the color and contrast is good.  The only troubling characteristic is the distortion on the extreme edges and the extreme corners.  I'm going to use the Adobe lens profiler to try and make a corrected profile for the distortions.  Unless I can find a profile that someone else has already made.  I think there may also be a profile of the combination of the Sony camera and the Sigma lens in the latest DXO software.  If I can correct the corner and edge distortion I'll be pretty darn happy. The lens is already a much better performer than the Sony 11-18 I borrowed several weeks ago to test.

But this brings up the question:  If Sony is really interested in competing with Nikon and Canon, and now even Olympus, why haven't they filled this important gap with something decent?  Even if they had a really good lens that was just 12-20mm with a slow aperture but really good performance they'd be way ahead of the game.  I was told that Sony owns a big stake in Tamron and Tamron recently rolled out a 10-24mm that supposed to be much better than the 11-18 as well.  At the very least they should re-badge that lens...

I'd love to shoot nothing but portraits but I live in work in a second tier market and it pays off to be able to offer good clients a wider menu of services.  From the walking tests I've done today I'm confident I can pull off what I need to do with the Sigma lens.  But I shouldn't have to.  There are enough great solutions out there that Sony should have this covered.  My dream lens for wide angle would be a prime 12mm f4 that's designed and made by Zeiss.  It doesn't even need to autofocus as long as it has an accurate focus scale on it.  With a super sharp, 12mm lens stopped down to f8 and hanging in front of a 24 megapixel sensor it would be a zone focusing dream.  Add in effect focus peaking and you're absolutely there.

 This image is a 10mm image that was originally tilted back to include the building in the background and then quickly corrected in post.

This image was taken at 20mm.  And left uncorrected and without processing.

I'd read in one of the poorer reviews about the Sigma 10-20mm that flare was an issue.  There's a vicious glare on  the building, smack in the middle of the frame, but I think the lens does a great job handling it.  10mm.

While there is some linear distortion, at the widest setting I think it's pretty well controlled and at most focal lengths is pretty easy to correct.

Snappy and sharp at f5.6 if what I'm seeing.

 10mm corrected in Lightroom 4.2.

By the end of my walk I had pretty much talked myself into keeping the lens.  What I was really looking for is good performance at 14mm.  That's the equivalent of 21mm in full frame and that corresponds to the Zeiss 21 ZE lens I used on the Canon.  When I shot at 14mm I was very happy with sharpness and contrast.  If I can make the distortion corrections I'll be happy.  And at about 1/4th the price of the Zeiss lens.  More tests, under duress, tomorrow.

Don't settle for whatever the manufacturer wants to throw at you.....

Kirk's Amazon Author's Page.