Sony Digital Cameras - Cameracraft

B&H has Hasselblad HV offer again

Posted on October 26, 2015 By David Kilpatrick

Hasselblad HV from B&H

I feel slightly sick… I’ve spent so much on buying and replacing successive Sony A7 series cameras and their lenses that I can’t just buy this outright, which I would love to do. I sold my A99 to get the A7R (subsequently replaced by A7II, and now by A7R II) and have regretted it in so many ways, the whole optical concept of the mirrorless system being built down to a price by using innovative construction… unlike the A99 lenses which are designed even to be usable on film, let alone on a DSLR body. And then there’s GPS. I really miss GPS-in-camera and it can take me many extra hours without its benefit, to caption a 500 to 1000 final edit from one or two weeks of travel shooting to the degree of detail my work requires. And dual memory card slots… and just the whole feel of the camera.

B&H have this today for only $3,495 with the 24-70mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens, two batteries, and case.

And this is actually cheaper than an A99 and pretty much hand rebuilt by Hasselblad into a new body, with a hand-picked lens (you can be sure) all fitted in a Pelican-style hard case. It’s not vacant bling on a camera which does not deserve it – it’s a thorough upgrade to one of the best system cameras ever made, to make it even better.

They ship to the UK and rest of the world very reliably and honestly, if I had the spare cash, there would one on the way to me now. If you do buy from this link (anything from B&H, even if you navigate away from this offer) we do make some small commission to help support the site. Buy a hundred of ’em and I can maybe get mine!

– David Kilpatrick

Accessories - 3rd party, DK's ramblings, Offers, Sony Digital Cameras

Low-cost macro for the A7 series

Posted on October 20, 2015 By David Kilpatrick

It’s been a while since my last review of Sony products here, and not because I have been inactive. The truth is that I’ve spent so much on Sony kit 24/7 working has been necessary, including a good few reviews and tests of the A7RII and lenses appearing elsewhere. It’s a real issue, I now lose so much value with the lightning-fast depreciation of Sony’s products within a few months of launch that my old tactic of buying, reviewing and selling no longer works. For one thing, no media in the world will readily pay a fee which even matches the amount you might lose on a camera body in the A7 series over its first two months of retail life. Sony have been good enough to lend me a few items for brief periods but you really can’t form any useful opinions on such radical and new hardware on that basis.

However, my A7R II report is shortly on the way, and the extra time spent using the camera and suffering the damage to my credit card does not harm the process. It helps put the gear in context. I’ve resisted the anti-social pricing policies of the UK camera retail environment for some time, even buying one grey import from Panamoz. So it’s appropriate that my first article for a fair while should be intended to help you save money and get great results from any A7 full frame FE mount camera, while also supporting a company whose UK pricing policies are entirely reasonable – Sigma.

The Sigma 60mm f/2.8 ART DN lens

The butterfly above is one example of what this lens can do on uncropped full frame, in this case adding a single 16mm extension tube, which we’ll come to later as the exact type of tube you buy matters a great deal!

The neat, low-cost 60mm f/2.8 is the portrait lens in Sigma’s Art DN lens trio for APS-C and MicroFourThirds mirrorless systems. I’ve used the 19mm f/2.8 and 30mm f/2.8 as well, but the 60mm is my favourite. Originally, I tested it on Olympus MFT and the 50cm close focus with their 2X factor made it almost feel like a macro. It’s actually just 1:7.2X scale, but 1:3.6X relative to full frame on that smaller sensor. That’s a really good working distance and subject scale.

I was curious to see how much of the full frame the 60mm would cover. All these Sigma lenses are just £129.99-£139.99 retail at most UK dealers right now. They are beautifully designed and made, very light, use 46mm filters and have advanced optical design giving high contrast and first-class full aperture sharpness. Well, the answer is easy enough; you’ll get more than APS-C, with a 24 x 24mm square format crop working well, but not anything like full frame at any aperture from the 60mm.

This is the closest focus of the Sigma ART DN 60mm on the A7R II, uncropped.

Sigma call it a telephoto, with its rear nodal point much closer than 60mm to the focal plane. But its design signalled it would probably perform well as a macro lens too.

Meike extension tubes

So, we add extension tubes between the A7-series body and the lens. There’s one prominent make, Meike, and a couple of years ago I bought their very low-cost fully electronically coupled plastic 10 and 16mm twin tube set. 26mm of extension is not much. It won’t even make the E-mount 35mm f/1.8 focus to 1:1, and does even less with a 60mm. However, what it does is worthwhile combined with the lens’s own focusing range.

I found my plastic Meike tubes have a narrow circular throat and cut the image off all round. But, you say, the image was cut off all round already, so what could be done?

When you mount an APS-C lens on tubes, it covers more than APS-C. Put it on tubes adding about 1.4X to its focal length – like using 26mm of tubes on a 60mm lens – and it will cover full frame. You are moving the lens further from the focused plane, and as you do so, its fixed angle field of sharp coverage grows (it more or less follows the inverse square law, as does the effective working aperture of the lens when you use tubes). So a lens made for the NEX sensors, c.16 x 24mm, can cover 24 x 36mm when used on tubes for close-ups. The 60mm on 26mm of tubes would cover 24 x 36mm even with no leeway. Since the lens already has a good image circle, it turns out that it covers 24 x 36mm when used on the 16mm tube alone, and shows just a hint of corner cutoff with the 10mm tube alone. With both, it covers the full frame easily.

This is the result of using a 10mm metal extension tube – not the plastic set. The plastic design cuts off even more than the lens used on its own.

Meike understand this. They have a newer, metal-mount extension tube set costing about twice as much as the original plastic one. To get it, you must search for Meike metal extension tubes – and they are not easy to identify for certain. There’s very little explanation on-line. These tubes have a full width throat with baffles top and bottom, more or less matching the 24 x 36mm frame shape. Some black flock paper is glued in to prevent light reflection at the sides, but none is fitted top and bottom, and this is the main weakness of the design (you can obtain flock paper and fix this yourself).

Twin set, no pearls

Used alone, the metal Meike tubes turn the Sigma 60mm into a very good close-range long standard lens for the A7 series. I found that you can add the plastic tubes next to the lens, not next to the camera, and suffer no cut-off. This combination of four tubes adds 52mm and makes the Sigma 60mm able to do 1:1 with the addition of its own AF range.

You need to understand sensor-based stabilisation before using any manual lens on tubes (which these are equally suitable for, with adaptors). The A7 II series bodies use the focal length and focus distance of the lens as transmitted to the camera to control the Steady Shot Inside function. As far as I can tell from practical tests, the Meike tubes do not transmit any change to the information reaching the CPU, but SS seems to be OK with such relatively minimal extra focus extension.

This shot was taken at 1/15th hand-held with the 16mm tube on the A7R II, ISO 800, 14-bit uncompressed raw, f/8 on the Sigma 60mm lens. There’s no significant corner vignetting with 16mm of extra extension to the lens.

This is a 100% clip from the shot.

When I mount my 50mm Macro SMC Takumar on the A7R II I use either the SSI menu control, or the Lens Compensation App, to tell the SSI system I’m using a lens with an extension in place. It focuses to 1:2 size, and for this I tell the camera I’m using a 75mm lens not a 50mm. If I add 26mm of tubes, it will focus to 1:1 and I need to tell the camera I’m using a 100mm lens. That’s because a 50mm lens extended to 1:1 focus has the same camera shake characteristics as a 100mm lens used on a distant scene. Be careful, as this relationship only holds good for simple lenses (Tessar, Sonnar etc) and not for any zoom lenses, or any macro lens which uses internal focusing. If you mount a Tamron 60mm f/2 macro on your Sony body using a dumb adaptor, just tell the camera it’s got a 60mm attached. The Tamron changes focal length to focus, but the effect for anti-shake purposes is that it remains a 60mm. Its angle of view remains unchanged as you focus, while my 60mm Sigma when used at 1:1 repro covers half the angle of view it does at infinity.

I am not entirely sure whether the Meike tubes work properly with SS Inside, or if the system simply has enough latitude to function with my degree of unsteady hand-holding. Those contacts just seem to make a connection, with no chip to add information. The EXIF data does show the focal length correctly, and the set aperture (which will be a reduced effective aperture at closer range, 26mm of tubes turns 60mm f/2.8 into a working f/4-ish). But the focus distance is shown as whatever the lens focus function chip confirms – a range of 50cm to infinity. That’s obviously incorrect when tubes are added, in contrast to using a dedicated lens like the Sony 90mm f/2.8 FE G OSS Macro, which will show the true focused distance in the viewfinder and also pass correct data to the CPU.

So, a warning – the 60mm plus tubes is not technically perfect but seems to work well enough.

When you use a tripod or flash, or a fast shutter speed, and turn off Steady Shot none of this applies. In practice with shutter speeds fast enough to stop subject action or wind vibration, it all goes well. The Sigma is very sharp even though not designed for macro range work, but that’s typical of this type of lens – even if 8 elements in 6 groups with several low-dispersion elements is not basic.

Here’s an example with 26mm of tubes plus some lens focus range. The ISO 800 14-bit uncompressed file has allowed some work on the bee’s back which lacked contrast. Click to open a 2048 pixel wide version.

Here’s an example which clicks through to a full size A7R II AdobeRGB JPEG (no doubt much crunched by WordPress image storage) taken at f/9 on the 16mm tube. If any of my image files have 20mm in the filename it was the 16mm tube – I’m so used to the lengths used by regular SLR mounts! The 60mm has a seven-blade aperture and gives pleasantly neutral defocused quality behind the subject. You can call it bokeh if you want to. Thank you, Scottish weather, for keeping a few flowers in this condition and giving me some sunshine just after the 14-bit uncompressed raw upgrade for the A7R II arrived.

The Metal Meike extension tubes have the same essential benefit over the plastic version with all FE and E mount, and legacy, lenses used of the A7 series full frame bodies. You can use them on the 28-70mm, 24-70mm, 55mm f/1.8, 28mm f/2 and most lenses though they have little use with the 70-200mm and I would not recommend hanging a 24-240mm off a tube.

Footnote July 2017: I now have the 50mm f/2.8 FE Sony macro. It’s a very nice lens, indeed, but the internal focusing means it’s really more like a 40 to 35mm as you get the subject bigger, and you end up just millimetres away. I compared using this lens on 26mm of tubes to focus on a target 7.5cm wide with the lens itself set to infinity (and therefore, 50mm). Working distance from the lens rim to subject – 11cm. Then I took the tubes out, and focused the lens using its own range, on the same target. The clear distance was reduced to 7.5cm. Now you know why you need tubes and probably don’t really need a macro lens.

– David Kilpatrick

If you have found this article useful, you can support Photoclubalpha by using affiliate buying links (we are not sponsored or paid in any other way, except by selling subscriptions to f2 Cameracraft).

Sigma 60mm at B&H

Vello metal mount extension tubes at B&H (similar to Meike)

Sigma 60mm F2.8 DN for Sony E – Silver from Amazon UK, no idea why they have none in black

Neewer metal extension tubes – much better price than Vello! on Amazon

Visit Wex Photographic and search for any items (UK)

Accessories - 3rd party, Equipment Reviews, Lenses - E mount, NEX System, Photo Techniques, Sony Digital Cameras

A7RII versus Pentax 645Z

Posted on August 1, 2015 By David Kilpatrick

At a workshop given by John Denton for The Flash Centre, with Elinchrom lighting and Pentax 645Z demonstration. model Laura posed for a comparison pair of shots using the Pentax with 90mm macro lens and the A7RII equipped I regret to say with a much inferior lens, the basic 28-70mm.

To compare the quality bear in mind that the Pentax was ISO 200 at f/5.6 and the Sony was ISO 400 at f/8 as I felt it necessary to stop down – I should not have, as I had forgotten than the 28-70mm is sharper at f/5.6 than f/8, which introduces local unsharpness to the left hand end of the image (landscape) and did with all three samples I have used. This means the model’s face is smeared on the Sony shot, because this lens can’t produce a sharp image under these conditions in that part of the frame. Yes, I’ve had some OK results, but this was the first time I used the 28-70mm on the A7RII. It is OK on the A7II and A7S, as the blur is not so visible at those magnifications. It’s really not good on the A7R or A7RII.

So, please examine everything except the face…

This is the Pentax shot. Despite the matched for theoretical exposure, it is much darker and the ISO 200 is only equal to ISO 100 in Sony terms. Daylight balance set for the flash, Adobe Camera Standard profile since no other is available.

Here is the full resolution link to 146MB (if opened or downloaded) original:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/160895282

This is the Sony shot. The Camera Portrait profile in ACR gave much improved skin tones, so I’ve used this. The pBase link appears to have scaled the images proprotionally, so the 42Mp image is correctly smaller than the 50Mp.

Here is the link to the 120MB original:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/160895292

Enjoy – John teaches retouching and has set up deliberately harsh lighting to create over-sharp skin and too much detail, which he then expertly ‘fixes’. My shots are un-fixed. His workshops are worth every penny as he delivers an entire set of notes and his Photoshop actions to all delegates.

– David Kilpatrick

DK's ramblings, Lenses - E mount, NEX System, Sony Digital Cameras

A7R II – universal solution, lens challenge

Posted on July 31, 2015 By David Kilpatrick

I’m under pressure to take endless pictures with the A7R II which arrived from WEX (Warehouse Express) on Thursday superbly packed. I am also finishing off f2 Freelance Photographer magazine to go to print over the weekend and have many hours of work to do – and despite having the camera, I won’t be removing some other article to rush a scoop into print.

It’s actually pointless to attempt to review any camera until you have used it for a few days at the minimum, with deliberate testing in mind, or several weeks with normal unplanned uses to confront it. Nothing tests a camera (and photographer) quite like real world pictures which are not hunted down as test subjects.

But of course I have gone out and taken a few shots during a brief period of sunshine which has returned after days of rain, and replicated a set-up I shot few weeks ago on the A7R, also to test a new type of combined LED and flash lighting head (Bowens IC12).

First of all, the £2695 UK price has to be compared against the A7S, A7II, or A7R with due accounting for its useful bonus – this camera body comes with the usual USB charger block and a battery, and then a further Sony external battery charger (remember them?) and a second battery. At Sony RRP this is £76 (battery) and unavailable (charger) but surprisingly expensive when it was. It’s definitely £100-worth of extras. There is also a screw in, not clip in, screw clamp grip twin USB/HDMI tethering lock device which could also securely grip mic and headphone leads.

Unboxing should hold no surprises now, but firing up the A7R II was a familiar experience as so many of setting customisations turned out to be factory preset to my own preferences. It still needed the image size and filetype setting up, AdobeRGB, Date Form folders and a few other things I used. And then, at last, the entry of copyright and byline information to be embedded into every image!

The A7R II takes the same GGS screen protector as the A7II and the RX100 series, not the same as the A7. First job was to stick a temporary protector on, and order one of these. All my cameras have GGS glass on them from day 1.

I used the CZ 16-35mm f/4 lens for a few outdoor shots and also for a test or two I will not release (too many tripods, cat trays and empty boxes in shot!) indoors at up to ISO 6400. Basically… you can use Auto 100 to 6400 and as long as you set Luminance NR to 25 from 400 up and increase it gradually to 50 at 6400 (LR/ACR) the images will be smooth and noise free as well as sharp. I also enter NR 10 even at 100, because it helps keep sky blues smooth.

You can view or download and examine, as you wish, a full size 120 megapixel from this from my pBase library – http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/160888201

You can view at ‘large’ which is really small… select ‘Original’ to see the original, of course. Or a tiny corner of it! If you think the 16-35mm is at the edge of its performance at f/9 in this shot, you are right. Anything wider and the corners and ends of the shot become visibly soft at 16mm. This test shows me that where f/9 was fine for 24 megapixels, I’m probably going to go for f/11 or even f/13 as a standard setting with the A7R II.

This is not a fair test even yet, but it says a few things. It’s taken on a late 1960s Asahi Pentax SMC Macro Takumar 50mm lens (I enter 75mm in the App data on the camera to ensure correct SSS) set to f/11, which is actually around f/14 at this working distance/extension. The camera is hand-held, with a Sony mini flashgun on top bounced to trigger two Bowens IC12 heads set to flash mode, after first doing the lighting and subject adjustments in LED Video mode. With these unique heads, the flash and the video modes are 100% identical in terms of how they cast shadows. The flash was set to 1/1 power at 1/1000th for a bare fresnel spot on the left, and 1/2 power at 1/1000th in a small Apollo softbox above and to the right. Focusing was done using the magnify function by moving the camera (or head and hands, in effect) over the subject.

Again, you can view a 100% 120 megapixel version of this: http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/160888192

Because this is very low power LED burst flash I need to set the ISO to 800, which would never be chosen for detail. NR is at Luminance 25 in Adobe Camera Raw (adjusting only that top slider). There is a full dynamic range with deep shadows and brightly caught surfaces. No adjustments have been made to the raw file in conversion for contrast, colour or exposure. I think it represents a very highly quality for ISO 800 and to see the level of microcontrast and detail, you need to examine the lowest contrast surfaces – the rounded bodies of the poppy heads. Throughout the image you will find areas of sharp focus and softer focus and it’s easy to tell the maximum sharpness zones. I also made an exposure at f/16 and this is significant softened by diffraction as you would expect. At f/8 this macro lens is likely to be sharper but with a file size like this, depth of field rules go out of the window. You need to use the same technique as would be employed when planning to make a 20 x 30″ print from a 35mm negative!

I will have more images soon enough. My initial impression is that the A7II really fixed the ergonomics of this camera type, the A7R II is identical; its functions cover all the functions found on every different A7 series body sufficiently well to make it one camera for all purposes.

– David Kilpatrick

The link to Warehouse Express is an affiliate link and purchases made through this link benefit the publisher

DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews, Lenses - E mount, NEX System, Sony Digital Cameras

Sony A7R II, RX10 II, RX100 IV – making everything else obsolete

Posted on June 14, 2015 By David Kilpatrick

(Updated June 15th after press conference)

The new Sony A7R II is the camera I’ve been waiting for, which everyone has predicted, and which seems to tick every box without having a huge price label on its own. I find the $3,200 (UK coinfirmed £2,600) matches its stated specifications well. Others may disagree, but they’re probably influenced by the price collapse of the original A7R, now occasionally found for under £1k.

Even so, at $3,200 the A7R II commands a $1,500 premium over the A7 II and much of that must be what you pay the new sensor – which does not seem to be licensed or sold to any other brand. Not even to Nikon, yet. The A7S remains the most expensive model despite the minimal 12 megapixel capture and lack of in-body stabilisation (SS in Sony terms, or IBIS generically).

On Monday June 15th I flew to London to have a look at the A7R II and the new RX10 II (£1,200) and RX100 IV (£850). This was a bit like a motoring journalist going to a car launch and being told, you can sit in the seat, waggle the gearstick but don’t start the engine as no photography was allowed with any of the demonstraton cameras. I was surprised to find it was a European conference, as this normally means journalists from across the Channel have a facility trip to be present, and that seems very extravagant just to look at cameras which can not be tried out. I wish I lived in France not Scotland – it might not have cost me almost £300 to be there, eight miles from Heathrow (but an eight miles which might as well be a fifty Scots miles!).

Don’t expect to get one on June 17th, as B&H’s information and too many bloggers have repeated. We are told by B&H it won’t arrive until August even though pre-orders open on June 17th in the USA. It may be later arriving in some regions. Demand is going to be so high that if you want one, you’ll need to crash into that queue…

But you can snag a Canon EOS 5DS – 50 megapixels – for only $3,699 right now

A7R II – or A7 II R?

In brief, the A7R II consists of an A7 II body with a new 42.4 megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, same Bionz X processor allowing 5fps at full resolution, new 399-point Phase Detection AF on the sensor covering most of the field (up from 117 points), a similar EVF with improved eyepiece giving a genuinely impressive 0.78X instead of 0.71X virtual magnification, the same rearRGBW bright LCD, plus silent shutter and HD 4K movie functions improving on the offering of the A7S. The new shutter mechanism is claimed to have a 500,000 actuation life expectancy which puts it ahead of almost every pro DSLR yet made. The back of the camera body is magnesium, where it’s solid composite plastic in the A7II. And it has, unlike the A7R, five-axis sensor stabilisation which talks to Sony OSS lenses for the best blend of anti-shake methods ever devised.

The new EVF size, to the eye – compared with the old (A7II, A7R, A7) 0.71X view below (A7R, Sigma 12-24mm at 12mm, Canon EF fit, on Commlite EF-FE adaptor).

You will read in the specifications and promo blurb that it has a new LCD double the brightness, new tough body and strengthened mount, new shutter release and controls but all these ‘improvements’ are listed by Sony over the A7R and already existed in the A7 II. Instead of making comparisons with the A7 II – which this is really a development from – Sony has listed many advances made relative to the A7R. It is not an A7R II. It’s really an A7 II R.

The eyepiece surround is much improved, wider and softer still than the A7II which in turn is softer on specs then the earlier models. Eyepoint and position flexibility both improve and there are no unsharp zones at all even if you shift your eye around.

It’s important to understand that many of the improvements already exist in the A7 II partly as a result of criticisms of the original A7R made by objective reviewers, not Sony artisans or staff or sponsored bloggers. You don’t owe this camera to the success of its predecessors or the daily Facebook sermons of awestruck evangelists – you owe its features to corrections made to the shortcomings of the models so far. And to those who have had no vested interest (other than ownership) persuading them to weaken critical appraisal. The further improvements in the A7R II are either extremely technical – serious core improvements in the sensor and focusing – or minor refinements and carries-over from the A7II.

42.4 versus 36 point anything

If you really think 42.4 megapixels is going to take you to realms far beyond your 36 megapixel sensor, think again. It is the same step up as from 18 megapixels to 21 megapixels, a move Canon made without absolutely transforming the images created, or about the same as from 10mp to 12mp. There’s one big difference – it does not make the jump to any larger common print or repro size. Remember going from 6 to 8? That was from sub-full-page to a decent full page resolution, for US or A-size documents at a touch under 300dpi. 24 megapixels took us to a really sharp A2, 36 megapixels takes us to a acceptable A1, and all that 42 does is to make a slightly better A1 but not 300dpi.

Above you can see the actual, real size difference (in proportion) between a 36 megapixel shot and a 42 megapixel shot. If you click on the bigger version, it will take you to my pBase page with a full A7R II sized version of this A7R shot. Zeiss? No – a 45 year old Asahi Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Macro Takumar 50mm f/4, used at f/11, and a 30 second exposure at ISO 50 lit using the ICE Light 2 moved round the subject in horseshoe shaped path for 15 seconds, laid flat, and then moved under the perspex for the remaining 15.

In practical terms, it’s 7980 x 5320 pixels (or very close – Sony has been extremely coy about releasing full specifications, even at the conference I could not find this out) versus 7360 x 4912 for the A7R. In perspective, make a big print from the A7R and it’s 24.5 inches long at optimum resolution; use the A7R II and you get one inch extra each end on the long side, 2/3rds of a inch extra top and bottom. The A7R makes a 16.3 x 24.5 inch print to perfection; the A7R II makes a 17.7 x 26.6 inch print.

Anything smaller than A4 printed, it’s got no great advantage over the 12 megapixel A7S – but you are getting close to enabling a 2X crop (one quarter of the frame) to look as good as the A7S full frame. Sony showed A3 prints. They could, honestly, all have been shot on the Sony A100 from 2006 and no-one would have been any the wiser. One enlarged section was the only real test of the camera. I’m sure the model’s dermatologist loves it.

Where it does count most is when using crop frame mode. In APS-C crop mode, the A7R II file is large enough for a 300dpi double page fine art magazine spread, just under 18 megapixels. I’d say that where 42.4mp is not a critical size, 18mp actually is. You can get away with 16, and for Nikon, Panasonic, and Olympus this had been an important baseline. Cropped frame FF from Sony now rises above that baseline instead of sitting just below it.

What I’d like to see would be 1:1, 4:3, 5:4 ratios implemented with the EVF and LCD screens cropped to match – and ideally the raw files reduced in size the same way. A square 1:1 would be 28 megapixels and that crop allows so many APS-C lenses (like the Zeiss Touit 12mm) to be used without vignetting or limits of coverage distortion issues. The example above is from the A7R and it’s a square crop 24 x 24mm from a frame taken with the 10-18mm f/4 Sony OSS, at 11mm; the lens would have allowed a 4:5 crop equally well.

Important edit: just read another ‘Sony artisan’ blog post asking the (redundant) question as to whether Sony lenses will be up to this new resolution. Anyone who owns an A6000, NEX-7, or A77 is already shooting at well above this resolution (full frame will need to match the Canon 5DS 50 megapixels to beat them). The resolution of the A7R II is slightly lower than that of the base level entry A3000. Don’t panic. Plenty of old legacy lenses will match it well, let alone any new Sony FE and A-mount designs.

I checked out the 20mm f/2.8 SEL lens with the new version 2 wide and fisheye black converters on full frame at the Sony event. Really, this lens comes so close to doing a good full frame and the converters even leave much of the area intact for a much bigger crop than APS-C.

And that’s all without removing rear baffles or doctoring the built-in lens hoods of the converters!

Detailed points

When we get a chance to use the camera, the following points will be of interest:

Has the mount been upgraded again? It still has only four attachment screws, compared to Fujfilm X system’s six screws (and the A-mount uses six too). My two camera bodies and two changes of mount on the A7R, to Tough E mount and then 2nd generation Tough E mount, all produce unpredictable degrees of slop, smoothness or jam-on tightness from various adaptors showing that no matter what, tolerances are broad. Comment: can’t tell from changing lenses at the event, it feels much the same as the A7 II.

Has the Memory position, 1 and 2 on the mode dial, been improved to remember MORE of the important settings – notable, Setting Effect ON and OFF, for saving a studio flash preset mode with the EVF/LCD setting effect disabled? Answer: No.

Is the hot shoe part of the Multi Function Accessory Shoe hampered by paint, or tolerances in fit, or does it readily accept all standard ISO hot shoe simple flash devices and triggers? Looks clear.

Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM on Focus EF-FE adaptor (also works perfectly with Commlite) on A7R. The 40mm f/2.8, and Sigma 12-24mm in EF mount work well on my A7R with these two sub-Metabones price adaptors. At the press event we found the 85mm just didn’t focus at all with any adaptor on any of the pre-production A7R II bodies, but the 40mm was fine.

Will the promised ability to use PD-on-sensor AF with Canon and other lenses rely on Metabones as the only adaptor, or is it generic? The microlenses on a backside illuminated sensor have a large effective aperture than traditional design, and this means the PD-lenses (a special variant of the microlenses used on sensel pairs) will be similarly improved. This may make some difference, but it’s actually the focus motor control via lens to body data communication which will enable fast and sure operation with Sony SSM on LA-EA3, Canon USM on EF-adaptor, and so on. Remember, this does not make screw drive or SAM, or micromotor Canon AF pre-USM lenses, function any better. It will only apply to ultrasonic, piezo, linear motor and similar finely controllable AF mechanisms with close to zero play and accurate (8 contacts, not 5) distance and ‘state’ reporting. Note, too, that Sony’s revised lenses (SSM II) are not just optical and weatherproofing reworks – the new SSM is designed to work with contrast detection, as found on the A7R, much better.

Comment: we found that the Canon 85mm f/1.8 USMdidn’t work on any adaptor on the A7R II, while the 40mm f/2.8 activated the PDAF points and focused very rapidly, and a 24mm f/2.8 USMf/2.8 focused fast – and that various different demo A7R II bodies responded differently and one malfunctioned a lot of the time even with Metabones. Sony said this was known and the final retail stock should at least work OK with Metabones IV and probable firmware updates, but other cheaper adaptors will not be tested.

The new camera’s mode dial has a central lock button, and a slightly lighter click action without risk of being turned by mistake. We’d had liked to have seen a lock on the +/- EV compensation dial too, but this just has slightly strengthened clicks.

Wish list

The same small battery has been used yet again despite the II body design having what looks like enough room for a full sized Alpha battery (see below – carefully positioned batteries with A7 II body). Let’s hope for upgraded batteries from Sony.

Please, Sony, you provided a GPS pinout in the new shoe – you have never rolled out a GPS module or firmware. It’s three years now and no news. Hell, I nearly bought a brand new boxed A99 at Dixons Heathrow Terminal 2 shop for £1075 inc VAT maanger’s special, I miss GPS so much!

Please let the Lens Data entered into the menu for SS of manual lenses, without data communication, be embedded into EXIF so if I enter 50mm, my files say so. And ideally, please make it possible to enter the focused distance (this would improve stabilisation) and the aperture in use (just to complete the EXIF data).

Sony pointed out that the latest version of the lens correction App will record the focal length and aperture as you enter them, in EXIF. It has its own SS on/off setting and automatically recognises whatever focal length you have entered. You can name and recall each different lens, and if for example you normally use your 24mm f/3.5 Samyang shift lens at f/16 for architecture, you can enter f/16 as the lens’s aperture and that will be corrected embedded in your EXIF. But to get this you must run the app, not just shoot with a manually set focal length for SS.

Please change the Memory 1 and 2 registers to save and recall ALL the camera settings and not just those in the first bank of the menu system (but see the vital point above about Setting Effect On/Off). Until I test the camera, no more to say – but Sony does not usually keep quiet about changes, and has not mentioned this aspect.

The existing rear screen – the II design, left, improves on the original A7R but this is still a basic, amateur level screen to be working with and a fully articulated design would be better.

Though you’ve missed the boat with this camera, the crudely hinged and angled rear screen needs to be replaced with a fully articulated screen that can be reversed to the camera for protection and to prevent distracting light when working in the dark.

Out of the loop

I’ve been out of reviewing new Sony gear for some time, as it has not proved possible to get hold of it early enough or for long enough to give any meaningful assessment which Joe Photographer anywhere in the world couldn’t appear to do themselves. For six or seven years I have bought and sold new Alpha gear to fill the gaps between the occasional availability of review kit, but recently that has become so expensive it exceeds any margins available from the three magazines I publish, or any fees I can obtain from other media. Like politicians, people who write about gear either need an independent mind or independent means – without one of these, you’re always in someone’s corporate pocket or feeding from crumbs under the main table.

The result, as we see all the time, is that many early users or reviewers of Sony kit are no longer all that independent and much of the first wave of information now comes through the channel of ‘artisans’ (as it does with ‘ambassadors’ for all makes). And we see plenty of others who are clearly of independent means, whose main purpose in life is to be the first to post pictures taken with new item X regardless of the cost.

So maybe I don’t need to push to get hold of an A7R II for the too-short two week period of any review loan, after a six month wait while other consumer-orientated magazines and blogs take priority – or indeed rush to buy one.

But… like the RX10 which I use all the time… like the A6000 kit which is co affordable and compact it’s essential… like the RX100 MkIII which goes where even the RX10 is not welcome… like my A7 II with stabilisation which has transformed a box of assorted lenses into a solid outfit… this one’s possibly something to buy because I actually need it and will use it.

I may not even cosy anything as it will make both the A7R and A7II redundant, because it does both jobs and also covers the A7S I did manage to borrow but never bought. And it does more.

So, thinking whether or not to bother with this upgrade is a bit irrelevant. Even if it was still ‘just’ 36mp the other improvements would mean it still replaced the need for a handful of A7 models, all in one.

Small miracles

My one doubt is that the A7R II may be beaten in practical terms by the RX10 II. Please note that so many incorrect snippets of info have gone around about the ‘stacked’ sensor design, I thought it referred to RGB stacking. It does not, the sensor is a conventional Bayer pattern, and what is stacked is the electronic substructure. This does not affect the top side of the sensor and the performance in image quality should be similar to the existing models. What it does is greatly speed data transfer and enables over 1000 (lower resolution) frames per second to be clocked through from photon received to movie frame recorded.

The RX10 and 100 new versions offer ridiculous levels of high speed slow motion capture, clean 4K video and other technical benefits which come with a very small chance of dust on sensor, unlike the A7R II which is almost guaranteed to be a dust devil. Why do I say that? Because a backside illuminated sensor renders dust on its cover glass even more sharply than a conventional one! We know the RX models are not dustproof and if you are unlucky enough to get a spot on the sensor it’s a service visit to get it removed, but in my experience with five or them so far I have never had a single dust spot.

So what? Just retouch? Not when making movies! Admittedly most movie makers will open up the lenses to max or only a stop down on these 1″ sensor cameras, and would open up lenses just the same on the A7R II and never see dust even if it was there. But what about the time you want that ‘American take’ – f/22 at 20mm? Traditionally they were taken in dusty settings for the spaghetti westerns!

All I can say is that the RX10 has come very close indeed to removing the need for any other camera and it’s been a pleasure to work with the raw files. The RX10 MkII might be so much better that I forget about DSLRs or mirrorless systems and just get on with capturing great images. Or then again…

– David Kilpatrick

DK's ramblings, HD Video, Legacy Lenses, NEX System, Sony Digital Cameras

The Fotodiox Tough E-Mount

Posted on October 27, 2014 By David Kilpatrick

Machined from brass and chrome-plated, in the tradition of lens mounts from 50 years ago and not necessarily the best solution for precision or lifetime wear, Fotodiox’s TOUGH E-mount is a replacement body mount bayonet which you can fit to your existing A7R, A7, NEX-7, A6000 or any other metal-mount E-mount body in a few minutes. You need a clean well lit work table, a small engineer’s or large jeweller’s crosshead screwdriver, and a similar flathead screwdriver or old credit card.

The NEX/A bodies are fitted with a three-part lens mount. Here’s what a bonded, single piece, original Alpha lens mount looks like when removed from an old Minolta 7000 –

This mount is stainless steel, which would be prohibitively expensive for a small shop engineering replacement on the E-mount. It’s in two parts, a front surface and the inside with a bonded bayonet spring pressure action, a thin shim with bent ‘arms’ forming three pressure points to hold the lens tight to the mount.

From Fotodiox comes this neat box taking 10 days to the UK from USA –

Since I also ordered a focusing Leica M to E adaptor, my overall value was marked as $80 and I had an £8 admin charge and a little over £7 in VAT to pay.

Inside, the TOUGH E-Mount is boxed and bagged without instructions. For these, you visit the Fotodiox site and watch a video:

http://www.fotodioxpro.com/tough-emount-from-fotodiox-pro-replacement-lens-mount-for-sony-nex-emount-camera.html

Here’s the rear face of the Fotodiox mount, which does not have any second layer of spring metal to grip the lens:

However, as we will see, this component (fixed to the mount for the A-mount design) is a separate loose item which sits in the camera body mount recess on the E-mount, and performs exactly the same function. You could probably remove it and bond it to the new mount.

So, why replace the E-mount on a £1200+ camera body like the A7R, which has a magnesium body casting into which the lens mount is anchored by four screws? The reason given by Fotodiox is that an intermediate plastic moulding is used behind a simple unprofiled mount face, so two parts make up the overall thickness. The tensioning ring sits behind the plastic ring, forming a three-part sandwich to make up the mount. The front mount is a relatively soft, crudely CNC lathed alloy.

Here’s my camera after 10 months of use. This camera has shown signs of light leaks, and has not been sent back for a fix. The mount flange is a completely flat item, relatively thin, and the leaks may be partly down to slight distortion of the front plane face, as shown by uneven wear from lens mounting.

Here’s a detail. You can see the lathe circles on the mount face, and you can see where the metal has abraded and either collected plastic from a plastic lens mount (most likely my MEIKE extension tubes) or paint from a cheap adaptor (my Novoflex and Fotodiox adaptors don’t use paint, they are anodised).

The mount is very simple indeed. It can be removed from all the cameras without disturbing the electronic contacts or the lens release mechanism.

Fotodiox video shows the camera on its back and warns about dropped screws etc. I just prefer to unscrew each screw in turn with the camera held vertically on my table, so that if the screw drops it won’t go inside the camera. Care is taken not to allow the spring loaded lens changing pin to disassemble itself, but that’s really very easy.

One removed, you can compare the Sony ‘washer’ (which is really more or less is!) with the Fotodiox mount – a much thicker unit, stepped to fit the recess on the camera body. A point worth noting is that the original mount has no recesses at all to fit over the four threaded posts on the camera body. Its position is maintained by two pins (at 9 and 3 o’clock) which engage in two holes on the otherwise plain flat rear face of the mount. The Fotodiox mount not only engages with these pins, as it replaces the plastic secondary mount shown below, but also has holes into which the threaded posts fit. It is better proofed against rotation.

You now see the plastic middle part of the sandwich. This is secured by a very thin double-sided tape in places. A flat blade screwdriver or a suitable cut piece of old credit card (or indeed a guitar pick!) pushed gently under the plastic at various point all round will free it. It lifts out easily. Unless you are amazingly clumsy you are not going to go anywhere near the sensor but if you have a clean 40.5mm filter or lens cap around, you can pop it in to cover the sensor safely. I used a 62mm filter to place over the whole mount when checking instructions and looking at the parts, as I don’t want to risk hairs and dust covering the upturned unit.

Underneath the plastic component you’ll find the third part of the mount, the thin flexible stainless steel tensioning ring which acts to pull the lens tight against the front face of the mount. You may note that if your lenses ever begin to seem slack, it would be easy to re-tension this ring by a gentle bend to the three arms. The four screw holes are in metal posts mounted directly into the magnesium body. The plastic ring can be argued to have no effect on precision, as the original mount rests on these posts, leaving the plastic and the stainless tension ring more as a ‘lubricated’ assembly with a little ‘give’, affecting only the tightness of the lens to the body. The plastic has no sacrificial role, as it does in many lenses (Sigma, Tamron, Nikon, and Canon all use plastic to create weak points where the lens will break on hard impact rather than having it shear the body mount off the camera – not sure about Sony).

The final step is to place the new mount, aligned with its white dot and cut-outs and screw holes, in the only position it will fit. Please note that the TOUGH wording goes inside and is not shown on the camera front! Again, I don’t place the camera on its back, and prefer the control given by holding both the camera and the screwdriver (which if properly chosen will support the screw). No pressure is needed to locate the screws for a few turns. I rotated the camera so that the screw hole being worked on was always below the sensor. Finally, when tightening up each screw in turn to a firm fit, the camera was laid on its back and my 62mm filter was placed to cover the mount opening, held firmly. You can also just place a finger against the screwdriver on the ‘inside’ while tightening up, so that if for any reason it slips, you block it from entering camera.

Once fitted, there’s little more to say. It looks a touch classier than the cheaply machined soft metal Sony original, it is a snug and perfect fit, and lens mounting has a slightly more solid feel without resistance or any scraping sensation. Fotodiox may be taking the mickey by suggeting you give the old mount to the cat to play with, of course you should keep it carefully. While doing this I discovered that the original old Minolta SR bayonet shares the screwhole locations and almost perfectly matches the overall size of the E-mount. I could actually take a Minolta SR bayonet off the front of some old extension tubes and fit an E-mount in place. This would serve no purpose but it’s a fascinating hint at the pedigree of the new system – it has a three-flange bayonet so similar to the SR mount, introduced 52 years after Minolta’s SLR debut!

Everything worked perfectly as expected once fitted (see notes below). Cost – $39.95 plus shipping. I consider it a good upgrade.

Notes on infinity focus, fit, and light leak issues

While Sony native E mount lenses seem fine, some of my third party adaptors are not fitting well, and very short focal length lenses show that the infinity focus may be affected. If you use lenses 12mm to 20mm on adaptors, proceed with caution. I am not able to get the Kipon tilt shift adaptor to mount without a forceful twist, though a similar age Kipon shift-only adaptor is happy enough (just no longer able to hit infinity with my chosen 20mm lens).

Infinity collimation after tests and measurements – I’ve now checked infinity focus using stars. I’m just OK on all but one lens and adaptor combination, and all Sony E or FE lenses are fine, as they have loads of spare adjustment (no hard infinity stop – they will all focus way beyond infinity and can handle big differences in camera assembly accuracy). Same with LA-EA3 and LA-EA4 adaptors and Min/Sony A lenses, the worst case lenses hit infinity at exactly infinity, most focus just past.

Kipon Nikon Tilt-Shift – extremely tight fit, so tight it has to pulled off the camera physically. Here I’m thinking that some very gently polishing or ultra fine emery (the sort I use for polishing guitar frets) might ease the adaptor.

Novoflex Leica M adaptor – will not bayonet-lock with the new mount, can’t work out if the flanges are obstructing the full turn or the locking pin hole is slightly off position. Fotodiox helical M adaptor locks perfectly. All other adaptors fit and lock comfortably.

Checked my Kipon shift adaptor for Canon and it’s 21.34mm from rear to front flange, and the lens won’t focus on infinity. My plain cheap Canon FD adaptor is 21.16mm and the lens will hit infinity perfectly. On the original mount, the shift adaptor was just OK to infinity – not for stars, but for landscape. So maybe 0.1mm actual difference in front face register to sensor on the Fotodiox Tough mount, compared to the Sony original.

Light leak issue – a day later I had bright full sunshine and was able to position the camera with the mount getting direct sun, and give exposures of 30 seconds to 1 minute with the lens completely stopped down and blocked off, and the ISO set to 1600. The results proved that it’s not the camera mount assembly which has most effect –

The pure black exposure above is from the 28-70mm kit zoom set to 40mm, at f/25, with the lens cap on.

This result is from a Voigtlander 40mm f/1.4 mounted using a Novoflex Leica M adaptor, at f/22, with the lens cap on. Simply swapping the Voigtlander adaptor for a Fotodiox helical focusing Leica M adaptor, which has a far wider flange and double the ‘bearing surface’ on the mount and it also a much firmer overall fit, produced the same solid black as the 28-70mm. The 10-18mm also produced a solid black though it was clear that the lens cap lets in a bit of light at the spring clip positions.

To double check, I fitted a disc of Rosco Black Cinéfoil (totally lightproof heavy metal foil you can cut with scissors) into another mount so it sat behind the back of a 50mm lens. This was a Ukrainian shift mount and Zenitar lens. This mount also has a large, black anodised rear surface. No light was admitted. I found that most of my third party adaptors let in light, usually the small angled line/crescent top right, and so did the Sony LA-EA3 and 4. The Novoflex has me surprised and baffled as it let light in over a wider pattern, and it seems to be the best engineered adaptor I have, but the well for the bayonet locking pin is shallow and perhaps too precise as the pin does now not engage (you can feel it just begin to hit the lock position).

(don’t read beyond this point if you don’t like seeing measurements…)

This adaptor works perfectly on other NEX/E bodies and worked perfectly before changing the mount. Relaxing and re-tightening the mount fitting screws, to be doubly sure of correct seating, did not solve the problem. The pin recess in the Novoflex adaptor is 2.30mm wide, and in all the other adaptors measured and also on Sony lenses, from 2.36mm to 2.5mm. The slight wiggle present on Sony lenses when fitted seems to be down to approx 0.07mm tolerance allowed for the locking pin to engage, as this is the part of the mount which limits or fixed the position of the mounted lens. Lenses and adaptors tested, when mounted with the locking pin depressed, can move around 0.5 to 1mm beyond the optimal mounting position.

It looks as if the locking pin mechanism is one area identified as a source of light leaks, and that if the pin is not allowed to engage fully (recess too shallow or not accepting the pin) more light will be admitted. All my manual adaptors varied in the depth and exact design of the locking pin well – 1.1mm deep on Kipon, 0.69mm deep on Fotodiox, 1.23mm on Novoflex, 1.1mm on Sony G 10-18mm, 1.18mm on Sony 16-50mm PZ. The 28-70mm which had perfect light sealing also has an unusual locking pin hole, almost perfectly circular not an elongated oval like all the other lenses. This was 1.2mm deep and with a 2.5mm radius. It is obviously perfectly placed and very precise despite this being a non-G, non-CZ, cheap Sony kit lens.

Anyway, 10 seconds with a Dremel and the Novoflex adaptor is now a perfect locking fit ready for another test if the sun comes out again this year.

Sony did say, back in 2010, they would make the E-mount specifications public for all to use. If anyone has information on what tolerances were specified, please let us know!

Update 30/10/14: using a high intensity single LED torch, the Novoflex adaptor problem was eventually narrowed down to light leaking through the mount between high-grade Leica mounts (Cosina Voigtlander, and Carl Zeiss) and the adaptor. Tightening the flange pressure did not cure the fault. No leak is present when using a low-cost Chinese M adaptor on a screw thread lens, which is a firmer fit. The Nokton and Tele-Tessar lenses also show no leak with the Fotodiox adaptor. It’s just an issue with these mounts – probably from the same source, as Cosina assembles CZ Leica mount lenses – and the Novoflex.

Absolutely no light leak can be identified on the A7R body with the new mount fitted. All leaks turn out to have been down to third party adaptors. The LA-EA3 and LA-EA4 give no light leaks, same for all E/FE mount Sony lenses. The Kipon Tilt-Shift (Nikon, $200+) has so many light leaks I can’t map them – every stage of the unit from the lens mount to the body mount, and all the moving parts, admit light; unit dangerously tight on Tought-E mount. Kipon Shift adaptor (Canon FD) admits light freely, especially when shifted. Canon FD plain adaptor, low cost – leaks at body mount. Cheap Minolta MD adaptor – no leaks. Cheap Nikon adaptor – OK at the body mount, lens release catch admits light freely (repaired using black putty compound but ineffective, still leaks light). Cheap tilt MD to Nex adaptor – one strong light leak in mount between some lenses (chrome flanges) and the adaptor, but otherwise light-tight to the body and in its tilt mechanism. Low-cost L39 to NEX adaptor – no problems at all. Ukraine/Kiev/Zenitar 50mm tilt combo – perfect, no leaks in any position. Samyang 12mm f/2 – small local leak at mount (top right crescent issue). 28-70mm FE – absolutely light-tight, no issues. 10-18mm Sony G – ditto, no light leak at all. 16-50mm Sony PZ – no light leak. Tamron 18-200mm – top right crescent issue. Fotodiox Leica M helical, with any lens, no problems. Focus brand Canon EF to FE mount AF adaptor – no leaks. Original 1st gen Kipon 42mm tilt device – no leaks at all.

– David Kilpatrick

Accessories - 3rd party, DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews, NEX System, Sony Digital Cameras, Troubleshooting

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 roll out Pro support in Europe

Posted on September 15, 2014 By David Kilpatrick

Professional photographers in Europe can benefit from valuable help and extra peace of mind with the launch of Sony Imaging PRO Support. There’s no membership fee for the service, which is offered to professional photographers who own qualifying Sony α camera bodies and lenses.

Following its successful launch in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Sony Imaging PRO Support makes its official European debut in Germany from April next year, followed by rollout in other countries.

A dedicated telephone help desk gives professional photographers expert support with using their camera equipment.

There’s a free collection and return service for units requiring repairs, plus a free back-up loan unit which helps to keep professional photographers up and running.

In addition, enrolled Sony Imaging PRO Support customers can benefit from a free twice-yearly image sensor cleaning service and firmware check-up to keep their cameras in top condition.

To be eligible for the service, professional photographers must own multiple Sony high-end α cameras such as α99, α7 series and Sony G or Carl Zeiss lenses. The details about the application and service will be announced closer to launch date.

News, Sony Digital Cameras

Capture One Express bundled for Sony raw handling

Posted on September 15, 2014 By David Kilpatrick

Capture One Express (for Sony) RAW converter and image editing software will be bundled with Alpha and Cyber-shot cameras in future.

The ‘Capture One’ RAW converter and image editing software from Phase One has been newly adapted for Sony. ‘Capture One Express (for Sony)’ will be provided at no extra charge to users who purchase an α interchangeable-lens camera or Cyber-shot RX digital still camera. This image processing tool incorporates an advanced RAW image processing engine to enable delicate images to be finessed to deliver a high-quality finish.

Refer to the following website for details: www.phaseone.com/en/Imaging-Software/Capture-One-for-Sony.aspx

This website will go live at 10:00 Central European Time on 16/09/14

Software Reviews, Sony Digital Cameras

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

« 1 2 3 4 »