DK's ramblings - Cameracraft

Sony’s BIG system future at photokina

Posted on September 17, 2014 By David Kilpatrick

I’m using my RX10 to report. This camera is my big Sony dilemma. It’s actually all I really need for 95% of my daily work.

Well, here we are reporting from photokina 2014, the major trade fair in Cologne. I’m only here for the day and a brief stop in tomorrow morning en route to the airport, and my first appointment was with Sony. To be frank, it doesn’t matter that much as everything has already been publicised on many web pages. My only request, to be allowed to take some test frames on my A7R using any of the new FE lenses, was turned down because the lenses were ‘pre-production’. I was not pleased to be standing within earshot when, ten minutes later, the very same 16-35mm f/4 was being made available to another UK journalist not only to use but to take outside the hall into the Messehallen surroundings for ten minutes (chaperoned).

Of course you need a Canon sign over queues. It is after all the brand of herd!

I don’t need an outside scene to assess a 16-35mm – give me a room with vertical pillars (plenty) and some small very intense bare bright light sources (ditto) and I can pretty much do an optical test on such a lens in a couple of dozen frames. The good news is that Sony UK may be better placed to let photoclubalpha (and all the other media I write for) have loan lenses. In the last year, I’ve bought £10k worth and sold £5k worth of Sony and related third party gear to be able to keep up to speed with the rate of new products and their sheer cost.

If equipment had cost this much relative to earnings when I set out in photography, I would never have become a photographer – it would not have been possible. It would have been making a choice – a deposit on a house, a secondhand car, or a camera and three lenses?

And lenses are certainly being rolled out. The new roadmap concentrates entirely on the E-mount systems (FE and E, full frame and APS-C). The Alpha 99 may still be there as a flagship for the A-mount but there’s really nothing here, no news, for A-mount system users.

Hands-on reports from photokina often mean nothing more… hands-on! No pictures allowed with the glass. It looks like a lens, it works like a lens, but it’s really only half a lens.

Unless, of course, it is two times a lens. The ciné targeted 28-135mm f/4 power zoom for FE may have the ghost of a Minolta 28-135mm hiding inside its suit of armour. It’s huge.

In a sealed but rather grubby fingermarked cabinet sat the new lenses – a Carl Zeiss Distagon T* FE 35mm f/1.4 ZA, a Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS, and a Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS. I wiped the drool marks off the glass with my secret weapon (a packet of tissues) and took some individual pictures.

OK, the glass didn’t clean up all that well and there were many reflections to avoid.

But here is what you need to see – a 90mm macro with an external OSS on-off switch so you do not have to menu dive to perform this function when tripod mounting, as well as a triple range focus limiter. But this len is a real monster. We have to assume it uses internal focusing with a design like this.

And here is another surprise. Like Fujinon XF lenses, the forthcoming CZ 35mm f/1.4 has an RX-style third f-stop clicked aperture ring, with an A setting at the extreme beyond f/16. My guess is that there is also an RX-style click disengager round the back, making this a superior lens for ciné but almost certainly needing a firmware update for camera bodies as it is the first A or E mount (electronic aperture) lens to feature an on-lens aperture control.

Then we have a neat 28mm f/2 AF for FE, joining the Carl Zeiss Loxia manual focus, electronic function 35mm and 50mm lenses shown elsewhere on the stand (one day I may feature these if we find them exciting enough).

This lens has two optional adaptors – very much like the adaptors for the 16mm E series pancake, a 0.75X wide angle (converts it to a 21mm f/2) and a fisheye (converts it to a 16mm f/2).

I would say many of the size advantages of the A7 full frame camera series are completely negated by all of these new lenses and by the adaptors. What we actually need and want is a handful of properly compact sensor-matched lenses, smaller perhaps than the existing 35mm f/2.8 FE, and not a range of lenses which increases the overall size of a mirrorless kit to the point that you might as well have a DSLR. It’s not quite that bad, they are still a bit smaller overall, but here’s the 28mm converted to fisheye:

I’ll leave you with the test set-up for the A6000 and lenses –

I’m off for a meeting with Sigma. Just got ten minutes to find them!

– David KIlpatrick

Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, Events, Lenses - Alpha Mount, News, NEX System, Sony Digital Cameras

Sony confirm silent mode in A7S

Posted on May 30, 2014 By David Kilpatrick

Today, Sony confirmed a rumour – no doubt started as a result of pre-production tester leaks – that the A7S would have a completely silent all-electronic shutter mode. This is not the same as the Electronic First Curtain shutter found on the A7, A99, A77, A6000 and so on but conspicuously absent on the A7R. Nor is it the same as the near-silent leaf shutter terminated exposure mode of the RX100 models, RX10, or RX1 models. It’s completely free of all mechanical action and totally silent.

A7S seen with LA-EA4 and 24mm f/2 Carl Zeiss. I’ve got the adaptor, and this lens – they do work well on the A7R, but I don’t use them as my tiny Voigtlander Color Skopar SL II 20mm f/3.5, mounted on a Nikon fit Kipon tilt-shift adaptor, delivers the goods without the bulk or the battery drain. The 24mm also works well on the LA-EA3 adaptor without SLT mirror, but focusing is excruciatingly slow.

The silent shutter has been implemented as a firmware upgrade to the early production samples and future stocks, along with several other important firmware enhancements – all of which will have Sony owners wondering why improvements to their six-month old or one-year old purchases are not equally forthcoming. These are however improvements to a £2,100 camera body which will not hit the shops until the end of July 2014.

The firmware fixes and upgrades are:
α7S now offers a ‘Silent Shooting’ mode
ISO range for Movie Shooting extended to ISO100 – 102400, expandable to ISO100 – 409600
Dynamic Range extended to 15.3 stops as sensor RAW output

The silent mode is an option, and we would guess it carries some penalty in terms of available shutter speeds or noise performance. They say “For situations where absolute silence is required on a shoot, such as nature shoots or behind the scenes at a movie production, the α7S will offer the user the ability to activate ‘Silent Shooting’, thus making the photographer as unobtrusive as possible.”

A further upgrade is the expansion of the ISO range when shooting movies (previously limited to the native range). The α7S now offers the ability to shoot between ISO 100 -102,400 (native range) and is expandable to ISO 100-409,600 whilst still shooting capability remains at a staggering ISO 100-102,400 (again, the native range) expandable to ISO 50-409,600. The sensor’s dynamic range has also been further extended to 15.3 stops sensor RAW output. Technical note: as the bit depth remains unchanged and is presumed to be 14-bit ARW, this enhancement implies a modified raw gamma curve.

Other system improvements

You may wonder why we’ve pretty much given up reporting on new Sony products. Despite running three photographic magazines, we can’t easily get hold of review samples as all three magazines are professional or enthusiast market only. I’ve now run out of money and can’t afford to buy any of the new cameras or lenses, as the rate at which they have been released and the price levels make this difficult, and the dramatic collapse in secondhand values has clobbered my recent workround of buying-testing-selling. Things like the 28-70mm FE OSS lens for the A7 are worth almost nothing (under £200 used even from a UK dealer now) and most gear is losing 35-40% of its launch month value within two or three months. Also, the performance of much of this kit tends to be flawed or just not that impressive. It’s really hard to justify spending thousands on Sony gear which then turns out to be very ordinary, when companies like Olympus, Fujfilm, Nikon and Canon only need an email or a phone call to send test kit out just as soon as it’s available.

To work further against Sony’s interests, so much of the older Minolta and other optical gear I have been trying – even something as basic as my 70-210mm f/4 ‘beercan’ on the A7R with LA-EA4 – produces such beautiful results. What money I have spent recently has been on adaptors and on vintage lenses including Voigtlander, Canon and Nikon. I’ve not lost a penny on buying and selling these to find the best choices.

Sony also has a habit of organising London press events starting at 10am which, because of the nature of London, pretty much demands an overnight hotel stay unless you happen to be based within the M25 ring. I’m 400 miles away with no intention of ever being closer. I’m willing to spend the two or three hundred pounds needed to be at a mid-day event in London, despite the fact that it generally only produces ten minutes with a product subject to a ‘no images may be used’ embargo, and all the major websites already had it a month before and the full details were all over the web before I boarded the early morning train. So that’s why I have not really felt an urgent need to work hard and put my company’s (my!) money into giving Sony free advertising.

Well, there’s a new Alpha 77 – the A77II. It has much improved AF, the new hotshoe, some WiFi stuff and the GPS has been removed. Neat though the WiFi and NFC may be, my main use of this is for remote control not tweeting photos, and for remote control rigs there are much better camera choices than a heavy A77 body with no possibility to control the zoom from an iPad/Android phone or whatever. The RX100 and RX10 hit the mark for this. The slightly gritty 24 megapixel sensor is still a slightly gritty 24 megapixels, and removing the GPS is just downright perverse. I have a Nikon D5300 sitting here which does everything I need in a gritty 24 megapixel APS-C format, with GPS, for a great deal less.

And there’s a great new RX100 MkIII which has a new Carl Zeiss 24-70mm equivalent f/1.8-2.8 zoom, a pop-up EVF, unbelievably good video (not far removed from the A7S 4K abilities and high bitrate encoding of HD1080p) and a more flexibly hinged screen. I do think this will be worth it for new buyers, but I didn’t bother with the MkII. The MkI only cost me £350 slightly used, it lives in pockets and shoves into compartments of bags, it has a lenscap adapted to ensure this treatment does not damage its fragile lens-front cover, and it goes to 100mm equivalent which is more use to me than extra lens speed at 70mm. The old MkI may only by f/4.9 at 100mm equivalent, but it is respectable f/4 at 70mm and the same f/1.8 at 28mm. It’s knockabout travel camera, a car glove-compartment camera, capable of delivering shots which any photo agency or library will accept.

The RX100 III will start shipping in Europe at the beginning of July 2014 and will be priced at approximately £700. I’ll get one when I break, wear out, or lose the original but I might just opt for a Nikon 1 system kit instead. At least they have a GPS you can add, unlike Sony – it will soon be two years since the Multi Function Accessory Shoe was unveiled, and the GPS module for it is still not even on the horizon.

Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, News, NEX System, Sony Digital Csmeras

Sony Alpha 7R – the Swiss Army Knife camera

Posted on April 28, 2014 By David Kilpatrick

I guess it’s time to publish another field test review of the Alpha 7R despite rarely having used the camera in anger, or in any state other than anger. It arrived in late November and caught me at a time when I was not going anywhere or doing anything, nothing was happening and the weather was just plain ordinary. We didn’t have floods, or snow, or anything else like the rest of the country. It also came with a set of problems to be solved some of which turned out to frustrate any affordable solution.

I started writing this page in February 2014. It may give you some idea of my issues with the whole current Sony system that I’ve taken almost until May to publish it. Additions have been made on December 2nd 2014.

When you’ve got a wonderful new tool to work with, it doesn’t help to have no work to do which requires that tool. This really is the Swiss Army Knife camera, a strapline I used on the first issue of the new-look f2 Freelance Photographer magazine which I took back into ownership at the end of January. The A7R has the potential to fit in my pocket and replace every single other camera I own, to use all the lenses I have bought for all other systems and formats, and to remove stones from horses’ hooves.

But, and here’s the problem, it also replaces nothing at all as well as it could. There are maybe no more than half a dozen reasons why, but they are critical reasons and any one of these reasons will limit the use of the A7R.

No in-body stabilisation and not all lenses are stabilised
No electronic first curtain means the shutter cycle is noisy and causes vibration see later comments
The sensor design prevents optimum use of rangefinder type lenses under 35mm focal length
No native full frame wide-angle lens under 24mm is likely to be available before September 2014
Any Sony FE-mount lens with a performance matched to the sensor is going to cost double its true value
No on-board GPS and (to date) no multi-function shoe GPS module to add
Single card slot only and consumer size lith-ion battery
Very slow start-up and wake up from sleep especially when not using Program, Manual or intelligent fully auto modes
Slow optimal AF/AE performance continuous shooting
Slow laminar shutter blade transit speed and flash synchronisation limit
Firmware compatibility problems with some existing E-mount OSS lenses
No provision for IPTC copyright information entry
Custom lens app can be used with manual adapted lenses but does not embed metadata in EXIF
User memory settings don’t cover functions from some menus
Apps are charged at additional cost for functions which would reasonably be free or included in a camera body with a price-tag of £1,800
No battery charger is supplied and default charging method is by micro USB cable
The rear LCD screen can only be tilted and is not reversible to face the body
The EVF even at its brightest is not up to tropical or desert viewing conditions
Auto switching EVF to rear screen is unreliable
As I have now found after five months’ use, not as durable as it looks (I have repaired the worn metal showing through the sharp edges on the ‘prism’ and body with a black Sharpie pen, but I’m tempted to use a guitar fret polishing sheet to make all the sharp edges into bright silver… just rub that thin black coating off!)

In case you’re thinking this is a completely unfair list of negative points to start a review with, well, you may be right. It’s here to make up for the usual lists of star features which *end* reviews. I’m also going to need to explain all these points. Here, to balance the negatives, are the positives.

The highest resolution full-frame sensor (24 x 36mm) currently made
The smallest full-frame system camera body
No moving mirror, no SLT mirror, and no optical low-pass (anti-aliasing) filter
18mm lens mount register allows the use with adaptors of all current and past lenses from all systems designed to cover 24 x 36mm except those which used fixed rear assemblies and front groups
Custom lens app allows corrections for any lens, while built-in function auto corrects E and FE mount lenses
WiFi and Nearfield Connection transfer file to mobile devices or other hosts with automatic small JPEG creation even when full size JPEG or RAW is the selected shooting format
Sony PlayMemories Mobile Apps downloadable to camera and devices add functions such as remote control and intervalometer, lens corrections, sensor shading and colour shift compensation
The shutter is a professional specification speeded to 1/8,000th with motorized actuation
The body is reasonably rugged, very light magnesium with some composite surface panels and is sealed against everyday dust and moisture ingress
Although you can’t hear any sound, it has an Olympus-style ultrasonic vibration dust removal process and it is stunningly effective – no big buzz, no vibrational you can feel, but it really works
A full set of buttons can be customised for functions, and there are three adjustment controllers plus a dedicated exposure compensation dial
The electronic viewfinder with 2.3 million pixels and a 0.70X virtual view is only beaten by Fuji’s X-T1
Triggered or manual magnified manual focus allows exceptional focusing accuracy when needed
The high cost of Sony dedicated lenses is offset by the quality of many low-cost, older manual lenses and the option of two adaptors for Sony A-mount lenses, SLT mirror type or mirrorless
The interface allows manual selection of most functions, including APS-C format crop or using full frame with non-FF lenses, movie audio gain, finder/screen exposure simulation, and lens corrections

This last point may seem a bit vague but it’s actually what makes the A7R usable at all in many circumstances. The APS-C crop on/off has saved the camera from having zero real wide-angle choice during its first three months of release, as our December 2013 article on the use of the Sony E 10-18mm lens showed.

Although electronic viewfinder cameras are not ideal for studio work, the high resolution of the A7R makes it an alternative to medium format for the highest quality. It can be set to ISO 50 or 100, with 14-bit raw files using a compression method which is comparable to Nikon’s lossless option. If ‘Setting Effect Off’ is selected, the EVF or screen will always show a bright auto white balanced image allowing modelling lights to be used for composing and focusing even when the actual shot will be taken by flash with a fixed preset WB. The professional or advanced user will want to have all the settings for such work stored as a custom memory preset, but Sony puts the ‘Setting Effect’ outside the saved functions. This is most frustrating as getting to it requires menu-diving.

The same applies to stabilisation, which is a function of the lenses not the camera. It is turned on or off through a menu setting or by assigning a Custom button for direct access, making occasional tripod work need an excursion into the menus before and after, unless you are to end up with OSS enabled or disabled inappropriately. The E/FE lenses have no OSS switch, the body has no switch, and there’s no one-press shortcut. Sony’s decision to omit M/AF and OSS on-off switches from the FE lenses makes the system just that little bit harder to work with. Buy a Canon or Nikon and even the cheapest lens has a stabilisation switch you can use easily every time you mount the camera on a tripod, work with flash, or use a fast shutter speed and want the optimum lens performance (achieved, almost invariably, with stabilisation off).

No in-body stabilisation is going to handle this anyway – luck, flash, a tripod or a very fast shutter speed provide the answers

Working speed

How much does ANY of this matter, if you simply fit the appropriate kit lens or prime, and just get out and use the camera? Not a great deal if you use the camera like a point-and-shoot and your objective is a small print or posting on Facebook. Given the remarks I’ve seen on-line from people buying an A7R with a view to catching their ‘toddler running around’, plenty of new owners fall into this category. They are lucky because no matter what camera they buy, from a £50 supermarket offer to a Canon EOS 1DX, they will be happy with the results and only criticise them when the family pet outpaces the autofocus in the ideal photographic conditions of their living room.

The main issue which will hit any user of the A7R is its overall operating response and speed. Acquiring focus, by contrast detection, normally seems to take around 1/4 second with an FE or E lens, but can take half to one second in low light or with a low contrast subject. It can also fail but confirm positive occasionally, and this is a little frustrating as we are not used to getting defocused snaps today. Even one fail in a hundred is a surprise. If you try the LA-EA3 adaptor, which provides a mirror-free light path and supports AF with SAM and SSM lenses, half to one second is normal in good light. You may find it worth disabling the ‘AF with shutter’ option and using only the AF button to set the focus, so the shutter release does not keep resetting it with each shot. However, after doing this I found it more than inconvenient NOT to have the familiar AF on half-pressure.

The shutter cycle

Having acquired focus, you complete the shutter release action. The A7R then executes a pre-exposure shutter action which involves closing the shutter with a movement of both blinds. This takes 250ms, or one-quarter of a second. That is longer than the mirror lift timing of a DSLR. After the exposure is made (a minimum period of about 6ms) there is short blackout dwell and the shutter re-opens to restore live view. The complete cycle is between 375 and 385ms as timed using audio and video recording and analysis.

This is not so very much worse overall than the Alpha 99 full frame SLT used with mechanical first curtain, but more of the cycle happens before the exposure, creating a surprisingly long shutter release lag. The A99, like the A77 and NEX-7, NEX-6, A6000 and indeed most other new Sony models including the A7, can use Electronic First Curtain. This means no mechanical action happens before the exposure at all. By the time you see any blackout or hear any noise, the image has already been captured, silently; the second shutter curtain closes to end the exposure and allow electronic readout. The shutter lag with an Alpha 99 or A7 in this mode is 20ms, or 1/50th. The shutter lag with the A7R can not be reduced to less than 1/4 in single shot mode.

This is also why the regular continuous shooting offers only 1.5fps, with AF and AE supported for each individual frame and 14-bit raw data. If you set Speed Priority mode, you can get between 4 and 5fps at the most with the exposure locked but AF active – however, you don’t get a real time viewfinder display, and you also get 12-bit recording instead of 14. This lowers JPEG quality in-camera as well as the headroom and dynamic range of the raw file. You’ll only get this performance by using the best SD cards. Some which claim 90-95Mbps speed only write are half or less, and are quoting their read speed.

The A7R will often remain in a card-writing state for several seconds (as long as 16 seconds if a raw sequence has been shot and buffering is queuing the images). Playback or review is not always possible without a brief wait. Since turning off auto review (which is not subject to this wait) greatly improves EVF performance for rapid fire shooting, you may have no clear idea of your shots until well after they are captured.

The simple fact is that where many competitors including Sony’s own A7 have fast responses, the A7R has an operating speed closer to a 1970s film SLR with ‘auto winder’ (the slow alternative to a motor drive), or being more charitable, to a Mamiya 645 with a power winder. It’s essentially medium format operating speed. This is in contrast to the Nikon D800/E, which offers the same file quality without a speed penalty.

Sensor shading and lenses

The A7R sensor microlens and coating structure produces not only a strong magenta-purple shading towards the frame ends with short rear focus wide angle rangefinder lenses, it also throws up a yellow-orange discolouration at the top of the (horizontal) frame. It shows some degree of this effect with nearly all lenses under 40mm focal length made for Leica M, screw, Contax G or similar mounts.

A month after releasing the camera, Sony issued a PlayMemories App which can be loaded up and invoked to record and re-use manually adjusted corrections for named lenses. These include distortion (barrel or pincushion), vignetting, and colour shading. The app does not allow the creation of a reference image or mapping mask. You can do this for Lightroom (shading only, saved as data) or Capture One Pro (shading and colour, dust and defects saved as an image). Consequently it actually won’t correct properly as it ignores the yellow-orange patch. Its limits are insufficient to correct full fisheye to normal (as found in the onboard correction which Nikon use for their 10.5mm lens) or handle typical shading from lenses like the Voigtlander 12mm, 15mm and 21mm.

This is typical of a non-retrofocus wide angle shading map produced from the A7R. The slightly magenta vignetting can be cured easily. The piss-yellow patch can not and it’s there, to one degree or another, with more lenses than you would imagine.

A different aspect of the sensor construction produces smearing. I noticed that this was minimal with the 15mm Voigtlander and strong with the 21mm. It seems to depend on the rear group geometry relative to the sensor. I ended up selling both these lenses.

Since then, I have given up on the idea of a super-compact Leica style outfit though I still have a 40mm f/1.4 Voigtlander and an 85mm f/4 Zeiss. Sony’s FE lenses are not very small and not all that attractive in specification. They do little more than return me to the kind of lens choices I had thirty years with the launch of the Minolta AF system – a slight step backwards at the time, losing the 17mm f/4 option, 24mm VFC, 35mm VFC Shift, Varisoft and many other unique bits of glass. I’m using a bunch of vintage Pentax, Minolta, Canon and other lenses in the 17mm to 85mm range. They don’t suffer from sensor shading or smearing problems and have generally proved far better than modern zooms.

My gripe with these solutions is that even if I enter a lens identity in the App, my images show no focal length data in the EXIF info, and certainly no aperture data. At the end of a long day, I have not made notes on every change of lenses. I have no idea what lens or settings may have produced a good or bad result. What I need is for every lens to be a properly dedicated FE mount one whether AF or manual focus. And I don’t want to pay Carl Zeiss a thousand pounds to get a sharp result from the type of lens and aperture specification which has been easy to make to an outstanding performance level, at modest cost, for the last half-century.

There are three lenses made by Sigma – 19mm, 30mm and 60mm f/2.8 designs in E-mount – which prove it is possible to make low cost, lightweight lenses which deliver results almost beyond criticism. Just making the direct translation of these lenses to 28mm, 45mm and 90mm f/2.8 for (say) 50% extra cost would give the A7R exactly the kind of glass it needed from the launch day. Sony’s Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 and 55mm f/1.8 may be wonderful in their own right but they appeal to me as much as 35mm f/2.8 lenses and 55mm f/1.8 lenses did back in the 1970s. Not at all. They are the focal lengths and apertures you used to find on twin-lens film compacts and they’re what you still find in the scruffiest old bag of 1960s worn-out SLR kit at a junk sale. They are what my father’s Pentax kit had (plus the inevitable 135mm).

Fuji’s launch of the X-series with a fast 28mm pancake equivalent (18mm f/2), very fast 50mm equivalent (35mm f/1.4), and good 90mm equivalent macro (60mm f/2.4) paid off well and they followed up with a 14mm f/2.8 (21mm equivalent) and pro portrait 56mm f/1.2. Though not cheap, these lenses are all affordable and have been supplemented by further excellent kit, tele and wide-angle zooms. What the A7/R needs most is a direct counterpart to this Fuji system and it simply doesn’t have it.

As for the long end, I see almost no point in buying any lens made for the FE mount longer than something like 100mm. The 70-200mm f/4 may be attractive, but it’s forever limited to the FE mount while being as long as a regular Alpha lens. Had Sony made a clever two-part SSM lens for FE and Alpha, with a detachable rear tube like a dedicated LA-EA3, they would have had a winner. Instead they have the lens which Alpha A-mount owners have been waiting for – pressing for ever since the digital system arrived – made in the new mirrorless mount only. After seeing the final prices of the CZ 24-70mm f/4 and the Sony 70-200mm f/4 G, I’ve bought an LE-EA4 Alpha SLT adaptor as well as an LE-EA3 mirror-free adaptor.

But longer lenses are still much better on the Alpha mount, with its sensor based stabilisation and the larger bodies with true phase detection AF ideally suited to the wildlife, action, news and sports for which lenses over 200mm are destined. You can add an LA-EA4 SLT type adaptor to the A7/R, but these are still full-frame cameras one of which (the A7) has extremely low resolution for tele work compared to the ultimate telephoto capture machine, the neglected Alpha 77 (or its lesser spec 24 megapixel siblings).

From my point of view I’ve got an amazing camera body with a few limitations, but a menagerie of odd lenses all with even greater limitations or lack of connectivity. If someone came out with a Canon FD lens adaptor with a chip able to tell the camera I was using a 20mm and what aperture was set, that would be great.

What does work is any LA-EA adaptor with Alpha lenses. You get all the EXIF data, and aperture control from the body. What you don’t get is the smooth focusing of a manual lens, or contrast detect AF, though you do have AF calibration to fix the inevitable inaccuracy of phase detect systems. It’s just a pity the 20mm Minolta/Sony AF design isn’t as good as the 1980s Canon last version manual focus FDn.

Timing and shake

The A7R shutter is a full size mechanism. A shutter like this running at 1/8,000th maximum speed should be achieving flash synchronisation at 1/250th. The fact that this camera is restricted to 1/160th shows that the transit speed of the shutter blinds is slower than normal. There must be a reason, and the discovery (by me, and others, despite vehement denials in some quarters) that a shock-induced form of camera shake happens could be it. Sony has also disabled OSS support for many E-mount lenses. I believe this is connected to the typical shake pattern in the hands of the average user. Update: because it occurs less with unstabilised lenses, for example my 70-210mm f/4 Minolta AF used on LA-EA4 shows none of the typical patterns, I now think this is not a ‘shutter shock’ or ‘user shake’ issue but is due either to mistimed communication between the camera and most stabilised lenes, or more likely, to a brief loss of the power needed to maintain moving lens groups or elements in position whether stabilisation is active or not. A need to moderate the drain on the battery is indicated by the slow transit of the curtains (slow motor speed to operate the shutter). Otherwise the A7R would surely have had a full speed 1/8000th shutter with X at 1/250th.

I made recordings using video, audio and motion sensing methods and observed the typical results from repeated exposures with different lenses. I found that shutter speeds from 1/30th to 1/160th could be affected by a shake or double image which occurs 1/250th after the shutter has opened, looking like a reflected or transmitted shock. At speeds longer than 1/60th this jolt occupies less than a quarter of the overall exposure and is not so clearly visible as a double image. It can look worse at 1/160th than 1/80th, because at 1/160th about half the exposure can be in one position and half with the image shifted a tiny degree. A distinct double image is often shown and it’s always in the vertical direction when the camera is held horizontally.

FE 28-70mm handheld 1/80th, OSS switched on (100% detail click to enlarge). Pre-update firmware. It’s very hard to be sure, but I think the April firmware update has made the 28-70mm (originally NOT recommended for the A7R or sold with the body) perform better.

FE 28-70mm handheld 1/80th, OSS switched off.

Sigma 70-300mm OS switched on, on LA-EA3 adaptor. One problem with using any non-Sony lenses is that firmware updates have no effect on them at all. Sony don’t make a stabilised lens going as long as 300mm, yet.

Sigma 70-300mm OS switched off. All images at 70mm (many tests made, these are accurate representations of the results and tend to show that stabilisation is likely to produce no benefit).

Since some stabilised lenses including my Tamron 18-200mm Di III VC also produced this distinctive double exposure, I believe that Sony’s disabling of OSS in the 55-210mm E lens for example was done because their engineers identified the problem before the camera went on sale. I also think it can be fixed by firmware updates to Sony E lenses, but probably not for others. Update: they did not update the new black 55-210mm OSS. I think it just imposes too much battery load without an entirely redesigned OSS mechanism, or perhaps a combination of OSS and focus. Fuji has overcome this problem using very carefully balance triple linear motors in their new large lens for the X-system, the 50-140mm f/2.8 – it’s a stabilised, fast focusing lens with minimum power consumption.

In response to those who say oh, it’s a super-high resolution camera, your technique needs to be (bla bla bla!) it’s actually slightly lower resolution than my NEX-5n and far lower than my Alpha 77 or the NEX-7 I no longer have. It’s also lower than the A3000 I owned briefly, and the NEX-6 I have used as a second camera since early March. 36 megapixels full frame is 15 megapixels APS-C and that’s a lower resolution than any E-mount camera made except the original NEX-5 and NEX-3 14 megapixel bodies. I can enable mechanical first shutter curtain on any other NEX or Alpha SLT body and never see the same ‘jolted exposure’ effect with the same lenses. I can also shoot with our Alpha 700, 900 and 580 bodies and never see this shake fingerprint despite their mirror mechanism and mechanical first curtain combined.

Of course I may get shake with disabled or absent stabilisation, hand-held, with almost any digital body. I use many different cameras through the year and sometimes I get very poor stabilisation, as when using certain Nikon lenses with the earlier VR zooms on their 24 megapixel DX format bodies. This shake is random and variable, and reflects my own instability, body sway, wind chill and so on. It’s not one type of shake visible too often in shots which should not normally be affected.

Reviewers have been incredibly cautious to observe this effect. I don’t know why. I’d spotted it within a few hours of trying the camera out. Others have been fast to defend the A7R and suggest that you just need to avoid that critical shutter speed range of 1/60th-1/160th. If this was not such an extremely useful speed range that would be fine. It’s actually the precise range you most want to be perfectly stabilised and least want to have to avoid. It’s also favoured by Sony when program mode and auto ISO are used.

One way to minimise this shake seems to be to use manual focus, mechanical lenses and to favour short focal lengths. The A7R never feels or handles better than when you’ve got a rangefinder lens in the range from 12mm to 28mm fitted. It becomes like the Leica that never was, the eye-level camera which doesn’t need a separate viewfinder to handle a 12mm, 15mm, 18mm, 21mm or 24mm lens. Leica may have a good rear screen to help with this issue now but no EVF. So the next point has been a big issue for buyers.

For the latest firmware updates, and new Apps and software, see:

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/ILCE-7R

And for the rest…

While I do miss the dual card slots of most of the Alpha cameras I’m using, I know the NEX and E-mount models have never had this, and with a 32GB card installed I have adapted to using the USB cable to read off new images and let the A7R charge. I do not miss the separate battery charger as I have one, and spare batteries. Nearly all the time, the camera is kept fully charged by its time spent overnight attached to the Mac. Since my RX100, RX10 and NEX-6 all work the same way using the same cable life has been simplified.

My favourite designs remain the A55, A77 and A99 all of which have had GPS on board and rear screens which enable self-filming for video demonstrations, or folding away to face the camera (how I normaly use EVF cameras now). The shared battery across the A55, A7R, NEX and A3000 models and RX10 makes it likely I might travel using a combination of these. I don’t have much use yet for the WiFi functions but I understand their importance to others, and they will really come in useful for remote camera operation in future. That can include skypole or kite work, or having a camera tripod mounted 10 metres away from the main shooting position for a different viewpoint of an event, operated from a phone or tablet.

GPS identified this as a church at Mailadumpara on the highway to Munnar – the 10-18mm lens used on full frame enabled this uncropped 36 megapixel shot at 14mm, f/11 (the shading is due to natural sky polarisation and the vignetting of the lens which I have not corrected).

I found a solution to my GPS problems in the form of a £40 igotU device from Maplin. It’s tiny (I am tempted to put a hot shoe mount on it but so far have just popped it in my shirt pocket). Free igotU2gpx file reading and low-cost PhotoLinker (buggy and unreliable in the extreme with 36 megapixel raw files) let me write GPS data into full day shoots on all cameras used. It’s not as accurate as built-in GPS and the process is tedious; the GPS data also exists in sidecar files until MediaPro is used to embed it into finished JPEGs. I’ll still buy the GPS module for the multi function shoe just as soon as Sony release it.

Top quality files

The appeal for me of the A7R is the sheer quality of the image. Even at ISO 3200, it is completely acceptable when processed carefully with Adobe software from raw. The JPEGs are mediocre with the exception of multi-shot modes and I don’t use them except for panoramas and night shots. The raw file has been criticised but compared directly with competitors, I find it has what I need – excellent highlight recovery from normal exposure levels, very low noise across a wide range of ISO, an ISO 50 setting ideal for studio lit subjects, and extreme pixel level sharpness.

The Lomography Petzval lens used on the A7R with Nikon adaptor. This reproduction lens from an 1840s design is a wonderful tool for portraits.

Richard Kilpatrick as a Victorian portrait subject with our Interfit background as a drape – A7R, ISO 50, Petzval lens at f/5.6 (Waterhouse stop) manually focused, Elinchrom Ranger Quadra RX flash.

Manual focusing with peaking and magnification combined tells you a lot about your lenses. Find a good lens, and the peaking will be present even at Low setting, with a very narrow band of activation. A poor lens (or aperture setting) usually fails to show a peaking line at Low setting, then shows one at Medium or High which has little discrimination. I’ve been able to identify my best manual and A-mount lenses by using the 14.4X magnification and the peaking function to examine targets.

Having done this, the extra performance squeezed out of almost lenses by super-accurate focusing makes AF seem inadequate. The contrast detection AF of the A7R is good, but just invoking magnified manual after it has locked on proves that it rarely hits the perfect mark. It gets to ‘good enough’. Like many new A7R owners, I find myself often using manual focusing without noticing that it is any slower than AF used to be. It’s a quantum leap ahead of any optical finder accuracy.

I find the body shape and size ideal, and have no complaints about the position of anything except the shutter release, which could have been 3mm or so further forward, and also would have been improved by the addition of a manual cable release thread (found on the RX10). I don’t plan to get a vertical grip, as the whole point of the A7R is small size and light weight. The external finish feels secure, the battery and other doors are adequately sealed and I don’t tend to overwork them.

The small body size causes a few problems with tripod mounting. Even the smallest monopod head can restrict the rear screen movement making it impossible to angle the screen down if you want to hold the camera above head height. It doesn’t angle down much to start with. The position of the Menu button, needed to access some adjustments like OSS and Finder Setting Effect, isn’t ideal as the only button on the left end of the camera. The exposure compensation dial is unusual as a solus function using up an entire large mechanical control, and has no lock, so it can be turned a little easily.

The A7/R is so customisable that after a couple of months getting used to it and changing things you’ll have a camera as far removed from its out of the box settings as a typical Canon ends up. Mine, for example, has the AF/MF and AE Lock button/switch control set up to act as Focus when set to AF/MF (with pre-Focus and tracking lock and eye-start focus all disabled), and to act as Focus Magnifier when set to AE; while the shutter release is set not to activate AF, but to lock AE on first pressure (when using the camera in a controlled environment – when travelling, I soon reverted to AF with shutter). This makes the camera anything but point and shoot, as out of focus shots are guaranteed without a separate focus action.

In practice

Like far too many A7R users, I’ve spent half my time testing and experimenting, and not enough time shooting. I’ve had the RX10 as a companion at the same time, and needed to shoot with new flash systems, where that camera’s exceptional high speed sync makes it more versatile – there’s not much point having flash heads which manage 1/5000th duration when your sync speed is 1/160th, unlike the RX10 which can manage between 1/1600th and 1/3200th depending on aperture. I had a concert venue opening to shoot, with video, and once again the silent RX10 with its superb video quality was the obvious choice.

Then, at Easter, we had a nine-day tour of Kerala, an exceptional offer from Citrus Holidays providing us with a private driver and a packed itinerary covering 1000km and five locations. This was our first visit to India for 28 years, and would provide the first library images of India apart from a few scanned transparencies of subjects which do not date. Equipment mattered. Shirley always uses her Alpha 580 with Sigma 18-250mm OS original version; it’s heavy and the lens has been through one factory service already, but it’s been very reliable and survived a short period where a Nikon D600 kit was tried as a replacement (and sold pretty sharply, in favour of returning to the more reliable AF, AE and clean sensor of 580).

Logically, my A77 and A55 would have come along. They share the same battery type, and my basic lens set 8-16mm, 16-80mm and 70-300mm gives both exceptional wide angle and a good tele performance (300mm plus APS-C plus 24 megapixels) for wildlife. It is however a very heavy kit and we wanted to travel light and work light, in high temperature and humidity.

So, the A7R had to be my choice. Apart from anything else, this camera at £1800 had not so far proved ‘better’ for any given job – it was barely used. In the studio our A900 and A700 optical finders just work far better than any EVF camera, and for general PR and social photography the last thing you need is 36 megapixel full frame. It just creates oversized files and tends to have too little depth of field. The A7R had been used for tests, for some winter landscapes, and some architectural shots. We had not travelled at all since early November.

This decision also led me to leave the RX10 behind, and this was a big mistake. I took the RX100 instead because the RX10 is fairly large. Its zoom range and silent operation would both have been valuable. With the A7R and its 28-70mm OSS lens I took the 10-18mm OSS, my Tamron 18-200mm VC DiIII, NEX-6 body and 16-50mm OSS collapsible kit lens. This was really a backup in case any fault developed. In practice the A7R makes a better APS-C camera. I only used the 28-70mm lens once, and used the wide zoom and the Tamron fairly often on the A7R with APS-C crop, occasionally with crop disabled. While it’s possible to get a bit more wide-angle from the 10-18mm by shooting full fame, the 15 megapixel crop is a 100% perfect frame every time with this lens.

Despite the phase-detect focus of the NEX-6, this camera proved less accurate and slower in all conditions. Its main benefit was better timing for shots once the finder image is focused and stable, along with quieter operation. It may be a smaller body nominally but there’s little practical difference. Also, I was wearing a baseball cap, the minimum headgear needed in the sun. The left-end viewfinder eye position prevented a right hand ‘on top’ vertical grip on the NEX-6 while the central eyepiece of the A7R allowed a choice of grip style without having to remove the peaked cap.

The most significant loss my choice involved was telephoto power. Shirley’s 250mm f/6.3 reach on APS-C would have demanded a huge lens, a true 375mm or in practice a 400mm, to get the full benefit of 36 megapixels on full frame. It would also have demanded at least one f-stop more stopping down to match the critical long lens depth of field. I didn’t have an E-mount 24 megapixel body, but if I had one my 18-200mm would have slightly outreached Shirley’s 250mm as used on 16 megapixels.

This snake bird (anhinga) was photographed using the NEX-6 and 18-200mm (162mm and f/8), from a moving boat. There is no trace of shake at 1/250th, indicating the VC stabilisation works on this body. I got excellent results from the NEX-6, which I picked up at The Photography Show on March 4th with its 16-50mm collapsible motorized zoom on a special deal. However that deal was not as good as the current B+H of $524 with free accessories.

There are no lenses yet made longer than 200mm for the FE mount. If there are any made other than an obligatory zoom to 300mm they will be expensive and limited to the E-mount system for ever. In contrast a Canon, Nikon or Alpha SSM long lens will always be usable on SLR-form bodies and also on mirrorless – possibly on various mirrorless systems. Canon EF lenses for example can be used on almost all mirrorless bodies, and Nikon teles have the possibility of fitting to their 1 system 2.7X factor bodies with totally successful functions and focusing. I’ve tried this and it works – an 800mm equivalent with outstanding image quality, from a 300mm.

It’s for these reasons I have succumbed to ordering an LA-EA4. I value the LA-EA3 because it allows me to use some lenses with contrast detect focus and a pure image path, but my favourite 70-300mm Sigma OS will not CD focus. Buy the EA4, and I can use all my screw drive Minolta and Sony glass.

This is why I sill feel the A7R can be described as the Swiss Army Knife! It can do APS-C as well as its 16 megapixel APS-C siblings, but switch to use full frame to squeeze extra angle from many lenses. My Tamron 18-200mm is only just compatible with the A7R – its VC stabilisation and general performance indicate that a firmware fix might be needed (see earlier comments) – but it can give me a 19 megapixel image sharp corner to corner with a range of image sizes from square to 35mm, at 18mm and f/11, making it as useful as a 16-200mm lens instead of an 18-200mm.

In March, I needed to write up the Samyang 24mm Tilt-Shift lens, which was only available for review in Nikon mount, and needed a full frame body. The A7R with a low-cost Nikon adaptor did the job perfectly and the magnified focusing function allowed full and successful use of the lens functions. I now have a wide range of lenses and adaptors, and there’s no manual lens I own which the A7R can not use.

The Samyang 24mm Tilt-Shift f/3.5 manual lens has better control over movements (including 30° intervals for independent rotation) than the Canon or Nikon in the same focal length, though it lacks auto iris, EXIF data and focus confirmation. Here it is used with a low-cost manual Nikon adaptor.

Using the 24mm Tilt-Shift – a lesson here in floor/ground and ceiling/roof relationships and camera position. First shot, a typical eye level architectural compromise in which a normal wide angle keeps the verticals straight. The trade-off is that you get a similarly generous view of both the floor and ceiling. Second shot, moving the camera close to ground level. Third shot, applying a full vertical shift; the floor is now seen from an angle giving it much less emphasis, while the vaulted roof is seen from below. For real estate shots, the camera is usually placed close to the ceiling on a tall tripod, and a drop front applied, to show the extent of room interiors better by emphasising their floor area. This is stuff I learned 40 years ago working with 5 x 4.

The A7R stabilisation incompatibilty issue with the Tamron 18-200mm was ‘tested’ at considerable cost in lost shots. During most of the Kerala trip, fortunately including a few chances to get close to wildlife like the anhinger shown above, I used the 18-200mm on the NEX-6 for the slightly higher resolution and faster response. I’m very glad I did this and put the A7R away. No shot shows any sign of stabilisation failure. Finding a dramatic sunset location with rocks and predictable spray from breaking waves, I used the same lens on the A7R, which I had taken to the beach to produce some tests showing full frame coverage.

One of my frame coverage tests of the 18-200mm on the A7R. 175mm, 1/200th at f/9 – conditions which with stabilisation should result in a perfectly sharp result almost every time. Instead, this combination produced a jerked slightly double imaged unsharp shot every single time. Even at 21mm focal length this degradation was visible.

All the images (full frame tests and rock sunset shots) showed the same characteristic stabilisation jerk even at 1/320th, which I had not considered possible as the peak vibration from the A7R shutter occurs 1/250th after the shutter opens. It may not be shutter shock which causes this shake effect, but a firmware incompatibility (in timing signals?) between the A7R body and certain lenses.

Here is my processed image put through the new software Piccure, which I can recommend as the first program to analyse and remove shake effectively – see http://intelligentimagingsolutions.com – and which has significantly improved some of my A7R ‘shaken up’ shots to the point that when reduced to 9 megapixels, they are as sharp as you would have expected from a KM Dimage A2 (ah, the irony… we do make progress, don’t we?). Click the above image for a full size screen shot.

This was my final crop and process from the shot involved, which was an 18.2 megapixel ‘more than APS-C’ crop from the full A7R frame, sharpened using Piccure and reduced to 24MB final image size.

This sunset, and all the similar shots taken with the 18-200mm on the A7R, proved too badly affected by stabilisation malfunction to use at the desired full size.

Again, Sony’s decision to disable OSS with many lenses on the A7R only, and to issue firmware updates to enable this, supports this theory. Whatever the case, I lost all my first night’s sunset shots for anything except web sized use (above – it’s not sharp for printing or library use). We returned two further nights at the right time and tried various combinations. It was a subject not helped by heat haze and blown salt spray (UV filters were fitted, of course, and needed cleaning frequently to avoid the whole picture being softened).

It’s so bad it almost hurts your eyes, but this was the focus point of many shots, and the double image (always in the vertical direction when the A7R was held horizontally) from the 18-200mm Tamron consistently gave a result like this. You might also suspect inaccurate focus and poor lens performance, but plenty of other shots at similar apertures and settings on the NEX-6 were completely OK. Perhaps the only answer with the A7R will be the near-£1,000 70-200mm f/4 G and replacement of the 28-70mm with another £1,000-worth of 24-70mm f/4. All that to get me back to where I was thirty years ago in terms of aperture and focal length range!

Using Piccure had no useful effect on this shot. It created triple outlines of the shake in place of double.

Eventually I got what I wanted but only with the 70mm reach of the 28-70mm OSS lens. The final, third, visit had cloud cover as the sun reached the right position. But, if you want to try this for yourself, visit Light House Beach in Kovalam at around 6.00pm (get a beer and wait) around April 16th-22nd. Like all such sunsets, there are just two times each year where the sun will hit the right position over the horizon.

The 28-70mm really didn’t have the power to give me the sun at the size I wanted, but at least with Photoshop processing this was a more or less acceptable result. For any shot like this, I would far prefer to have a true mirrorless camera – no SLT mirror either – and the A7R should be a perfect choice. Tripod use was not an option because of the crowds (which you can’t see) and combination of incoming tide and wave.

There was one lens which never let me down – the 10-18mm OSS. Whether on the NEX-6, A7R crop or A7R full frame this lens always turned in a perfectly focused and well stabilised result.

At the end of our Keralan tour, we were invited to have lunch and a short tour of a major ayurvedic resort hotel, Isola di Cocco. The tour only took twenty minutes, seeing some of the rooms, and was at mid-day when the light is not ideal. I took a few shots on the A7R including room interiors, and sent small versions to our hosts afterwards. The outcome was a request for commercial use of the image set in their next brochure. These were not exactly what we would do on a commission – for one thing, we’d normally remove towels from round the pool, pick the best time of day, make fine adjustments to room details and even use lighting.

A pool needs to be very clean to handle a shot from three inches above the water surface (at 10mm).

This is what we we used to do in the 1980s producing brochure pictures for travel operators and it was never a casual thing, more a very long and full working day with many appointments and too much driving. These shots were quick snaps, even if professional snaps, and we agreed to use for a charity donation (all Indian businesses seem to support local charities as a matter of routine).

We’d be more than happy to go back and do it properly though!

Back in the 1980s we had nothing to approach the 15mm equivalent angle of the 10mm used on crop frame A7R, even though a few such lenses did exist for 35mm systems. 35mm was like using a 6 megapixel camera, and our shots had to stand full page to double page use. I used a Pentax 6 x 7 with its widest non-fisheye 45mm lens and that was equal to a 24mm, something you can now find at the wide end of many compacts. It had to go on a tripod, as the exposure times with Fujichrome RF 50 film (for shadow detail) with the f/16 or f/22 apertures needed for sharpness in depth were usually around 1/4 to 1 second. The tripod was one you couldn’t easily take by air today, and the camera kit with two bodies and three lenses was heavy and bulky. Then there was a matter of a hundred or so rolls of film to handle the five bracketed exposures for each frame, lead anti-X-ray bags, and a large Metz flash with an extension head… and our 35mm Minolta kit on top of it all. Each room could take an hour or more to photograph.

Raw conversion controls enable the rich teak wood interior to be shown clearly without losing the highlights of the wall and white sheets.

And here I am today, complaining about aspects of the A7R when I can walk into a room like the one above, without a tripod, find my viewpoint, observe the horizon level display while composing carefully, and make an exposure at ISO 1600 with quality equivalent to ISO 100 35mm film. With a lightweight carbon-fibre tripod, this almost Leica-sized camera can now outperform anything we might have expected from 6 x 7 film and at ISO 50 is good enough for wall-sized prints and poster reproduction.

We have some aspects of A7R technique and performance to ‘fix’ and you’ll realise that I do not approach using any new camera uncritically. But there’s nothing else on the market short of medium format which can match what it does.

I do not address, here, the demands of users wanting to switch from conventional heavy-duty SLR type cameras whose gear includes fast long apo telephotos and zooms, who work frequently with sequence bursts, require to track sports action, shoot news, capture wildlife or want to snap their kids and pets (which requires much the same camera performance as covering sports and news… they may move slower but they are much closer!).

My present thinking is that the new 12 megapixel A7S with its 4K motion picture capture and extreme low-light performance may not be what I want, but I’m considering adding an A7 or changing the NEX-6 for an A6000. I’m not quite ready to sell the A900 or the A77. I’ll see how the A7R performs over the summer and update in due course.

The A7 MkII with full-frame stabilisation, announced in November 2014, tends to put my theory about power drain and lenses into doubt, but only because I might assume the 5-axis sensor stabilisation also puts a heavy load on the battery. It does have the different shutter mechanism found on the A7, and of course, it does not have a 36 megapixel sensor to power.

– David Kilpatrick

DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews, NEX System

Using the 10-18mm OSS zoom on full frame

Posted on December 3, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

The Sony E-mount (not FE) 10-18mm f/5 OSS lens can be used effectively on full frame for creative work and within limits for technically more demanding shots. Below, an uncropped A7R shot of the concourse at Abu Dhabi Airport, taken at 13mm setting, f/6.3 with my lens profile as provided below. Check the straight lines in the floor tiling, if you doubt that this lens would be of any use for architecture.

However, you don’t get this without a lens profile, and without due care to limit the focal length to a range of 13 to 16mm – not the full 10 to 18mm. Below, you could get this if you try 12mm straight out of camera…

This is a pretty awful case of vignetting and distortion – as you would expect. It’s from an APS-C format wide angle zoom, the 10-18mm f/4 SEL OSS lens for NEX, used on the Alpha 7R full frame mirrorless body. Early in the launch period of this camera, various far more attractive images appeared on-line using subjects like roads, rail lines, beaches and even shop counters where the lines look straight – rather like that drainpipe – because of where they fall in the shot. As you can see, anything with a horizon near the long edge of the framewould have given a very different impression.

However, Adobe offers a free utility which enables you to make lens profiles to correct vignetting and distortion.

I created a lens profile for ACR/LR using full frame and the 10-18mm on the A7R. The vignetting is such that the profile creator really can’t handle it, and overcorrects the extreme corners as a result. I’ve done f/4, f/8, f/16 at 12, 14, 16 and 18mm focal lengths using an A2 chart; for a lens like this, a much greater working distance and an A0 chart would really be desirable. The link below is to a zip file of the Adobe Lens Profiles I produced – for A7 and A7R, with .lcpp files for final use, and .lcp files for different settings of the 10 18mm I found useful.

10-18AdobeLensProfiles

At 12mm you can probably see the vignetting artefacts in the corners, the magenta corner shift and incomplete correction of the horizon line. You’ll also be quick to spot that the 12mm coverage has been reduced to something much less, lens profiles always reduce the field of view (they can not do otherwise).

The profiler simply can’t handle the degree of sudden fall-off in illumination given by the 10-18mm used on full frame. Manual distortion corrections can actually do a better job. At other focal lengths, the profile I’ve made works well enough, and if the frame is cropped slightly (still exceeding the APS-C area the lens is designed for) it’s possible to get good results and wider angles.

I have sold my Sigma 12-24mm HSM II which was used with the A99, and also sold a Voigltander 15mm f/4.5 I bought to test (zero cost fortunately, as it made a small profit between Gumtree source and eBay destination). The Sigma was not only very difficult to focus using CD, its HSM motor won’t play with Sony CD.

My .lcp full-frame file can be downloaded from:

//www.photoclubalpha.com/AdobeCameraProfiles/ILCE-7R FF (E 10-18mm F4 OSS) – RAW.lcp.zip

Just for good measure, here is an uncropped A7R 13mm focal length shot of the church of Maila Dumpara in Kerala taken to use dramatic converging verticals – which fail terribly unless the lines are properly corrected, the last thing you want in a strong upward angle is lens distortion. It’s very stiff test of any lens to do this. I have left the vignetting uncorrected. I rather like it. Click either this or the Abu Dhabi photo and you’ll get a larger image, about 1000 x 1500 pixels.

Samples produced for a dPreview forum question

There’s been a lot of discussion on dPreview forums of which lenses work on full frame E-mount, as Sony saw fit to put a Disable APS-C crop option in the menus of the A7 and A7R (almost as if they wanted owners to experiment). They have made other welcome changes of a similar kind which I’ll cover in a full review of the camera – which I can not do yet as I have no FE mount lenses for it, and with the current choice and prices, I can see I may never use FE mount lenses on this camera.

So, to answer some questions on dPreview’s E-mount forum, I posted these images and comments.

Here is a ‘native’ uncorrected shot of a local building taken on the 10-14mm on A7R at 11mm, f/10, ISO 100:

View: original size

Here is the result of using the profile, doing a crop and some straighten of slight rotated tilt, and pulling the scale down (with the profile applied, the roof apex is clipped off at the top as the lens has so much distortion its 11mm probably becomes more like 15mm when corrected):

View: original size

I’ve used some clarity and local burn adjustments on the sky to treat the image more or less as I would (except that I wouldn’t actually photograph this building at this time of day, with blinds drawn, etc).

For me, the 10-18mm on A7R with our without the profile correction offers the same options as using assorted lenses on 5 x 4 sheet film. It never mattered whether a 47mm didn’t cover the entire film, you got an image circle and could use whatever part of it you want. At 10mm the image, with the profile used, has strong corner cut-off but the overall circle of usable image greatly exceeds APS-C provided you stop down (f7.1 seems just OK, f/10 is maybe optimum, I’d certainly try f/16 despite fears of detail loss).

View: original size

The red crop mark is square – my ‘Hasselblad SWC killer’, as the classic SWC had just a 38mm wide angle lens. You needed to get an Arcbody with 35mm Rodenstock to go any wider on 56 x 56mm film (6 x 6). With the A7R and 10-18mm at 10mm, you get the equivalent of a 24mm lens. Not a 24mm fisheye on 6 x 4.5 like the widest ever offered by Mamiya… a 24mm rectilinear on 6 x 6.

The yellow crop mark represents a significantly larger area than APS-C (which is actually just a little under the 24 x 24mm square in width). It is shifted vertically, as if the lens was being used as a shift lens. If only the APS-C area is considered, its approximately 16 x 24mm area can be positioned right to the top of the frame, equalling a 4mm rise, or the equivalent of using a 6mm rise on a full-frame PC lens (most actually go to 11 or 12mm rise). There is only one lens made which can compete with this, and that’s the Canon 17mm f/4 TS. Admittedly this is a superb lens and when stopped down to f/11 and used on the 6D (Canon’s most shift-friendly sensor) will blow this result away for clean rendering of detail toward the frame edges.

And then, you can still use the 10-18mm in APS-C crop mode as a snapshot wide angle with pretty much perfect correction (Adobe’s own Sony profile for APS-C), for videos too.

– David Kilpatrick

DK's ramblings, Lenses - E mount, NEX System, Photo Techniques, Sony Digital Cameras, Sony Digital Csmeras, Uncategorized

Nikon’s DF finally recaptures the spirit of Dynax 7D

Posted on November 6, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

Sony said, as they took over the Konica Minolta camera division in 2006, that the day of mechanical controls and switches was gone. Economies of production and efficiencies of design meant that from now on, cameras would be controlled by buttons and menus. Anyone who remembers the original Alphas, the 7000 and 5000 from the mid-1980s, will also remember that this is not an original idea.

Minolta started to return to mechanical dials and visible controls after ten years of experiment with buttons, programs, and automatic functions. The Dynax (Alpha, or Maxxum) 800si and above all the 600si Classic restored traditional camera controls. The acclaimed 9 and 7 models followed, featuring physical switch or dial controls for exposure compensation (separate ambient and flash) and drive modes along with a shutter-dial style mode setting including the vital 1, 2 and 3. The triple custom memory setting enabling users to switch instantly between (say) outdoor action, studio flash and tungsten theatre lighting has survived as a Minolta gene all the way to the latest Sony generation.

Now Nikon has arrived with the DF, a very much standard autofocus DSLR using the D4’s 16 megapixel full frame sensor and a D610-derived AF and shutter specification, in a moderately compact retro-styled body with about the same number of mechanically switched visible controls as the Dynax 7D. It’s over ten years since the 2002 design of that camera (which finally appeared in 2004 after a change of imager from a planned Foveon sensor to the 6 megapixel Bayer Sony, rumoured to be a decision helped by Sony’s pressure on Konica Minolta as their main supplier for compact digital sensors).

Top, you see the Nikon DF in the black finish which very few sites are choosing to highlight – the silver and black looks SO much more retro – with 18-35mm Nikkor lens, 2013; below it, you see the Konica Minolta Dynax 7D with Konica Minolta (aka Tamron) 17-35mm. Note the strap lugs; KM moved one forward for better balance, but carefully kept the right-hand strap behind the shutter finger. Nikon has rather peculiarly chosen to place this strap lug forward as well, putting the strap physically between the index finger and the rest of the fingers.

The Nikon is hiding a flip-out aperture coupling pin to allow the use of original Nikon F (Photomic metering) or Nikkormat generation F-mount lenses, which have an external non-self-indexing meter coupler on their aperture control. Minolta’s full aperture metering used a self-indexing coupler which, unlike Nikon, did not required a back and forth rotation of the ring to tell the camera the relationship between the full aperture and any stopped down setting. In the 1960s, Minolta’s method enabled the fastest lens changes and also enabled ‘blind’ changing as there was no need to look down at the lens or engage a pin when doing so.

Nikon kept faith with their old mount when they introduced their AF system, despite the deep body register and narrow throat creating many problems with lens design. Minolta designed a brand new wider throat. At the time it made sense. Who then was to know that precisely the same constraints on lens design imposed by the narrow Nikon mount and deep mount to film register would make Nikon lenses much better, 20 years later, in the age of digital sensors with their need for telecentric designs and small rear exit pupils?

You’ll see that the old KM has a switched White Balance at the right hand end, more or less where Nikon has put a small PASM selector dial on the DF. Imagine it – a switch to get AWB, your most recent Preset, a Custom reading or to set in Kelvins. Where the D7D has a PASM plus 123 custom memory selector (locking) and hiding below it a mechanical switch for self-timer and sequence drive modes (3fps from the 6.1 megapixel sensor), Nikon has a very granular T (for time) to 1/4,000th shutter speed dial cramming those intervals in.

The actual shutter inside the camera despite being full-frame in the Nikon is really much the same as that of the D7D, a 30 second to 1/4,000th unit with X at 1/200th. And below the Nikon’s dial at the front (the KM has it at the back) is the drive mode selector, which does include the Mirror Up position that the D7D was lacking. There’s a mini LCD display on top to allow the use of the 1/3rd step control-wheel set shutter speeds, and to display the aperture on G type lenses which don’t have a physical setting and must be set from the body.

On the left end of the Nikon there’s a two-tier wedding cake for ±3EV 1/3rd stop exposure compensation, and below this an ISO control from L1 (50) to H4 (51,200).

I don’t seem to have a picture of the D7D left hand dial from above, but it offered something unusual – turn the dials a full 180° and the 1/3rd step EV compensation adjustments were exchanged for 1/2 step adjustments. The D7D also had a stack of controls on the back, like the lockable AF point selector control round the four-way selector, an ISO button (bearing in mind this camera was derived from the Dynax/Alpha 7, which used DX coding to read filmspeeds and an LCD menu entry to adjust them), Memory Set and other stuff which now seems rather clever and useful. The AS anti-shake physical switch, last seen on the Alpha 900, is one which would be welcomed back again. And of course this camera had AS. It was the first, and everyone apart from Nikon and Canon has followed the lead.

Where the back of the D7D was criticised for being a bit complex for the everyday user, the Nikon DF in all fairness bears a remarkable similarity right down to five left hand buttons and the metering selector switch, AE and AF buttons. The DF has more stuff on the front, including a control wheel which looks a bit like the battery cover off an early Mamiya SLR and two buttons down to the right of the lens escutcheon which vaguely resemble an ancient two-pin flash connector. Since there can be no actual need for the bulges they are placed on, this is probably deliberate. Same goes for the mechanical cable release screw thread in the shutter button, fun feature, but actually electrical releases can have many more functions and don’t transmit hand movement the same way. The DF has a pretty skinny right hand grip but exceptional battery life at up to 1500 exposures, where the D7D has a lovely big grip partly to accommodate a similar size of battery which rarely managed 400.

KM’s pioneering DSLR weighs almost 200g more than the Nikon, though both are made from magnesium alloy, despite the smaller format. That’s perhaps because the prism in the Minolta design was not downsized and the actual eyepiece magnification of the 95% view was 0.9X, where the Nikon dealing with a full frame is reduced to 0.7X (and still, of course, looks larger – 0.7X versus 0.9X 0.66X 0.95X, or a cumulative 0.56X scale).

As for size and fit, the Nikon is said be based on an F2, or maybe they meant an FM2 – but it’s not in any way, the prism can look vaguely FM2-like in the chrome version with leather panels, but the body is a completely different shape some 15mm shorter than an F2 but much fatter and taller. It’s a dumpy sort of chunk, is also shorter fatter and higher than the D7D despite having no built-in flash. D7D = 150mm x 106mm x 65mm (specifications misprinted as 77.5mm in many reviews, no idea why); Nikon DF = 144mm x 110mm x 67mm.

Now there’s one other way in which Nikon has copied the KM D7D – the DF has no video! It does have live view, and that means you can overcome the shortcomings of the D600-like 39 point AF module (limited to the DX crop area and in my experience with very small AF point areas making it ‘twitchy’). Live view has magnification and focus peaking.

The new Nikon shoots 16 megapixels not 6 – that’s what a decade of progress has done – and it shoots 5.5fps not an actual 2.8fps like the ‘3fps’ D7D managed. But it’s got just a fixed rear screen, 3.2 inches verses 2.5 (the D7D was ahead of the field in 2004). The Nikon also shoots superb ISO 6400, equal to the old sensor’s 1600 at a pixel level before you consider the benefits of the larger file as well.

And the pricing is borrowed from KM 2004 too – the D7D came in as a $1599 body only which made it a premium product against competition like the Canon EOS 300D, the Nikon DF arrives at $2749 body only and it’s a comparable level considering the full format, technology and cost changes, and a near ten year interval.

We’re sure the Nikon will be a success and this article is not trying to knock the concept or the execution. It’s just here to point out that a decade earlier, Minolta had designed and Konica Minolta eventually produced a DSLR with a general philosophy of physical, external, mechanical-feeling controls. As the pictures show, the Nikon DF could almost be a tribute to that design rather than something based on historic Nikon film bodies – which it quite simply isn’t!

– David Kilpatrick

Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, News

Sony A7 merges NEX and RX lines, RX10 revives classics

Posted on October 16, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

Although some of my information back in September was off-mark (writes David Kilpatrick), the post which I put up here was definitely right about the new A7 or rumoured ‘full frame NEX’ being based on the RX body design. I gather it was not the Alpha division, or the NEX division, which handed the prototype cameras to photojournalists from Magnum and Panos agencies. It was either Sony management at an even higher level, or the Cyber-shot division. The photographers involved had previously been using the RX1. They were given the pre-production A7 as a development of the RX1. It may even have been produced because Sony got the feedback that an RX with interchangeable lenses would be great.

Richard Kilpatrick attended the London launch event on Wednesday 16th October and has a small gallery of JPEG shots taken with prototype or pre-production bodies and lenses:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/sony_a7_a7r_samples_by_richard_kilpatrick

Richard also relays these comments (now finalised and properly written, evening of a busy day):

Both cameras are deceptive; you simply don’t expect this image quality out of something that light. It’s not like carrying a Leica, where you’re wielding something that might double as a weapon – the magnesium body and full-frame sensor feel solid yet after carrying my regular full-frame SLR, it’s a genuine shock.

The Zeiss lens on the Alpha 7R I used, the 55mm F1.8, looks to be exceptional. When first looking over the JPEGs, I went straight to the corners – the clarity, the even illumination, just instantly impressive. The kit lens I didn’t spend as much time with, and I tried it on the 24Mp Alpha 7 mostly investigating the AF, but I would be opting for primes anyway on this body. I’m curious to see how it handles Leica M-targeted lenses – there will undoubtedly be a 15mm or similar, but one of my favourite inexpensive lenses on the M9 was the Voigtländer Super Heliar II, which showed dramatic falloff and magenta tinges in one corner on that full-frame CCD. It was possible to correct, it seems Sony’s work on short registration full frame may be extremely successful, or their lenses are very well matched. Either way, it works.

I’m not very familiar with Sony’s user interface, and I found some controls slightly unintuitive – on this pre-production model, I couldn’t change the ISO whilst the file was being written. That’s the sort of thing which if I’ve left it set to Auto, or simply hadn’t been paying attention between uses, I might want to do – noticing an incorrect exposure and wanting to rapidly correct my error and reshoot.

Other areas of the UI impressed. The animations for aperture and so forth as you adjust the wheels are quick, clear and unobtrusive, whilst still providing the feedback that would allow less experienced users to see which direction they’re heading and what options are available.

The main screen is very nice. Sharp, and I’m a big fan of articulated screens that allow the use of a camera in a “waist level finder” format. Felt solid, robust enough to cope with professional abuse.

Card door and battery compartment aren’t combined, which is a bonus on a compact body. It also has a well sculpted grip. Perhaps it’s unfair to make direct comparisons, but let’s say I prefer this sort of body design to the flatter, more ‘retro’ inspired mirrorless options on the market.

Can not mention this enough, it’s tiny. It’s properly tiny. Not tiny like “well, it’s as big as a classic SLR from X manufacturer, but it’s packing a tiny sensor in there” – it’s “35mm film era compact body” tiny. With a proper, serious sensor in it, the design compromises to achieve a digital, high-tech UI in a small form factor feel like a much better trade than if you’re working with small controls and sacrificing sensor area.

Port covers are hard plastic, hinged, a bit annoying (rubber ones will at least bend if you catch them by accident). Again, lack of familiarity with Sony catches me out here, as the accessories I’d often expect to hook into the ports use the hotshoe accessory port. An adaptor for the earlier hotshoe is available and about £25 apparently, I was more concerned that I wouldn’t be able to use a regular wireless trigger and thus finding a conventional – albeit very sophisticated – hotshoe was reassuring. I wonder how many regular professionals share that perception – that there will be a non-standard interface on the Sony body.

Shutter sound is very solid, mechanical. A really nice sound. There is not a fully electronic shutter mode available, so no silent shooting, but it’s discrete enough.

Ergonomics are really good. The wheels are logical, I found my way around it very quickly on the whole, though without the experience David has of Sony’s software I didn’t know where to find specific features right away. It was logical enough for the main features, such as setting file size and type. There’s an optional battery grip, though it’s really not vital for changing orientation – the camera is so light, one handed shooting and quick rotation is easy.

I am not a fan of EVFs, though I’m happy to work with them if that’s what I’ve got, an optical viewfinder will always be my preferred route. That said, the EVF really did impress. It’s very sharp, has an impressive refresh rate and of course, somewhere there’s a lot of data being shifted to generate that 2.4Mp image. Cannot deny the technical accomplishment! The overlaid virtual horizon was useful and unobtrusive, though I wasn’t clear on what focus point I was using due to my lack of familiarity with the interface.

Sensor exposed when lens detached. This is common on mirrorless bodies, but I’d really like the option for the shutter to close when detaching a lens. Pros do not treat their kit the way an enthusiast or amateur will cherish the substantial investment – the job, be it on sandy beaches, muddy fields or pouring with rain at a wedding, must take priority and the cameras and lenses get subjected to abuse.

I want one, in an abstract way. it’s really very nice. To expand on that – I’ve a feeling when I see what the finished firmware and raw files offer, and have had more experience with the Zeiss lenses in particular, the shift to an EVF is a change I’d willingly accept for the size and quality advantages, but it’s also just a lovely bit of design. Really appealing.

Sony want to move to pro market. Sony have pretty much always had good glass and bodies, but this offers something really unique that should appeal to many professionals – not least because of that 36Mp sensor.

NEX brand is no more. All models will be united under the Alpha brand, with A, E and FE mounts (Alpha, E and Fullframe E) – Richard Kilpatrick

That it should use the NEX E-mount (already used for full frame on the VG-900) was never in any real doubt, though other prototypes may have existed using a different approach. Today, worldwide, the A7 (24 megapixels full frame with Phase Detect focusing pixels on the sensor) and the A7r (36 megapixels without PDAF, but with AA filter) were officially announced.

Compare the body here with the RX1 below – and make a special point of looking at the film plane index mark on the left-hand top plate end. You’ll see that the sensor is positioned much further forward in the A7 body, as the FE mount has the same 18mm register as the original E-mount (including the RX-style decorative orange lens throat bezel) and the RX body is thicker than a NEX even before this is added. This enables a flush-mounted double hinged rear LCD screen, but it’s not a fully articulated or reversible screen, which is a pity.

You will also see that the entire body has been extended in length, despite the RX being full frame.

This is necessary to accommodate the mechanical drive for the focal plane shutter, which sits more or less between the lens and chunky right hand grip (the RX has no FP shutter as it uses an interlens design). All other principal aspects of the A7 stem from the RX design but the construction is not the same, with multiple magnesium body components sealed together and a different set of interface covers.

The cameras include WiFi and NFC (NearField) communication to enable cable free transfer of images. It does not have built-in GPS but a GPS module is expected for the Multi Function Accessory shoe. The cameras have 2.3K dot 0.71X 0.5 inch OLED EVFs, essentially the same as the A99 with a similar generous eyepiece size and auto switching.

There also appears to be some extra depth to the body. You could dream that the extra body depth, length and height conceal the required mechanism for in-body stabilisation… but it’s just what is needed for the focal plane shutter.

We had hoped that the 35mm f/2 lens would be replicated, but this was not to be despite some information that the 35mm being used on prototypes was ‘the same’ as the RX1. Instead, there’s a 35mm f/2.8 Zeiss. I will admit to being underwhelmed by that, as it puts the A7/A7r into a category which almost every camera ever made matches (very few cameras can’t achieve a 60° view angle at f/2.8 – it’s what the cheapest compact 35mms used to start with). It is not stabilised.

One zoom lens also announced – a lower cost stabilised(?) Sony G 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 – also fails to set the heart racing (or the hands racing for the wallet) when you consider its modest aperture and fairly substantial size. Unlike the 35mm, it has a rear ring which is marked for aperture adjustment like the RX1 (silent or clicked at choice). The FE mount, while compatible with existing E-mount lenses and accessories and has the same ten-pin contact array, may have additional protocols to handle the on-lens aperture setting.

The 28-70mm zoom is not a true parfocal, it’s similar to lenses such as Canon’s 18-135mm sold with their EOS 70D which almost negates the value of on-sensor PDAF by having massive focus shift when zoomed.

If you want contrast detect focus to work, you need parfocal zooms. You need to keep the subject as close to being sharply focus when you zoom as you possibly can. This zoom does not have a constant aperture though setting it to f/5.6 or smaller may have that effect, and it has a large varifocal range (closest focus at 28mm is 0.30m, at 70mm, it’s 0.45m).

Looking at this, I feel that the 24-105mm Sony f/3.5-4.5 D I’m using on my A99 has real appeal.

This shot shows a Carl Zeiss 24-70mm f/4 OSS lens, not a kit lens, but an option at a high price. This is a more realistic range. My guess is that this lens will not only be a constant aperture (regardless of setting) but also parfocal so zooming during video will not force a refocusing process.

The A7 models have audio manual level control during video and a conventional 3.5mm jack for mic input, clean HDMI output for professional external recorders, and for stills only (not video which remains 1080 50/60 or 25/24p – there is no 30p option) the camera will play back at 4K resolution for the new Triluminos gamut Sony 4K televisions.

The final lens of those released with the camera is a 55mm f/1.8 – again, a slightly odd choice for an expensive standard angle lens of reasonable speed without being special. Bear in mind all these lenses are weathersealed and built for professional use, with the kind of smooth focusing and aperture control required for video as well as stills. A 70-200mm f/4 is also released, putting a total of five lenses in the showcase for launch despite the absence of a true super-wide.

A brand new LA-EA4 Alpha mount lens adaptor provides phase detection AF via an SLT mirror, and has sufficient clearance internally to prevent image cut off (the LA-EA2 casts a shadow on the sensor as it has a smaller throat). A new 70-200mm SSM G II A-mount lens has been launched today as well as is picked out by Sony as compatible with this adaptor.

For most potential buyers, the preview of many other lens adaptors – for Leica and for Canon, as examples – will not just be an added attraction, it will be a essential function. It would be interesting if the FE-mount allows adaptors with their own aperture ring controlling lenes such as Nikon G, and reporting EXIF correctly to the A7’s CPU. That kind of detail we’ll have to wait to learn about; most early reviewers will have other concerns. Adaptors are vital because this camera is launched in sharp contrast to the original NEX-5 and 3 models, with at the best a semi-wide prime lens and a basic wide angle on its zoom.

The NEX system set off with a 24mm lens equivalent, an 84° angle of view considered to be the most desirable all-purpose wide angle, in the box. The NEX SEL 16mm f/2.8 may have had its critics and its QC problems, but it’s become a much-loved lens and got hundreds of thousands of NEX owners off to a great start needing no other wide angle lens. It also had the 12mm wide and 10.5mm fisheye adaptor options at modest cost, meaning that those who wanted true wide views had no reservations buying into the system.

The A7/r is in sharp contrast to this, without no prime in the launch range shorter than 35mm. Professionals would definitely want to have a fast 24mm (and a faster 35mm!) and a geometrically good 20 or 21mm. The Leica 21mm Super Angulon was almost the standard lens for photojournalists from as long ago as 50 years, reaching a peak of popularity in the 1970s, still considered vital when you’re in a tight situation with crowds. The A7 is an incomplete professional tool until it has a moderate sized, f/3.5 or f/2.8 20-21mm. Vignetting is acceptable as long it’s not accompanied by a colour shift. Vignetting actually helps with the look of the images!

The AA filter

The A7r with its D800 level resolution (but a sensor not related to the D800) has the AA filter removed, as in the RX1r. I have tested the RX1r against the RX1 for the British Journal of Photography and I’ll write here about the whole issue of AA filters and moiré only after the BJP has published my report. I will say that the moiré is not a minor issue, the RX1 standard version is already capable of throwing up moiré as it has a very weak AA filter, and the RX1r is bitingly sharp.

So why does Sony do this? It’s hostile to video though the scaling down from the 6000 pixel sensor to a 1920 pixel HD frame is accompanied by moiré removal. The answer lies in conventional contrast detection autofocus. AA filters reduce fine detail contrast and tend to smooth the luminance peaks and troughs used by contrast detect focusing to decide when the image is most sharp. Removing the AA filter has a small but significant effect on the speed and accuracy of contrast detection focusing, along with an improvement in many irregular textures like distant woodlands, lawn grass and human skin. So if you incorporate image processing able to remove some of the resulting moiré, it makes sense. This is the route being taken by most other makers now to get the best possible live view auto follow-focusing.

The A7r sensor has a sensitivity of 100-25,600 expandable to 50, and to 51,200 with multi-frame noise reduction.

The battery

The RX1, like the RX100, charges via micro USB and uses a very small battery., NP-BX1. This is fine for running a camera without a focal plane shutter, though pushing it for capacity when running the larger RX1 with EVF (you need spares). The A7 models have a large finger grip partly to accommodate a more substantial battery. The tiny NP-BX1 is really a consumer compact camera cell. The NP-FW50 used by the A7 models is the same cell used by NEX and Alpha 55 (etc).

A battery grip VG-C1EM accepts two of these cells for extended shooting. Charging remains in-camera despite the battery size, as with the Alpha 3000, the first camera to charge this battery type via USB. However, there is an external battery charger available.

Availability

Sony state ‘mid November’ for worldwide shop stocking. B&H already has offers in place:Sony A7 digital camera body only $1,698
Sony A7r body only $2,298
Sony A7 with 28-70mm $1,998
Cyber-shot RX10 see below $1,298
CZ 24-70mm f/4 OSS $1,198
Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA $798
Sony FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA $998
Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G SSM II $2,998
Sony LA-EA4 SLT Alpha mount adaptor $348
Battery Grip $298
Charger $48
Off-camera flash shoe (also for all other cameras with Multi Function Shoe) $198

The RX10

As this image, released in the early hours of the morning, shows it’s a bridge camera with an 8.8-73.3mm f/2.8 lens which is equal to 24-200mm on a 1″ sensor (2.7X factor, 2:3 format shape). This is the spiritual heir to two cameras – the Konica Minolta A200 and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1 – rolled into one. The A2/A200 was described as having a 28-200mm lens, but because it had a 4:3 format shape, the lens was actually equal to a 24mm if you wanted an 8 x 6″ print shape (the 28mm equivalent assumed you cropped the frame down to 2:3… not many people know that…). And that camera had a 7.2-56mm lens, which tells you that the 2/3 inch sensor is for some reason more like a 3/4 inch sensor relative to the 1″ standard.

The RX10 has a mechanical zoom just like the earlier Minolta/KM and Sony models. As long as the lens lives up to expectations, it’s going to be a great general purpose camera, with its 1/3rd click stopped aperture ring round the lens and its Alpha style mechanical AF mode switch. Why would you really want anything more than this for 90% of your out-and-about photography? It has Nearfield (NFC) connectivity but does not have WiFi, or GPS built-in. It does have the Multi Function Accessory shoe which can add many accessory functions in future.

One surprise is that this camera has a mini XLR balanced powered adaptor kit for microphones – this is the small XLR you may have seen on wireless mic sets, locking and more secure than the minijack which is built-in for regular use. This also has audio level metering and manual gain control (thus beating the Alpha 77, which remains hampered by forced auto gain for audio).

Local noise reduction

All the new Sony models have improved sensors and processors. The A7r has the microlenses moulded directly to the sensor, rather than added in an overlay layer as it normal, and they are gapless. The RX10 has a back-illuminated sensor. All have ‘local noise reduction’ which sets alarm bells ringing. If it’s a function that only affects JPEGs, all very well; if we have adaptive local NR affecting raw files, it will only be acceptable if it can be turned off (at least, to some users).

DK's ramblings, News, NEX System, Rumours, Sony Digital Csmeras

Sony Alpha 3000 review by David Kilpatrick

Posted on October 9, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

The A3000 is an E-mount camera which looks like an SLR but takes all your E-mount lenses and has a pretty good 20 megapixel sensor. It even has a metal lens mount. So what has been saved? You can now (2018) find these five-year old bodies for as little as £100. The saving is mainly in the expensive EVF innards – it uses a tiny 0.2″ display and a high power eyepiece, more like a consumer compact with a token EVF.

There’s not much really, in a difference of just three tenths of an inch. There’s even less when the inch isn’t a proper inch, but the sort of inch used to express the size of sensors or display chips. Except, that is, when the difference is between 0.5 inch and 0.2 inch and you’re comparing the electronic viewfinder of cameras like the A6000, NEX-6 or Alpha 77 with the EVF found in the entry-level Alpha 3000 (above and below, from both sides).

Here’s our 2013 review:

I’ve had the Alpha 3000 (ILCE-3000, Sony model reference number) now for a few weeks (writing in 2013), and used it as much as my eyesight and patience would permit, given a wide choice of other cameras to use instead during the same period. I can now say without fear of being shot down in flames that it has the most inadequate electronic viewfinder I can remember using, including finders on various bridge cameras of the distant past.

The viewfinder of the vintage Konica Minolta Dimage A2 used a 0.44 inch 922,000 pixel display chip with a generous eyepiece size and accommodation latitude. That is, anyone able to focus their eyes comfortably between 1m and 3m, with or without specs, would rarely need to touch the dioptre control. The Alpha 55 used an 0.46 inch and the Alpha 77 (and accessory EVFs) 0.5 inch.

The A3000 eyepiece has a hard plastic surround and small, only slightly recessed ocular. The accessory shoe is over the eyepiece unit not over the camera body, and the eyepiece assembly sticks out well clear of the screen.

The Sony A3000’s EVF has 201,600 pixels, not even equal to one-quarter of the 2004 Dimage A2 bridge camera’s display. Because it is such a small chip – a mere 2.88 x 2.15mm which compares to a match-head or a grain of rice – the viewfinder eyepiece has to be a low powered microscope. Like any cheap microscope, it only looks sharp if your eye is precisely centered and the slightest nudge to the focus (dioptre) blurs the image. I found that the click-stops of the dioptre control on the A3000 were so crude it was possible to have a sharp image between them, yet uncomfortably unsharp when set to the clicked position either side. I can’t put a graphic of the actual size of the display chip here, because different screen resolutions would change its size.

To make it worse, the quality of the ocular lens is very poor, with distortion and smeary blurring together with considerable flare from the brightly illuminated display chip; it does not have the level of multicoating or internal light baffles to present a crisp clear view. Since the main selling point of the A3000 over any comparable camera is that it has a built-in EVF, the extremely ‘stretched’ design parameters of this EVF will cost it sales in actual stores where it can be tried out.

The A3000 kit box. This unit is made for more than one country’s market.

Inside there’s no software CD, and that super fat looking manual is actually a minimal introduction to the camera printed in 12 languages. It is the Rosetta Stone for a future alien civilisation discovering the remains of Earth!

The bonus for buying a multi-zone package is that you get stubby cable UK and European mains leads. There is no battery charger, instead you get a 5v USB transformer (as with the RX100 and RX1 models) and a USB cable to charge the battery in-camera. The neckstrap is Sony’s standard chafing and scratching type.

Children, young women and most people under 40 in bright weather will find they can accommodate just enough to use the finder comfortably, though the vague smudge which represents the scene is only to be considered as a composition guide. If you are male, over 40, have typical Western rather than Japanese eyesight age-related changes and try the camera out in a dimly-lit environment you’ll hand it back to the salesman and buy something else which is easy to view through and shows a clear sharp image.

That said, the entire camera and its 18-55mm SEL black metal skinned E-mount lens costs a bit less than the accessory EVF for the RX1/100II. And you read that right, this is an Alpha (so are all NEX cameras, as anyone able to see the Greek letter on them will realise) but it’s not an Alpha A-mount. And though it looks like a DSLR or a DSLT, it is neither.

Thick skinned

The A3000 is nothing more than a rather appealing sensor upgrade to the NEX range, accidentally fitted into a NEX-3 body, dressed in a hollow plastic sumo suit. In Spain you can see parades with impressive giants, twice life size, concealing a very strong young man who can make them dance. That’s rather what the A3000 is like.

On an iMac 27″ screen you will see the NEX-5n and A3000 precisely life size. The front face of the mounts has been aligned.

My photograph doesn’t just show the relative sizes of the 5-series NEX body and the A3000 together. I have positioned the front face of the lens mounts to coincide. This enables you to see how much space is wasted BEHIND the sensor in the A3000. There should be no cooling problems for extended video shooting with so much air circulation! The A3000 has an focal plane index mark to show where the sensor actually sits inside the body (hard to see – right hand end above the strap fitting) but it’s ahead of the middle of the 38mm thick body, as the mount to sensor distance is 18mm leaving 20mm behind it.

The whole body, though it can claim to be small by SLR standards and therefore get a ‘smallest lightest’ accolade, is just a big plastic skin inside which the intestines of a much smaller NEX have been concealed. You get the same 3-inch rear screen, though without any kind of articulation or touch function and only 230,000 pixels like much earlier generation cameras.

You get a genuine metal lens bayonet mount not a cheap plastic version like the A-mount Alpha 58, presumably because the entire NEX system has always been of much higher overall precision than the A-mount range (just as the 1990s Vectis APS cameras were built to finer tolerances).

You also get a metal tripod bush, though this is in an odd position for panorama fans, located close to the focal plane but well centered on the lens axis; a really well-shaped right hand grip taking advantage of the larger body size.

It uses NEX-3 style controls lacking any front or rear wheels and just using the back mounted dial-rocker and unmarked soft-function buttons.

There is a super-simple interface on the left end of the camera with a single SD/MSPro card slot and a versatile USB connector which is remote release compatible.

The big bonus is on the camera’s fake prism top (which does have a GN4 flash, unable to control wireless flash, but giving excellent exposure and coverage with the 18-55mm). Here you find the Sony Multi Function Accessory Shoe, reassuringly metal and hiding an array of contacts under its forward edge. The A3000 has no HDMI port, no microphone input despite pretty good built-in stereo mics, no remote release socket, no wifi, no GPS, no wireless flash, no studio flash sync socket. It can or will have all of these through the Multi Function shoe. I have not been able to check whether it can also support one of the superior EVFs which would fit (I do know that the Alpha 99, for example, does not support an RX1 EVF mounted in its similar shoe). Perhaps Sony’s expectation is to sell barrowloads of these extremely cheap (£299/$399) entry level interchangeable lens cameras and see the new owners buy two or three lenses, flash, microphones and more.

It’s about time they actually launched the GPS module which this shoe is contact-pinned to accept.

See current price of A3000 kit at B&H

High resolution

Against all the minimal feature set and basic menu-driven user interface must be set one of the best sensors around, the 20 megapixel APS-C seen earlier in the Alpha 58. It is not a stunning sensor, in that some noise can be seen even at minimum ISO, but that may be because it’s got a very weak AA filter (helps with contrast detect focusing) and decent colour discrimination. Applying just a little raw conversion NR keeps the images clean up to 1600 and allows usable (professional, on-line library etc) ISO 3200. It can go beyond this right up to 16,000 but if you need this sensitivity, you’ll find the EVF so noisy and dark it’s hard to see anything at all.

At ISO 800 (click these sample images for the full size file) you can see the general focus accuracy and sharpness of the 18-55mm used wide open, f/5.6 at 55mm, and also the quality of the flash for shots like this.

This is an ISO 12,800 in-camera JPEG at default settings.

This is the same shot carefully processed using Adobe Camera Raw Photoshop CC.

Here’s a shot at f/8 and 18mm, at ISO 100 (minimum) processed without any NR or sharpening from raw. The sky blue does show some noise even at this low setting. The sharpness of the focused zone (to the left side) is excellent.

Inside the Castle Restaurant, Edinburgh, the light is natural window-light, looking good but fairly low. This is 1/30th at f/9 with ISO 3200, processed from raw with some sharpening and some NR. I’d say nice colour and tones, a little soft because of limited depth of field, but sharp where it can be expected to be.

This one is also ISO 3200, but it’s been put through Photoshop CC Noise Reduction filter (NIK Dfine 2.0 looked superficially better but created artificial looking tone breaks) and then downsized to 3600 x 2400 pixels.

There is no phase detect focus on this sensor, and the only focus method is contrast detection, as on earlier NEX models. It carries this out quickly and extremely accurately. Anyone used to the vague calibration of traditional DSLRs will be amazed by the lens quality the A3000 can reveal just through its pinpoint focus ability. No doubt this is helped by the rigid mounting of the sensor, which has no SteadyShot stabilisation and no vibration to clean off dust. The only self-cleaning is an anti static cover glass. A rigidly mounted sensor requires none of the complex carriage supports and adjustments found in Alpha DSLRs and DSLTs right from the Konica Minolta Dynax 7D onwards. It is probably more accurately parallel to the lens mount than an Alpha 900 or 99, let alone any of the lesser models.

Since the camera has an electronic first curtain focal plane shutter speeded 30 seconds to 1/4,000th and full PASM controls (with a little difficulty) with fully auto mode, scene modes and respectable plus-minus override and bracketing/HDR functions there is nothing an Alpha 99 or 77, NEX-7 or any other high end model can do to exceed its abilities except in some cases achieve a 1/8,000th top speed and shoot burst sequences faster and longer.

Contrast and dynamic range from raw as exposed without any adjustment in raw processing.

With adjustments for black, highlights, shadows, exposure the sensor shows that it has recorded plenty of detail in all zones.

Used for single exposures, it’s just as much a professional tool as a Nikon D4 even though it might not last a week in the hands of a pressman. For £299 perhaps that pressman might consider buying a couple of these just to get into the next urban war zone street demonstration, or to cover a Spanish tomato fight. The pictures will probably be just as good and if the camera gets kicked into touch, the light plastic half empty body skin could well survive better than a crackable alloy jam-packed top model NEX.

Without accurate focusing and exposure, the 20 megapixel sensor would be of little value. Since both focus and exposure are read directly from the sensor, they are about as accurate as you can get. The raw files also show a very good dynamic range and as expected it’s just a little better in ISO performance and DR than the Alpha 58, because there is no SLT mirror in the way.

User set-up

Again, despite being an entry-level camera probably designed for a huge Chinese and Indian potential market but sold worldwide to ensure it’s taken seriously, the A3000 has vital functions which Sony could have omitted in a purely consumer model.

It has a setting for shutter release without lens, which makes it suitable for use with the vast range adaptors and third party lenses for the E-mount (almost every lens ever made for any format larger than half-frame, whether rangefinder or SLR). Will A3000 buyers want to spend as much again on Novoflex, Kipon or Metabones adaptors and legacy lenses? Maybe not, but they can, and they will work well on this body.

It has a ‘Setting Effect Off’ option – that is for the LCD screen and the EVF, disabling the accurate simulation of exposure/contrast/colour, and permitting use with modelling lights and studio flash. It’s got AF Calibration, usable with the LA-EA2 phase detect Alpha lens adaptor, and the contrast-detect AF is compatible with many SSM and SAM focus motor lenses used on the LA-EA1.

It has focus peaking for manual focus, with magnification, but the low resolution of both the EVF and the rear screen render this less functional than it is in some other models.

A criticism has been made of a very faint click generated, apparently through the audio speaker, when the shutter is pressed. I thought this was a mechanical or electrical relay click connected to the operation of the E-mount aperture, but someone has determined that if the circuit to the speaker is cut (beep off does not work) the click disappears.

Actually, the click indicates the moment of capture for brief exposures and the start of exposure for longer ones (like 1/15th). The first shutter curtain on this camera makes no noise, so you would press the shutter and hear nothing at all. Even ‘silent’ cameras like the RX1 and RX100 do make some noise from leaf shutters. This click is similar in volume or less.

To me this indicates proper concern for the user in a camera where there may be no image displayed on the rear screen and the eye may be away from the viewfinder. You can tell when the exposure is made because the finder blacks out, but if you are not studying the finder, you would have no idea. The shutter button does not have a very obvious point of resistance after first pressure for focusing and you do not have to jab it down. Very gentle pressure will take the shot.

Electronic first curtain shutters are slightly confusing because all the mechanical shutter sound you hear happens AFTER the shot is taken. It is valuable to have this tiny audible clue, which no subject is likely to hear, that you have timed the shot as intended.

In use

The practical side of the A3000 includes a weight so minimal (281g body only) you can take it on a Thomson package deal flight and still carry your wallet and toothbrush as well. The bulk means you are unlikely to mistake it for your iPhone, and the shape means that some people will take your seriously as a photographer while others who would have ignored a NEX will shy away or physically assault you. However, if you hold it out and use the rear screen to compose, no-one will do either as they will assume you are a beginner and ignore you.

To do this, you must press a button on the top. The camera has no eye sensors (it does not even have a rubber eyepiece surround and its 21mm eyepoint just helps to avoid the regularly clattering on spectacle lenses against hard plastic). This means that you can lift the camera to do a rear screen frame-up and the screen is, of course, dead. You get used to it.

The mode dial appears to be metallic and has raised markings. Note the Finder/LCD manual switching button and the safe position of the Movie button away from accidental pressure (it can also be disabled completely).

The camera lacks any kind of finger or thumb wheel so the adjustments are all made after the fashion of the most basic NEX (3 or 5 series models). This is only a bit of a nuisance when setting shutter speed and aperture manually. It does have a lockout for the movie button, a lesson learned from the notoriously free triggering of video shooting by the badly placed red button on countless previous Sony models. The button is actually placed where you wouldn’t hit it by mistake anyway – belt and braces.

The 3 inch rear screen seems to have a very good quality finish – a better acrylic, or might it even be glass? Mine seems to be remaining unscratched to the same degree as Gorilla Glass protectors do.

The EVF is only just acceptable in bright sunshine, when it is also most useful as the rear screen may become unusable. It does not really show the tones of the scene (take a shot and play it back and the difference is obvious) and it shows very little detail. You can make out all the larger shapes in a composition. In some ways it probably encourages good composition. You can’t really tell if the focus is sharp but green confirmation rectangles or a wide zone will activate, with beep if requested, and the shutter release won’t operate until focus is OK. It has optional grid line display and 25 focus points so the little display can get pretty busy.

I have no interest in medium rate burst sequences personally as there’s hardly any action or subject where I do not prefer to time individual shots. A modest 2.5fps is no different to 3.5fps or even 5fps or 1.5fps for me. Really fast stuff like 8 or 10fps or Nikon’s incredible 60fps on the 1 V2 and AW1 has some appeal as this does give you a chance of optimum timing for sports and general action. The A3000 doesn’t. OK, photograph your toddler stumbling towards the camera, just don’t try to advertise the kid on Facebook. Try eBay instead, it’s a far surer way to get rid of them before they become too much trouble.

The worst experience I’ve had with the A3000 has been EVF use in extremely dim indoor conditions, with or without flash, regardless of ISO set and lens used. The rear screen performs much better so it is not just a matter of the sensor’s live view feed. However, in typical well-lit interiors its only failing is that Auto White Balance doesn’t seem to work even if Setting Effect is enabled – it will look brighter than an optical finder, and reasonably clean and clear, but often show a strong colour cast which is not present in the final shot.

I’ve shot a few video clips with acoustic performers and found the sound to be good but very prone to auto gain ducking and boosting. To make decent videos with sound, you have to buy the shoe fitting accessory microphone or audio preamp unit. This is no great surprise as to date only the Alpha 99 has the right functions to control levels and use a conventional plug-in condensor mic directly.

And back to those small differences

I started out by observing the miniscule size of the EVF display chip. I’m going to end with something unexpected. Snapsort.com’s camera comparer states that the A3000 has a larger than normal APS-C sensor, 25.1 x 16.7mm instead of the normal 23.5 x 15.6mm. If this was the case, the camera would gain a huge bonus point, as 1.6mm in 23.5mm would ‘turn’ your Sigma 8-16mm zoom into 7.5mm-15mm.

But the handbook clearly states the A3000 actually has a smaller than normal sensor, 23.2 x 15.4mm. The Sony website says that it has a 23.5 x 15.6mm sensor. Amazon incorrectly lists the size of the original APS-C film format.

The handbook also claims that the EVF is 0.7X when Snapsort comparison specifications gives 0.49X – without knowing where this figure comes from, I can only confirm that the EVF is visually a fraction smaller than a typical 0.72X APS-C like the Alpha 580 (this is easily established by holding two cameras, one to the left and one to the right eye, and seeing how the finder windows compare). So don’t believe everything you read about the A3000. The 0.70X is true. The specs also show an extreme dioptre range (-4.0 to +3.5) for the eyepiece, which is necessary given the critical viewing conditions produced by such a high powered ocular and small display chip.

Actually the Snapsort comparator is very badly written, as it also claims a normal Sony Alpha body is 3.5 inches deep (it’s actually 2.55, 65mm mount to back, compared to the A3000’s 38mm) and that the A3000 is 4.7X smaller than an Alpha 57. This is based on measuring the A57 including prism and grip, and the A3000 on mount to back body thickness only. The A3000 is volumetrically 1.35X smaller including all external air space – the ‘box’ it can fit in – and in linear terms it’s only about 4mm less tall and 102mm long as opposed to 132mm. It’s small but there is a fair amount of bad measurement and worse measurement floating around the net.

Don’t tell me stabilisation would not be a bonus even for the 16mm. If not, why did they make the 10-18m an OSS lens? The 16mm chrome lens looks rather odd on this body.

Snapsort also lists the lack of in-body stabilisation as an advantage compared to the Alpha 57 because apparently in-lens stabilisation gives ‘less risk of blur’. In my experience the two methods are equally effective and our many Alpha bodies offer the choice between using IBIS and lens IS. The A3000 with IBIS (SS) would have been a great companion for the 16mm, new 20mm f/2.8, Zeiss 24mm f/1.8, SEL 30mm Macro, SEL 35mm f/1.8 and the Zeiss TOUIT 12mm f/2.8 and 32mm f/1.8 – not to mention the Sigma 19mm f/2.8, 30mm f/2.8 and 60mm f/2.8. All these excellent lenses currently must survive with no stabilisation other than pixel-shift electronic processing for video work on some cameras.

The A3000 is very small, but the saving is mostly on width left to right, and on the thickness of the body disregarding the ‘prism’ overhang and the right hand grip. The grip extends nearly as far as any other Alpha, meaning that you actually get a much deeper inside surface so your fingers wrap right round. It gives the A3000 the most secure right hand grip of any E-mount camera I know, almost 30mm of sculptured rubber-skinned moulding. Like the rear of the body, this appears to be completely empty. It’s just a moulded grip with a few connections in the top for the shutter button and on-off switch. It does not even house the battery (NEX type) which sits well behind it.

The lens

The cheapest kit for the camera includes a black 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 SEL OSS. Well, I might as well admit I sold the black 18-55mm which came with my original NEX-7 for £200. Previous 18-55mms were chrome, I bought a Tamron VC DiIII 18-200mm, and the black lenses were in high demand. Now, I get one again, but in with an A300 body and the brand new price was only £349 – one month later, cut to £299. So does that mean I really only paid £99 for this body?

I was not over-impressed by the performance of the 18-55mm on NEX-7. Now I find this latest 18-55mm seems much better. It is made in Thailand, not Japan or China, just like the camera body. Sony must have opened a new plant or recovered the factory which was swamped by two metres of floodwater a couple of years ago. Whatever the case, the Thai contractors (whose story started with the Nikon Pronea APS SLR) have a highly skilled workforce now with almost two decades of experience.

The A3000 looks great with the 18-200mm, whether Sony or Tamron branded.

This lens is so good it compares with the Fujinon 16-50mm I was using recently, and Fuji’s lenses are generally a level above Sony in quality as well as cost. I have found the A3000 body to be a great companion for my 18-200mm as well. It just looks much better on this body, handles better with the right-hand grip, and focuses better than on my NEX-5n. The EVF with the VC stabilisation is better to use than any rear LCD screen when a lens can be extended to 200mm on this format.

The final dilemma

As you will gather, I have big problems with the very poor EVF of this camera. I don’t really have any issue with the relatively low resolution rear LCD. The only other thing which causes me any problems is that I’ve been using Olympus OM-D E-M5 for a while alongside my Sony kit, and I have come to value its in-body stabilisation. I felt able to buy a Sigma 60mm f/2.8 for the Olympus – this is a truly wonderful lens, equivalent to a 120mm on the MicroFourThirds format. I don’t feel able to buy one for the NEX as I know the combination of a 90mm equivalent lens and no stabilisation at all will result in poor sharpness from a super-sharp optic, in many of the conditions I like to use such a lens.

Had Sony decided to put SteadyShot into this body, I think it would have made a great difference. The NEX mount market is just waiting for a stabilised-sensor body able to guarantee the best results from the hundreds of adapted lenses around (Olympus, of course, has a menu to let you enter the focal length of any adapted lens and thus ensure correct IS). But the price point would then have been missed and the precision of the assembly might have been compromised without even greater expense in manufacturing.

I have been using the OM-D more often; its 12-50mm standard zoom is a very good lens, I have a 45mm f/1.8 portrait lens and now the Sigma 60mm which is semi-macro with a great working distance for flowers and fungi. The 5-axis stabilisation works well. I have a drawer full of legacy lenses, adaptors and accessories for NEX but all of them are let down by the lack in sensor stabilisation. The only thing stopping me from ditching NEX and shifting to MicroFourThirds is the lack of a decent wide-angle within that system. I have access to 12mm (16mm+ converter) or 8mm (Sigma zoom with LA-EA1) but for the Olympus I really would need a 6mm lens and no such thing is made.

So, do I sell the A3000? I like to buy rather than beg and borrow cameras for test purposes. Borrowed cameras are OK when it’s not possible – there’s a Canon EOS 70D kit about to land for a couple of weeks – but bought cameras don’t half focus the keyboard fingers. It is easy to be too kind to a camera lent to you for a couple of weeks. It is not so easy to be kind to one you have paid for, unless you are dishonest and think that writing it up favourably will make a camera you don’t like easier to sell on!

Take the Nikon D600. We couldn’t lie about the showers of stuff deposited on the sensor by the shutter. We had bought a full kit. My reviews didn’t hestitate to mention the shutter issue. Nikon replaced the shutter in the camera under warranty and we immediately sold it, the buyer getting a considerable bargain (effectively, a 28-300mm Nikon lens, a GPS unit and a Sigma 17-35mm of proven performance thrown in free with a body that included a transferrable warranty). The buyer also knew who was selling it and could read the reviews. Now we see the Nikon D610 launched with an entirely new shutter mechanism, though Nikon has never once admitted the problem with the original D600. Reviewers and critics and technicians, 1, Nikon 0. Reviewer’s bank balance, -1.

My inclination is to keep this camera despite no GPS and a poor EVF. It’s so cheap that it is really only a swap for the NEX-3 kit I sold this year. I’ve written one paid review which writes off part of the cost of the camera (we make nothing from this website now unless visitors decide to subscribe to Cameracraft magazine which is not all that directly related). I can use it alongside my NEX-5n which is so much better with the 16mm f/2.8 – that lens just looks silly on the A3000. I can maybe even fit my optical finder to the 5n for the 16mm now. I have recently bought some extension tubes.

The A3000 has all the contacts – but are they all wired?

If only the A3000 had a tilting rear screen…or the NEX-6 had the 20 megapixel sensor… or the NEX-7 had the new hot shoe… if any one of the them had on-board GPS like my A55, A77 and A99… if the GPS module for the new hot shoe existed…

What a mess! Sony does not offer choice. It offers buyers’ dilemmas and buyers’ remorse, as in ‘did I buy the right model?’ or ‘did I pick the wrong system?’. Sony is doing just the same with the Alpha A-mount system. You have to pick a sensor you trust over a viewfinder which is great or a format and lens kit change or controllable audio input or having GPS or missing your built-in flash. No way can you have it all in one body.

(below – my conclusion written in October – we now know of course what was launched, and also that there will be an A5000)

Sony must surely follow this up with an A5000, or whatever, adding a few missing refinements to the camera and making it a £499 kit. That is what I would really like. But for the moment, the results from this cheap entry-level ILC are so good I have not touched the NEX-5n or the Alpha 77 since it arrived. And that is maybe the last word.

Except for the full-frame NEX or the interchangeable lens RX1 or the NEX fitted with Olympus-derived 5-axis IBIS – or whatever mid-October brings.

(added below – a comment at the end of 2013)

The A3000 is now sold for as little as £220 including in the UK (£185 before tax) and for $300 US. It is also sold with incentive deals for the 55-210mm E OSS lens, an excellent telephoto option, in addition to the 18-55mm. Am I upset that my camera’s value has been reduced? Well, I often sell cameras I buy to review, eventually. This one I decided to keep. It’s got the best imaging quality of ALL my APS-C cameras and so far, the 20 megapixel sensor responsible for this has not appeared in anything else except the plastic-bayonet A58. It’s a remarkable bargain now and it’s almost being given away.

(added below – a comment in September 2018)

I’m struck by how Canon’s way of making the new EOS R full frame mirrorless system look rather DSLR-like resembles what Sony did in the A3000!

– David Kilpatrick

Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews, NEX System, Sony Digital Csmeras

RX1 ‘NEX’ coming in October – 2 interchangeable lenses

Posted on September 10, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

Reporting from Perpignan, one of our good friends in the biz was enjoying the usual wine and sunshine with photojournalists from a French agency (or two). Turns out that right now there’s an RX1 with interchangeable lenses, just what we asked for when the camera was first seen at photokina, roaming the night-time streets of Paris in the hands of no small Magnum name.

The body is exactly the same size and the mount is thought to be a modified E-mount with additional contacts to enable the silent leaf-shutter and iris action which is the hallmark of the RX1 as a ‘stealth’ shooter. It’s possible that the RX1-N (not necessarily its name) lenses will fit other E-mount bodies, but existing E-mount lenses won’t fit the new mini-Leica-style body. But it may also contain a focal plane shutter, as there is such a high potential demand to retrofit Leica M and other vintage lenses to a full frame body of this size.

More we can’t say. The two international press agencies testing the camera right now are keeping very quiet – just like the camera. In fact it’s hard to imagine the RX1 becoming as ‘noisy’ when fired as a NEX (and they are pretty silent when first curtain electronic shutter is used). So a completely new, or partially compatible, mount may be involved. It would be quite fun though if it turned out that over 30 years after the end of the Minolta CLE, a decade after the demise of the Konica RF, and fully 55 years after Minolta’s first abortive bid to make a Leica M body system camera… that Sony put a plain old Leica M mount on the front instead.

Whatever the case, we gather only ONE lens has so far been released for trials and it’s probably exactly the same 35mm f/2 as the regular RX1/RX1X. A second lens is due by the October launch window and the informed guess is that it will be between 50mm and 90mm, our bets are on the most attractive Leica-heritage option, a 75mm between f/2.5 and f/1.4 in aperture. Those 75mms would have been far more popular on Leica bodies if the viewfinders had been better designed to use them. With electronic viewing, that problem disappears and there is no longer any need to keep to fixed steps like 35mm, 50mm, 90mm, 135mm.

In the meantime Hasselblad is having fun selling their STELLAR alongside the earlier LUNAR – the Stellar is of course an RX100 (Mark 1) with an exotic wood (eco-friendly, folks?) or carbon fibre handgrip and some funky styling in return for a 50% higher price tag. They’ve even opened a new Hasselblad brand shop in Japan to sell these luxury bits of luggage to connoisseurs.

I’ve been using the RX100II. Strikes me the STELLAR is light years behind before it even got of the launch pad. Maybe there will be a Stellar II by Christmas. Make mine an African Zebrawood grip please.

– David Kilpatrick

Our comments system is not working properly so I’ll add this here:

Our contact was sure it was an RX1-type camera rather than a NEX and that two lenses are involved, one in existence, the second to be tested shortly. There are two test bodies in existence, being trialled by two different picture agencies. However, this is third-hand info – other photographers in the agencies involved were talking about something they had seen in the hands of colleagues, and were in turn overheard by a journalist who is not a hardware specialist, who called me with what he had heard. If this was a full-frame NEX, I think it would have been identified as such and the RX1 would not have been referenced. However, it is also possible that the full-frame NEX (already rumoured) could simply be styled like an RX1. I did ask whether it had an eye-level finder but this was not mentioned and therefore not known. It would be great if it was just a full-frame NEX, able to do cropped images with existing E-mount lenses and to use the LA-EA3 (full frame compatible adaptor for Alpha A-mount lenses. It would also be great if it did turn out to use the near-silent leaf shutter mechanism. Both possibilities are speculation. We’ll know in maybe four weeks’ time.

DK's ramblings, News, NEX System, Rumours, Sony Digital Csmeras

Sony updates RX1 and RX100, adds new flash

Posted on June 27, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

In a move which will not delight many owners of the 2012-released RX1 and RX100 cameras, Sony has chosen to update both of them in fairly subtle ways which improve performance without changing the basic lens specifications at the heart of each camera. The makeover to produce the RX100 II is more thorough, and includes a tilting rear screen, a new back-illuminated version of the 1.0 inch CMOS sensor, and a Multi Function Accessory Shoe which can power an electronic viewfinder or other accessories. It also features WiFi and Near Field Communication for transferring those tiny 20 megapixel files to your smartphone, perfect for direct upload to Facebook (just shoot Small JPEGs instead, keep the big raw files untransferred).

You can view the European press release about the RX100 II here.

The RX1R is less thoroughly upgraded, as it’s basically an RX1 with the low-pass (AA) filter removed. Got to admit that we could have sworn Sony originally said, at photokina, the RX1 did not have an AA filter. Its performance seemed to back that up. Then, in the release version (which was very different from the September 2012 pre-production models, even in control details) this was moderated to say that there was a special low strength AA filter. Now, in the RX1R, the AA filter is definitely removed and some new processing added to combat the resulting increase in moiré and colour artefact production which always goes with the absence of the filter. Nothing else is changed; the two models are very similar to Nikon’s D800 and D800E, and like them will be available side by side. The RX1R does not replace the RX1. Whether owners of RX1 will see it quite that way, who knows?

At this level of camera, there will be plenty of buyers who want to have BOTH bodies. Just as, with the RX100, despite version II not having the imaginary extra lens range dreamed about by those who don’t realise what’s involved, there will be many buyers for the new model who will pass the original on to a family member or keep it as a spare.

See the press release about the RX1R here.

Finally, there is a new HVL-F43M flashgun with the now familiar rotating head design first seen on the HVL-F58AM. This slightly smaller but almost as powerful flash unit has the Multi Function Accessory Shoe (and can now therefore be used with both the above Cyber-Shots as well as NEX-6, A99, A58 and future SLT/NEX/Cyber-Shot models). It has an LED light for video, also useful for modelling when using flash off camera – but get our latest issue of Cameracraft, No 4, to read my detailed article on how the quality of LED light compares to other sources!

A question which remain unanswered is – when will Sony introduce the shoe fitting GPS module which is already provided for in the pinouts of the Multi Function Shoe, on the NEX-6, RX1, Alpha 58 etc? Having this on the market would certainly make the RX100 II even more of a must-have upgrade.

Be warned (perhaps by our review of the Alpha 58) that the promoted Tri-Luminos colour display compatibility – a change in the camera’s RGB sensor filters and processing – may not necessarily make for better colour with other devices, or for printing. It’s a good reason to buy a new Sony television but not an especially good reason to prefer the new models over the old non-Tri-Luminos type.

Finally, having removed the AA filter from the RX1 to create the RX1R, we must await the arrival (or non-arrival…) of the Sony Alpha 99R. That would be logical now that a refresh to new models seems to be called for after only 6 to 12 months on the market. Perhaps that is a bit cynical. What often happens in this industry is that a product will be revised when stocks of all the components for the original batches are used up, and not enough finished product is in the pipeline to satsify predicted demand.

The RX1 and the RX100 have both been runaway successes worldwide and it may be that new production was commissioned and presented a chance for hardware changes. Firmware updates for existing owners? A second priority, but don’t give up hope…

– David Kilpatrick

To discuss this on the Photoclubalpha Forum, go to (but remember it may take a day to be activated if newly registered):

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7770

DK's ramblings, News, Sony Digital Csmeras

20/20 vision – Sony Alpha 58 review

Posted on June 5, 2013 By David Kilpatrick

In the last year two cameras have been through my hands and impressed more than any others with the quality of their sensors. Those cameras were as different as they could be – the full frame Canon EOS 6D, and the pocketable Sony Cyber-shot DSC RX100. They have one thing in common, 20 megapixel sensors.

Of course there is no connection; a 24 x 36mm Canon sensor and a 8.8 x 13mm Sony sensor are very different. But if you shoot at ISO 125 on both cameras, and process from raw with a normally exposed scene, you will be hard pressed to tell the results apart.

So, when Sony – proving a giant-killer with the 1.0” format RX100 sensor – creates a budget DSLT model with an APS-C 20 megapixel sensor it would be reasonable to expect that this would outperform the RX100 and in the process prove superior to the 24 megapixel Alpha 77, 65 and NEX-7. It might even match the Alpha 99.

The Alpha 58 was announced at the end of February 2013, and some major websites had still not reviewed it by June. This is the first new Sony APS-C silicon for two years. It’s not found in any other body. Why the lack of urgent interest?

Perhaps, like me, the entry-level grade of the A58 has been responsible. It’s by far the worst Alpha body ever manufactured, and the first to have a plastic lens mount where machined metal is normally used. The whole physical feel of this Thai-made camera is inferior; it even has a slightly rough external texture which picks up handling marks the moment a store customer (or cynical on-line orderer intending to try, but return for a refund) so much as touches it.

It has a relatively low-resolution, small rear screen (2.7 inches and 460,800 pixels) which is in the simplest and most restricted kind of up/down angle hinged mount. Against this economy, though, you need to balance a better OLED electronic viewfinder based on a one-inch 1,440,000 pixel display and a change to the new Sony Multi Function Accessory Shoe (without a protective cap, and without the adaptor for the Minolta/Sony Auto Lock shoe). It also uses the larger FM-500H battery common to all other current Alpha models, not the smaller FM-50H used by the NEX and also by some previous Alphas like the A55.

What is really new about the A58 is the price. I was not interested in the camera, though curious about the new sensor, because it was $600 US or £499 UK with the most basic lens , a new 18-5mm f/3.5-5.6 SAM II with quieter and improved internal focus motor (delivered, like Canon kit 18-55mms, without a lens hood). Then while helping a professional friend decide how to replace an A350 used for some unique underwater photography where the Quick Live View AF function has no equivalent in other makes, I looked into the A58.

It was on sale, in Britain, including VAT and properly sourced from Sony, for under £350. The actual price of the kit was only £291 before added VAT sales tax. This was £100 cheaper than the lowest price of the RX100, less than any other DSLR on the market with anything like the same specification. Bear in mind what a replacement Sony battery costs (around £50) and what an 18-55mm fetches (officially more, but in practice around £100 new) and this body was coming in at about £150. That’s a point and shoot compact price.
So I bought one.

First impressions

The packaging for the A58 cuts down on many things – recent Alphas have been festooned with stickers, this one has a single swingtag and a sticker on the rear LCD promoting connection to Sony’s webserver to obtain PlayMemories Home, the kiddy-friendly name for what is probably quite functional software, if you happen to use a Windows PC.

When you have charged the battery and loaded it, the first time you turn on a similar message fills the rear screen. Everything works as you expect from an Alpha, though some mysterious glitch stepped the entered date back by two days. You can only set to complete minutes, not seconds. Some defaults are set to ‘on’ including Smile Shutter and Auto Object Framing, and for my use these were disabled and the recording mode set to shoot RAW+JPEG, sRGB.

The supplied lens is a cheap product glitzed up by the addition of a metal microskin on the front bezel, behind the rotating rubber rimmed zoom and focus tube, 55mm filter thread. The SAM focus is quieter than the original version. The plastic-on-plastic mounting action is smooth enough, but when changing between the 30mm SAM macro (very noisy and jerky motor in comparison) engagement of the contact array was not always positive and the lens had to be twisted back and forth once with the lock pressed to enable AF.

The A58 is set to use electronic first curtain and SteadyShot Inside sensor-based stabilisation, both switched via the main menus. The Function button, which can access most regularly used settings does not reach these directly (a second menu screen is involved, very easy to use). There are also direct access button-positions round the rear controller for the important Drive, Picture Effect and White Balance settings, and a dedicated ISO button close to the shutter release. These can be customised to a degree, like the stop-down/intelligent preview button on the camera front which can be changed to work as a focus magnifier.

What’s initially surprising is that the shutter sound is noisier than many cameras with flipping mirrors. It’s not a pleasant sound either, mechanical in a clockwork-motor way. It all happens after the shot has been captured, as you can tell if you make a long exposure. Maybe the lightweight mostly plastic construction of the body, with its minimal metal skeleton, fails to damp the sound.

The viewfinder has the same contrast and dark detail failings as the A77, and in some ways the old A55 finder provides a more useful view. The rear screen is not very bright, and there is no auto brightness setting, just a 5-step manual control. In return, whether you use the LCD or the EVF makes on a tiny 10 shot difference to the 700 frames expected from one battery using the former. This stamina is double that of an EVF camera using the smaller battery type and restores a more than acceptable battery life per charge to Sony’s consumer entry level.

What is excellent about the finder is the ocular. It has been designed to give extreme eye relief – 26.5mm from the eyepiece glass, 23mm from the rubber frame surround. This compares to 19mm/18mm for the same data on the A55 (eyepiece glass not well protected from dust and light ingress, but eye needs to be close) and 27mm/22mm for the A77 (very deeply recessed and shaded ocular, reasonable eye distance). Part of this is down to display module sizes: 1.0 inch for the A58, 1.2 inch for the A55, 1.3 inch for the A77. Matters are further confused by the A55 failing to use all its EVF for the image, so the eye also sees a large near-black surround except when using menus which then expand to fill it.

Overall, the EVF looks like a view which is A55 size but A77 quality, like using a cropped section of the A77/99 2.4 megapixel EVF module. Sony has made this much easier to use with spectacles, or with the camera held an inch away from your eye. So although it’s not the best finder ever, it may be one of the best choices for anyone who has trouble with eyepoint. I found the EVF very blue at its neutral point, and set two notches of warming up to match the eye’s view.

The controls are no different from any other Alpha, they don’t feel rough or weak, and every button push got a response as expected.

The cover for the single dual purpose SD/MSDuoPro card slot is not a tight seal, and does not need firm action to open. The synthetic rubber single seal door over the microphone jack (no manual level control), Micro USB matching the RX100, and Micro HDMI ports is a good flush fit. There is also a Minolta/Sony unique DC in socket with similar cover.

What’s missing is the old Minolta and later on Sony remote control socket. Instead there’s a pretty clunky wired remote which works via the micro USB port. It looks like a version of a Chinese generic. This connection offers the only way to get wireless remote control, with a suitable device, as the camera lacks the IR receiver and has no Drive Mode for it.

The body shape in the hand is just a little more cramped than the A55, far more so than the A580, both cameras we have and both ‘replaced’ in the Alpha line up by this one model. I’d say it was less of a good fit to my hand than the classic Minolta Dimage series bridge cameras, or the Nikon 1 V2. Both of these were around to compare directly.

The critical bit

Then after getting acquainted with the camera, comes the question of the sensor performance. Here, the viewfinder gave the first clue that unlike the ‘sweet sixteen’ CMOS this 20MP newcomer was not going to move any goalposts. In domestic lighting, the level of noise in the EVF is higher than the old A55 and comparable to the A77.

However, I chose to compare the A58 with the RX100, because of the great advances made in the RX100’s very small 2.7X sensor. The results show an interesting divergence from minimum (100 for A58, 125 native for RX100) ISO to maximum. There is almost no advantage to the A58 up to ISO 400. Both cameras, with similarly adjusted raw conversion, yield clean images and it’s not even easy to tell ISO 400 from 200 or 100. If you click the images below, you’ll access a full size original conversion from raw (ACR).

A58, ISO 100, full sun, shadow to highlight from raw

RX, ISO 100, deep shadow to full sun on white, from raw

A58, ISO 400, full sun on wide tone range, from raw

RX100, ISO 400, wide tone range in full sun, from raw

As you increase the speed, the 58 rapidly shows its advantage and by ISO 1600 has both a structure which looks finer in terms of granularity, and with far less chroma noise. Where a carefully processed ISO 800 from the RX100 might match a carelessly handled 800 from the Alpha, at 1600 it’s very difficult indeed to close the gap. By 6400 the RX100 is not really useful but the 58 can still deliver a fairly normal looking shot – it does begin to look like a desperate measure. Then you have 12,800 and the absolutely pointless 160,000 top setting which seems to be there for advertising purposes.

Taking into account differences in colour rendering, the advantage of the larger sensor is levelled if the RX100 file is reduced to 4500 x 3000 pixels and moderate chroma noise reduction applied. In relative terms, the small sensor is better, because it’s actually only a little over one quarter of the size of APS-C.

Compared to the 16 megapixel Sony sensor (NEX-5n, A55 and many later models as well as Pentax and Nikon variants) the 20 also fares pretty well. It has higher levels of luminance noise but minimal chroma noise. It’s not easy to reduce the luminance NR without softening detail, when using Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. It does not harm sharp detail much if left alone; if this sensor actually has an AA filter, it’s very weak.

This a MacBeth ColorChecker rendered using the official sRGB values.

This is an ISO 200 shot on the A58 with the greyscale white balanced to match the above, Iridient Raw Developer conversion using Iridient’s A58 profile. See later comments on colour and reds.

As for dynamic range, it falls off as the ISO in increased. At ISO 100 or 400 a typical high contrast sunlit scene is perfectly recorded, with only bright specular highlights clipping to 255-255-255. It can handle everything from shadows on dark areas to direct light on white. A few practical comparison shots show that the RX100 can do exactly the same things – indeed, precisely the same areas clip at the highlight end.

This simply indicates to me that Sony has matched the processes used in the two cameras against a common exposure and contrast standard. I’d have the rate the JPEG engine of the RX100 a little better than the Alpha, and images seem to need less work. Against the Alpha 99, the 58 gains some significant processing speed in raw converters as it’s producing 20 megapixel 12-bit files compared to 24 megapixel 14-bit.

Click this for the full size to see detail.

Compare this RX100 shot. It’s interesting.

A hidden benefit of the 20 megapixel sensor is that if you use Adobe Camera Raw, this program offers a range of preset optimised output sizes converted directly from raw, which can be previewed at 100% of their actual pixel size before conversion. All 24 megapixel cameras have this as their largest output size, all you can do is downsample. 20 megapixel cameras offer a 25 megapixel output option, as do 16 or 18 megapixel models. The RX100 has already proved to me that it can make a 25 megapixel image that’s hard to tell from a native A77/99 image. The same goes for the Alpha 58. It can be set to export to this larger size, and if you use a top grade lens and low ISO, the result will be better than a native 24 megapixel at higher ISOs with a medium-quality lens.

Overall, I find it hard to rate the new 20 megapixel sensor as better than either the classic 16 megapixel ‘sweet spot’ sensor or the maximum 24 megapixel APS-C, but it is as competent as either of these in its own right. I guess the truth is that at all these resolutions, superb image quality is possible.

Other aspects of performance

Since the A58 uses the 15-point, 3-cross AF sensor which has been proven ever since it first appeared in the A580 and A55 it has identical performance; fast, very accurate AF down to EV -1 (50mm f/1.4). The exposure metering is, again, the familiar 1200-zone Sony system and works down to -2EV.

The actual focusing mechanism works no better with SAM or SSM lenses than with screw drive. It’s not the best ‘old’ mechanism in there and it lacks fast/slow AF setting, but it’s fast for certain. In low light although AF will lock, it needs a good target. Throughout my use of the camera I found the focus the least accurate and consistent of any Alpha body I’ve used, leading me to question whether I had accidentally set the lens to MF, so many pictures were clearly focused on some other plane than the subject, nearly always a definite back focus. The AF module is officially the same as the A55, A580 and so on. I can’t help thinking it is the same design but perhaps, like the rest of the camera, built to a budget.

The A58 couldn’t really back focus this shot at f/8 but it took three shots to get one sharp.

Click the RX100 (f/5.6) example too, to see the real difference.

Switching between rear screen and EVF using the eye sensors, or if you have the rear screen off just turning on the EVF, is good on this camera. Its balance tends to prevent the eyepiece sitting against your chest, and thus avoids accidental activation, but it’s always brought the EVF into action by the time your eye is close enough to use the finder.

Regrettably the EVF and rear screen both lack the instantly visible high resolution needed to know whether your image is pin-sharp. Even the far superior finders and screens of the A77 and A99 do not give you the same awareness of this as an optical finder. The good news is that Focus Peaking can be turned on. This really isn’t sensitive or accurate enough unless you magnify the image, and much of the time, you simply don’t have time to do this.

So, the A58 is capable of pin-sharp images and you can be sure under the right conditions with the right technique that you won’t be short changed out the 20 megapixels you expected. But a lot of the time for everyday shooting it’s not very good at getting AF pin-sharp, and those same 20 megapixels do their best to show any error clearly.
In practical situations, ISO 400 is as noise-free as ISO 100 and gives you the chance to use a smaller aperture for more depth of field. The 18-55mm SAM II lens is not very sharp at 55mm wide open, and it proved optimistic to expect f/6.3 or f/7.2 to be much better. The old ‘one stop down for zooms’ rule works well enough. The 20 megapixel sensor shows signs of slightly softening at f/11 so the sweet spot for me has to be around f/9 or f/10.

The A58 has slightly warm tones overall and pinkish flesh colour

The RX100 on the same scene is more neutral or cool

You can click the images above for full size versions (same applies to all those shown in link frames like this).

As for colour, you’ll be happy if you have always like Canon DSLRs. not so happy if you were either a Sony (sunny!) or Minolta (full spectrum) sensor colour fan. This sensor shows every sign of having relatively weak RGB colour filters and a non-linear response, with underexposed shadows on higher ISOs in daylight tending towards magenta. It’s rather too easy to get putty-pink skin tones and a certain lack of subtelty in sky gradations, though blues and greens are not bad. Subjects like red flowers test the colour discrimination of the sensor to the limit.

It’s truly intense – but is it realistic? Camera profiles for raw conversion may tame this.

Let’s just say that every other current Sony Alpha model, and many past ones, will yield more visible difference between close hues. This is what you might expect from the more densely populated 20 megapixel sensor but, as ever, I’m left wondering why the little RX100 seems able to yield better colour (whatever DxOMark.com may say – but they also put the low light ability of the RX100 way below its actual performance).

At present there are no camera profiles available when converting files using Adobe Camera Raw, and the Adobe Standard colour seems to handle reds from the A58 badly (this is why I refer to Canon – the reds look much the same as problem Canon reds of the past). I don’t believe that red paint, red clothes, red street signs and red flowers are all are one type of red and when clipping warning is turned on, almost all the reds clip.

Shutter and flash

The shutter of the A58 is able to synchronise short-duration fast triggered flash, such as a thyristor camera top gun, up to 1/250th on manual without any shutter curtain clipping; at 1/320th, a shadow intrudes slightly on the frame. This is a better performance than indicated in the specifications, but for studio flash (mains powered) I would recommend working at 1/125th and for Sony/Minolta dedicated flash at 1/160th.

The shutter itself does not operate or make any noise whatsoever until AFTER the picture is captured when you use ‘Electronic First Curtain ON’ setting. The capping shutter blind has a cycle (close and return) of approximately 230ms overall in single frame mode resetting the camera ready for the next shot, or 115ms for continuous shooting which fits in with 8 frames a second fastest (cropped) frame rate. If you use the mechanical first shutter curtain, this adds exactly 50ms or 1/20th of a second to your release lag, which is not as easy to measure but seems to be in the order of only 20ms (1/50th).

Overall, this makes the A58 one of the most hair-trigger responsive cameras you can possibly own for capturing action – or would if the AF were faster and more reliable. Pre-set focus, use manual exposure, and you can trigger exposures with this camera as fast as you can think – just like the A99.

With its built-in flash or dedicated Sony flash, there’s the usual small delay caused by preflash. You may think the shot is being delayed more, because the shutter operates after the exposure, and then as the finder returns to life you get about 1/30th of a second of ‘review’ of the shot taken even with the 2s or 5s (etc) image review disabled. This happens all the time with the camera, the first frame or two of the finder refresh is a fleeting glimpse of your captured shot, and it’s useful. With flash you may be viewing a dark scene, the finder itself is blacked out when your flash fires, but this sudden bright image looks almost like a delayed flash through the eyepiece. Of course it is not, this is just an impression.

The built-in pop up flash becomes a rather aggressive AF illuminator when flash is active and the camera has trouble finding enough light for an AF lock. You certainly do see the effect of this through the finder, a surprisingly long and bright burst of light. It must drain the battery fast.

Flash exposure, long a problem with Alphas, seems predictable. A pile of black camera bags produces a full exposure (histogram hitting the buffers at the right hand end) while a white paper document in the middle of the frame results in one stop under. No doubt users will find specific flashguns or situations which produce wildcard exposure. That’s why you should always enable DRO+ Automatic or something like level 3 when shooting with flash. This dynamic range contrast optimisation process can produce great flash pictures out of the camera but remember it only works well at lower ISO settings, do not go over 800 and expect DRO+ to keep you smooth noise-free image.

The A58 appears to allow DRO to be used at higher ISOs, which earlier cameras often lock out because of its effect on shadow noise. However, both the printed manual and the downloadable handbook contain many inaccuracies and ambiguities; even Sony’s specification for the camera on-line has problems, listing standard and magnified views in the finder instead of eyepiece glass and surround against the two eye-point figures.

Wireless flash operates in the usual way, with the pop-up flash acting as a commander once paired by first fitting the remote flash, turning on, selecting WL Flash mode, and removing the remote. This is now a 20-year old Minolta technology updated – something which took Canon fifteen years to catch up with, after which they progressed further. The Alpha wireless flash works but it’s frozen in time. At least, with the optional adaptor, you can use earlier Minolta and Sony flashguns of the HS(D) generation and later.

HS is the high speed burst mode (long duration resembling continuous light) and the A58 can use HS flash at all shutter speeds up to 1/4,000th. The A58 has a useful Slow Sync function which delivers and automatic dragged shutter setting according to the available light, and a Rear Curtain sync as well. The camera may, with the built-in flash, switch to a slow longer recycling time even if you load a fresh battery when shooting flash intensively. This is to prevent the camera (not the flash) from overheating.

Studio compatibility

One reason I obtained an A58 to look at was because Ian Cartwright, a friend of mine who shoots models and babies underwater, had obtained an Alpha 580 on my advice to replace an A350 only to find that this camera forces a strange blackout delay of almost half a second when using any dedicated flash. The A350’s otherwise similar Quick Live View does not have this peculiar firmware fault. I can confirm that the A58 fires in real time, and unlike either of the other two models, can be used with PocketWizard or an infrared trigger. That’s because the finder view can be switched to ‘Setting Effect OFF’ which defeats exposure simulation and gives you a bright view even in manual with setting like 1/125 and f/11 under dim modelling or ambient light. The A58 can be used in the studio as easily as the A99, because of its ISO hot shot compatibility and this feature.

For this studio shot I chose not to use flash, it was lit by my Interfit 3200 tungsten outfit (great for video) instead. The colour rendering matters little because the image is adjusted in processing to give this look.

As to whether you would ever want to use an EVF camera for studio work, that’s another matter. I have bought a replacement Alpha 900 after three months trying to use EVF for studio set-ups and temporarily reverting to my A700. It’s not just the quality of what you see when composing and adjusting your studio shot (stray hairs over a face or a clothing fibre landing on your still life are just not visible with EVF) it’s the need to have power saving permanently turned off to keep the screen or finder awake as you do all the lighting and reflectors, background and subject adjustments. Nothing is more annoying than having to half-press the shutter to wake up your camera every time you go back to check – and with the A58, the shutter release is so light it’s easy to take a shot instead of waking the finder view.

The A99 can be used tethered and plugged in to AC, with a USB cable to a remote capture Mac or PC, and a live feed to an HDTV monitor. Do that and the business of setting up and adjusting a studio shoot becomes far easier with live view. I just don’t do enough work of any kind to justify that, it’s quicker to keep using the old familiar glass prism. It looks as if the A58 can be used the same way, joining the A77 and A99 by having PC Remote capability and HDMI previewing, while the A900/850/700 are the only other choices in Alpha history able to use PC Remote.
This does open the door to using a netbook, for example, as an intervalometer timer or remote release. There is no App for iOS or Android but the PC Remote control panel is well designed to fit a smartphone. There is no Wifi in the camera (it has good compatibility with EyeFi cards, invoking special display icons).

Video

Due to the softness and lack of AF sensitivity of the 18-55mm SAM II lens, my couple of quick test videos in real situations were not stunning but also not too bad. The sound quality is reasonable without plugging in my Rode Video Mic, stabilisation of video is very good indeed, and by using the dedicated video setting I was able to set my own shutter and aperture. You can also lock out the movie button except when the mode dial is set to video, preventing accidental video clips.

If you want the camera for video, either the 18-135mm SAM lens or even better the 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM (quiet fast focus) will do much better than the 18-55mm. The A58 lacks the highest quality video encoding of the A77 and A99, but you can get the vital requirement of 25/30fps at 1080p, the second highest level found on other Alphas. The clip above is at best quality with the 18-55mm; it took some fairly extreme action (the car driving right towards the lens) to persuade the AF to bother to try to track, most of the time it was telling me, hey, that’s good enough, no need to refocus… or even focus to start with.

Special functions

Although the A58 has been trimmed down in some ways, other aspects have been improved, compared to past entry-level cameras. There is no wireless remote drive mode, and no 2sec self-timer, so unless you buy the unusual Micro USB wired release you have to use a 10sec timer for shake-free tripod work.

Bracketing is only three frames, but the range is now large – 0.3EV, 0.7EV, 1EV, 2EV or 3EV steps. HDR Auto can also use a 6EV span (±3EV). You can not control the auto ISO range, but it’s a reasonable 100-3200. If you shoot JPEG and choose multishot noise reduction, an auto 6400 may be selected, and some of the Scene modes may also enter this range. But if you shoot raw, you have to select ISOs from 4000 to 160,000 manually which makes them harder to get by mistake.

There are many picture effects, both single and multi-shot, in the A58. One of the more interesting is Rich Tone Black and White, which uses three shots to build a gradation resembling a traditional darkroom print.
The sensor does not appear to support sub-frames, or cropped raw files, in the same way the A99 or Nikon D600 can do. The maximum frame rate for continuous shooting is 5fps for full size raws, but the buffer is minimal and the best I could get was four frames in a burst before a major pause and intermittent resumption, never at 5fps. On raw you get click-click-click, off to make coffee, click, take a walk round the block, click, remember to turn the lights off before going to bed. It’s that bad. JPEG Fine, which delivers 4 frames at 5fps, then becomes intermittent and variable in capture speed but a little faster than raw.

To get anything better, you must convert the camera into a 5 megapixel 3X factor (2X crop of the 1.5X sensor) by setting it to T8 (Tele 8fps) continuous mode on the main control dial. This delivers about 8.1fps for 24 frames on a 95MB/s SanDisk card, then slows to capture around 5-6fps in a regular pattern of two frames at 8fps, hesitation, two more and so on. On a slower card, Transcend SDHC, I got 12 frames continuous and a slower more regular tail. Memory card speed is clearly critical for getting the best from the A58.

Since you can’t get a 5MB cropped raw, exactly how this mode functions is a bit of a mystery as JPEG images are produced via an intermediate raw file – that’s how things work. So inside the camera, 24 frames can be processed and cropped in 2 seconds – but it can’t even manage one second of unprocessed raws at 5fps. This indicates the processor is fast and the input buffer big enough, it’s the output buffer and card interface which causes the bottleneck. Card interfaces and drive assemblies are third party products normally bought in by the camera maker, while the main processor is their own (or a dedicated design based on a Fujitsu module or other OEM).

This camera is extremely low cost and I think this is simply one area where cost savings ended up reducing what could have been a great specifiction and performance.

Digital and Clear Image Zoom

The A58 has a Zoom button, like a Cyber-shot DSC RX100’s zoom control that goes beyond the mechanical range of the zoom. Since you can’t go beyond the zoom on the lens itself, you go to the tele extreme, press the zoom button and a bar appears on the displays. Up to 1.4X magnification, you get a cropped shot (JPEG only) but this crop fills the EVF/screen and is enlarged by interpolation to 20MP. Up to 2X, you get Clear Image Zoom which is profiled or custom interpolation, similar to software packages which can enlarge JPEGs better if they have a profile for the camera used. Up to 4X, the rest is ordinary Digital Zoom which means the resulting 20MP image has really been created from a 1.25MP area of the sensor, and it shows.

Fine JPEG, normal shot

Interpolated Zoom 1.4X. 18-55mm at 55mm.

Clear Image at 1.9X (all at f/8)

Digital zoom to 4X.

I made some tests with the 18-55mm and its vague focusing and overall modest quality lowered the bar for the digitally zoomed range. Then I tried with my extremely sharp Sigma 70mm macro. I think the 1.4X range is acceptable for all normal uses, the 2X range is almost acceptable, beyond this the softness overpowers any possible reason to want a 20MP output file. There is a mark on the zoom bar showing the change from resized and Clear Image (1.0-2X) to Digital Zoom (2.0-4.0X) but I was unable to get the zoom to fix on 2.0X, instead it insisted on using 1.9X or 2.1X but placed the 2.1X on the ‘safe’ side of the mark.

70mm macro, raw shot at f/10

Fine JPEG of same ISO 200 shot.

1.4X interpolated zoom.

2X Clear Image zoom

4X Digital Zoom. Still 20MP…

As expected, the A58 has Sony’s excellent sweep panorama mode, and just about every other Sony original technology around from face recognition and smile shutter through to auto framing (an intelligent crop which keeps a copy of your uncropped JPEG too) and AF object tracking. Its Intelligent Auto and Super Auto modes will serve the beginner and general family photographer well.

The A58 has sensor cleaning and does vibrate the sensor on shutdown, not on switch on; this is not listed in the specification, which just mentions the anti-static coating. Manual cleaning is possible and Sony make two notes of interest – they advise blower cleaning the back of the mirror before lowering it (so clean both this and the sensor in one step) and they say that you can not shoot with the mirror raised. My camera had no sensor spots on delivery.

Future expansion

The A58 shares with the NEX-6 and Cyber-shot DSC RX1 the new Multi Function Shoe, and some of the accessories for this shoe are futureware. All these cameras lack the GPS found in the A99. The Multi Function Shoe’s interface includes pins to connect a GPS device and record location data as you shoot.

Despite my affection for the robust qualities of the little Alpha 55, the Alpha 58 does more and when armed with my 16-80mm CZ lens makes a good travel camera. For that, I want to have GPS. So of all the possible future accessories for the shoe, this is the one I hope Sony will produce soon. Other possible accessories are a Wifi remote shooting module (the interface could allow image preview remotely) and a PocketWizard or similar wireless flash trigger. The shoe interface might even enable uncompressed video streaming to external recording devices, or back up between the camera and an external SD card or USB stick. It can also feed an external larger video monitor or a mic/headphone module which might have auto gain over-ride for sound recording – or perhaps these functions may be combined one day in a video/audio adaptor.

These are the prospects which this one change in the Alpha system brings, yet there is no sign that Sony is rolling out MFAS accessories. It’s also true that each camera’s own MFAS may have missing pins, or differently assigned pins (that would be seriously bad planning). You can not, for example, use the EVF of the RX1 on the A99 shoe, though both cameras have 24 megapixel sensors and the same EVF display resolution. The camera does not recognise it.

Made in Thailand – not a bad thing, and Thailand has a big camera industry with Nikon, Sony and others. But this does feel like the lowest cost, most pared-down offering ever in the Sony DSLR/SLT lineage.

Changing the market

It is a pity that a camera with a brand new sensor and many advanced features and functions should ever have been designed down to the lowest price-level by reducing the specification of far too many components, from the lens mount and body itself to the displays and the buffer and card interface.

Sony’s manual and general approach to the camera menus and built-in help indicate that it’s targeted at what Americans would call a ‘soccer mom’ market. Well, your own kids are always beautiful even if the rest of the internet community groans inwardly every time another snapshot of infant overfeeding is posted to support how wonderful dad’s new camera is. They are always polite and agree.

Same goes for this camera – for those who acquire it as a new addition to the family, it will be the best thing ever made. And in some ways they will be right, nothing else comes close for the money. Unlike the sprogs, the Alpha 58 has inherited many desirable genes but suffered from malnutrition during its gestation. It could have been a robust, capable semi-pro camera in the tradition of the A580, the last Sony Alpha to have an optical finder.
Perhaps the 20 megapixel sensor will appear in a higher level body. How about an A68? For me that would be close to home (look it up on a UK road map!).

– David Kilpatrick

Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews, Lenses - Alpha Mount, Sony Digital Csmeras

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