Tag: Alpha

Creep no more! The LensBand.

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Though their website shows a very different way of using this theme park wristband repurposed – the LensBand anti zoom creep device – it just happens to fit many Sony zooms perfectly without stretching it into position to lock barrel to collar.

By fitting the LensBand exactly over the joint between the zoom ring and static lens barrel, you can create a much smoother damped zoom action and prevent the zoom from tromboning when carried, or creeping during long exposures when the camera is angled up or down. This issue is not tackled by stabilisation and very small amounts of zoom creep can affect exposures as short as 1/30th without your realising. You don’t get why the zoom appears to be not so sharp – that’s because you do not realise you, or gravity, have caused a tiny shift in focal length during the exposure.

These silicone rubber bands are not expensive, and they can also be used to provide extra grip on zoom or focusing rings. We chose two colours as the best for Sony Alpha – orange and black! At the end of this article you’ll find a link to our associates at The Photostore (Adrian, for a decade the manager of the Minolta Club) who have both these wonderful rubbery colours in stock.

Here’s Mr Orange fitted to a very first batch 16-80mm CZ zoom which has become slack enough to extend itself when strapdangled. By positioning the band centrally over the seam, leaving the focal lengths just visible and the focusing window clear, the lens is transformed. The zoom action becomes super-smooth and the lens does not shift at all. The elasticity of the LensBand is 100% perfect for this zoom. You can yank it over the back of the zoom ring closer to the camera, at one side, to increase the lock effect but in practice this position works full time. It locks, and prevents creep, and also radically improves the feel of the lens zoom.

As you can see, it also looks pretty funky and matches the orange lens not-a-seal-just-a-decoration bit on the Alpha 55 mount.

But for a Sigma 70-300mm Apo Macro – one of our favourite lenses despite past histories of stripped gears, since no other lens does the same thing in terms of focus range and pure sharpness – the black band looked better. This time, the fit is a little tighter but the band forms a cone shape gripping between zoomring and barrel. It prevents the rather slack zoom of a brand new 70-300mm Siggy from causing havoc. Between 150 and 250mm, this zoom will tend to self-extend if aimed downward (or collapse back when tracking those same old BIFs and airshow targets beloved of dPreview boringphoto posters!).

You can see that this new band collected dust and skinbits instantly – it really doesn’t matter if you have just spent 15 minutes in a bath, the human body sheds a couple of million sensor dust specks every hour and your fingers are a magnet for silicone rubber. Black always looks worse – the orange band stands up to our macro lens photography a bit better.

The band bridges a fatter zoom ring to a narrow diameter lens barrel. This still works. By moving the band just 1mm either way, the tension or damping effect on the zoom can be controlled precisely. This particular lens was improved 200% in feel by fitting the band. It was also made usable on a tripod when aimed down or up.

Well, there it is. Could not really be a simpler concept (we’ve done it with fat rubber bands – one Photoclubalpha member reports using a band found holding together a bunch of broccoli). But these robust, one-size-fits-all-except-tiny-microfourthirds LensBand alternatives are clearly a better choice.

No, they don’t fit the 70-400mm SSM G. For that you need the inner tube of a hobbit bicycle tyre, or perhaps a couple of sand eels knotted together. Or one big one in the fashion of the Worm Orobouros. One day, we’ll tackle that; at the moment, our 70-400mm SSM G is solid enough not to slip. Another really rocksolid lens seems to the 16-105mm Sony SAL zoom, lovely firm action; and the Tamron 18-200mm E for NEX feels like it won’t get loose for years.

You find the LensBand for sale all over the place, but in UK, for orange and black, visit:

www.photostore-uk.com

Adrian Paul also has loads of small accessories and he can get almost ANY Sony Alpha part or product to order – faster than most retailers. He is an authorised Sony Alpha supplier and has 25 years plus in-depth knowledge of the system.

For worldwide orders, B&H in the USA stocks all the colours, even the ugly ones which look nice on Canon lenses!

 

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Accessories - 3rd party, DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews

Sony DT 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM

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I’m about to offend myself. I own this lens, and I know how upset owners of brand new lenses get when someone says it’s not perfect. Well, the 16-50mm SSM is far from perfect and if you know how to check out lenses, you’ll agree should you be lucky enough to own one. It’s a compromise. But I love it.

Here’s the problem; this lens has such soft corners and complex distortion at 16mm and f/2.8 that it makes the NEX’s legendarily reviled* 16mm pancake look like a Super Angulon in disguise. It’s got a curved field at 50mm and stopping down does not always bring distant scenes into perfect focus across the frame. It suffers from rampant chromatic aberration which just becomes a dead-sharp fringe on stopping down. *Not by me!

This shot was taken on a preproduction A77 and 16-50mm. I was not supposed ever to show it. But I know there is no fault with the shot, the pre-release gear was just fine. And I really like the minimum focus, at 50mm, at f/2.8!

Yet it also has exceptionally high central sharpness, great colour and contrast, and a lovely quality to its differential focus. That’s the old traditional English-language term for the context in which people over-use the term ‘bokeh’, and deserves to be revived. With f/2.8 to play with across the entire zoom range, you can use differential focus creatively. At medium settings, 24-35mm, the distortion disappears and the sharpness extends corner to corner wide open. You have to set it to 50mm to lose the edge.

More than this, the 16-50mm SSM is a video-tuned lens. Its natural host camera, the Alpha 77, crops the frame considerably when shooting HD video. The soft corners and even most of the distortion don’t get a look in, they are outside the video area. The standard and 3D pan modes of the A77 also crop out the problems. The focus action and silent supersonic motor of the 16-50mm are ideal for A77 video shooting with active AF (if you want it) during takes. The f/2.8 aperture allows the lens to be stopped down to the optimum f/3.5 used for movies and also for high speed (12fps) mode, and have no issues with aperture shifts if the focal length is changed.

The Carl Zeiss 16-80mm, left, is smaller than the Sony 16-50mm SSM.

After testing the lens, I decided to keep my 16-80mm CZ which is now five years old. It’s not just the different quality of image produced by the CZ coatings and design, or the very slighter better close-up ability (you can’t get quite as close but at 80mm the subject scale is a touch bigger on the CZ – the 16-50mm wins at 16mm, where getting two and half inches closer to the subject makes a real difference). The CZ is lighter, takes 62mm filters rather than 72mm, and is considerably smaller with lens hood size adding to the difference. Working in the field, it is a lens which can easily be held in the hand with fingers free to operate the lens-mount release button, hold a rear cap, or even another lens – the usual juggling of two lenses which photographers get used to.

With lens hoods fitted, the overall relative sizes become more obvious. The SSM lens has an attractive metal front ring, a new trademark of higher-end Sony lenses, shared with the 70-400mm G.

The 16-50mm is at the limit of diameter, shape, balance and weight to be safely gripped with another lens in the same hand, even briefly during the process of swapping over. That’s not to say it is cumbersome, just that the 16-80mm is faster and more secure to work with because it’s that little bit smaller and lighter.

Once on the camera, I have to say I like the overall balance created by the 16-50mm. It tends to help the A77 hang lens-down, a position I prefer with the camera under my left arm and the strap over my shoulder. The zoom action is super-smooth and well damped, and also has a lock which operates at 16mm to prevent gravity-fed creep, and keep the action firm in future.

No creepy zooming – thanks to Royal Mail, and their neat Sony-coloured rubber bands which are a perfect fit to go on the CZ 16-80 and make the zoom action super-smooth and stay put!

My CZ is now well used and over-free in action. A rubber band to go over the front end of the zoom ring is the cure! You can get proper broad Alpha-ish orange silicone rubber ones from Lens Band as well as the free orangey-red ones used in the UK to hold our postal deliveries together. My way of using a rubber band is not quite the same as Lens Band’s method, it goes over the flush seam between zoom ring and lens barrel on the 16-80mm and it doesn’t just hold the zoom, it smooths the zoom action.

The zoom lock on the 16-50mm was missed from the 16-80mm… missed by all owners, that is. The 16-50mm has a type of raised  moulded marking. Durable? Maybe not. The similar raised ‘P’ on my A77 mode dial is now a ‘D’ having lost its stalk.

The best shots I’ve got from the 16-50mm are as good as the best from the 16-80mm, but I can trust the CZ more in the 35-80mm range. From 35-50mm the SSM becomes increasingly soft and sharpness towards the edges of the frame can be poor. At first I thought this was only at full aperture, but shots at apertures like f/5 and f/7.1 were affected. I compared my own lens with two pre-production Sony samples I had used months earlier; we were told not to release images taken with these. The degree and type of sharpness loss was identical, enough for me to conclude this is a characteristic of the lens and not a coincidental case of rogue lenses.

Major plus points for the 16-50mm include focus accuracy, which is much better than the 16-80mm on most Alpha bodies. The f/2.8 aperture activates higher accuracy sensors, such as the Alpha 700’s central point and the extended range of the 11 cross sensors of the Alpha 77. When used on the Alpha 580 for live view pre-shot AF, or on the NEX models with the original LA-EA1 contrast-detect AF adaptor, both focus speed and accuracy are optimum.

The SSM lens has an AF/MF switch but no on-lens button control. Direct Manual Focus is supported and unlike SAM (conventional in-lens motor) lenses, the supersonic drive is not damaged by moving the focus ring without engaging MF.

Despite the large area of glass, the 16-50mm is no more prone to flare than the 16-80mm. The new Sony coatings used for this lens (water and oil/dirt resistant, very hard, similar to Nikon’s NanoCrystal) do a great job. And, of course, they are part of the final reason I am keeping this objective. It’s weatherproofed to some degree, as is the Alpha 77 body. Reports vary between dowsing with a bucket of water without harm, to reluctant use in slight drizzle. I think I’ll get myself a Sigma EX DG filter for my lens, as these have the same coating now and they are about the best slim-mount UV filters made for optical quality without paying Hoya Pro1 Digital prices.

Also, with the 72mm filter thread, there seems to be less need for a super-slim filter. The CZ lens suffers from very strong mechanical vignetting at both ends of the scale, producing dark corners at 16mm or 80mm alike. At 16mm, depending on the position of the SSS/AS sensor-based stabilisation, a dark corner can be well enough defined to need cloning out or the image cropping. The 16-50mm SSM has no such issues. Not only is optical vignetting well-controlled, the mount does not create any dark corners.

These dark corners are created by adding vignetting and grads in raw processing. The 16-50mm, at 24mm, turns in great shadow to highlight detail without a hint of flare; 1/50th at f/9, ISO 100, hand-held with SSS – mid-January in the Scottish Borders. When I pulled up to shoot this, a car with two camouflage-kitted big Nikon and Canon multi lens ‘serious enthusiast’ shooters pulled in alongside. They were still struggling with tripods, a kissing-gate, a stone wall, lenses and car by the time I’d got the sunray shot (which disappeared in seconds) and left. I just carry my Alpha 77 – but then, I’m not a ‘serious enthusiast’ and my ideal camera would be invisible and with me all the time. I’m a panda – sees shoots and leaves.

Though Sony owners may be reluctant to admit it, the SSS mechanism can decentre the sensor and if the lens coverage is so tight it barely covers the corners of the frame (16-80mm and 16-105mm both guilty) you can get the occasional asymmetric dark corner. I’ve never seen this yet from the 16-50mm. But when I check the 16-80mm against the 16-50mm using the Alpha 900 full frame finder to examine the image circles, if anything the 16-80mm has more apparent clearance round the extremes of APS-C, with a softer gradation. The 16-50mm has a tight exact circle.

I have also checked the way the 16-80mm and 16-50mm focus as you zoom. Though the CZ is not perfectly parfocal. That term describes a zoom which retains exactly the same focus point, as you zoom. Video and TV camera lenses are parfocal, otherwise, the focus might ‘go off’ during a zoom. The CZ is nearly parfocal, just a touch varifocal. That’s the opposite term, and means a zoom which changes the focus as you change focal length. At one time, varifocal lenses were not actually called zooms; they date back to the 1920s, and J H Dallmeyer’s adjustable telephoto lenses. Konica made a famous 35-100mm f/2.8 Varifocal in the 1970s.

Silent focus, silent A77 camera (almost), 16mm and ISO 800 at f/3.2 – with ACR profile correction. Café society, Hawick.

The 16-50mm is either a perfect parfocal zoom, or so close you will never know. It is possible to focus at 16mm, and zoom in to the subject. This can only happen with very accurate focus, and a parfocal zoom. Try it with the 16-80mm CZ and you will see the image go out of focus, not to mention clicks and jumps in brightness changing as the aperture adjusts (that’s because the CZ is a variable maximum aperture lens, f/3.5-4.5). The 16-50mm can zoom during video, in or out, without losing the original focus point and without any brightness change or aperture adjustment.

Now you may understand why I want to keep this lens even though – unlike some enthusiastic new owners – I find that its sharpness across the field is not actually as consistent as the CZ. It is a far better overall match to the Alpha 77 especially for video work. But in January, I chose the CZ in preference for a week abroad, and I would most likely do so again.

The Alpha 77 (and 65) include built-in correction profiles for this lens. They are so effective that when I first saw JPEGs from it, I thought the geometry was perfect. If you intend to use the lens for JPEG and movie shooting, any criticisms can be moderated. The correction profile can not improve sharpness, and it does change the effective focal length slightly so than you don’t get a true 16mm.

This is a straight-on shot of the Adobe chart used (not this way, shot nine times per full frame) for profile creation and it shows how very bendy the 16mm f/2.8 setting is at this range, the target is A2 size. Click image to see full size.

This is the same, but JPEG with the in-camera correction enabled.

This is the same, with the Adobe Lens Profile I have created and sent to Adobe, applied in raw conversion of the first example. Please note that the Adobe profile applies to shots taken at three times this distance or more – these profiles, like the in-camera profile, are never much good at rigorous correction of geometric targets shot a couple of feet from the lens.

For Adobe Camera Raw, I have made a profile for the lens which covers three apertures (f/2.8, f/5.6, f/11) and three focal length settings (16mm, 24mm, 50mm) between all of which ACR will interpolate correction values. Because the extreme corners of the image go so much out of focus when shooting the target (refocusing ruins the profiling process) I don’t think this profile handles chromatic aberration as well as it could. The profiling program needs a sharp image of the RGB colour channels to work out their relative scale, which is how CA is corrected. Applying 150% CA correction, instead of the default 100%, seems to improve the conversion.

Here is an uncorrected real-life shot on the 16-50 and 16mm, 1/125th at f/9, ISO 200 (click image for full size 24 megapixel view, and note the chromatic aberration at the left end of the shot especially).

This is the same raw file processed using the Adobe Lens Profile I have produced for the lens.

You can dowload from here the 16-50mmA77rawAdobeLensProfile, hopefully it will also become available from Adobe’s user-created download area. Unzip the file to extract the .lcp file, and place this in your Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/LensProfiles/1.0/Sony directory. You require Photoshop CS5 to use the profile.

So what is my conclusion? I do not agree with some of the over-the-top reviews including one to be found on the Sony store USA site claiming it’s the best zoom of this range and aperture for any system. It is not, you get more than you pay for (much less than a lens of this specification might cost from others) but not an optical miracle. You get a very well designed optical compromise housed in a particularly good mechanical design. I would compare it favourably with Olympus’s waterproof ‘Top Pro’ range fast lenses for 4/3rds. I think it can claim to match Canon’s 17-55mm f/2.8 and Nikon’s similar lens, I’ve used both and the Sony is rather neater. It’s probably a little better than the Pentax/Tokina 16-50mm f/2.8, which it most resembles but definitely is not related to.

It’s different from the CZ 16-80mm, not better or worse; it has a different mix of good qualities and failings. The obvious competitors are Sigma’s 17-50mm f/2.8 OS and the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. The Sigma offers Optical Stabilisation. The Tamron is now an older design, replaced by a new VC stabilised version for other mounts, but still issued without stabilisation at about 60% of the price of their VC versions, for Alpha. It is the lowest-cost option in this range.

The Sony Alpha SSM 16-50mm f/2.8 DT lens is supplied with rear cap, 72mm lens cap, and bayonet petal hood. It does not come with a case or pouch. My lens was purchased ‘white boxed’ – that is, split off from an Alpha 77+16-50mm kit by a dealer and priced accordingly. The lens is only available with the A77, or as a separate item; it is not currently offered as a kit option with the Alpha 65 or other models.

– David Kilpatrick

Check the current price from B&H Photo Video – remember, B&H ship worldwide and for the UK buyers, offer a UK service.

Technical Data (Sony information) amended to remove nonsense

  • Lens Type : Standard Zoom
  • Focal Length 16-50mm (35mm equivalent 24-75mm)
  • Lens Mount Type : Sony A-mount, SSM in-lens supersonic motor focusing, electronic coupling
  • Aperture (Max.) : f/2.8
  • Aperture (Min.) : f/22
  • Filter Diameter : 72mm
  • Lens Groups-Elements : 13 groups, 16 elements
  • Minimum Focus Distance : 12″ (30cm)
  • Distance Encoder : Yes
  • Distance Scale: Yes
  • Angle of View: 83°-32°
  • Non-rotating Filter Thread : Yes
  • Aperture : 7 blades (Circular aperture)
  • Lens Weight : 20.4 oz (577g)
  • Maximum Magnification : 0.2x
  • Dimensions (Approx.) : 3-1/4 x 3-1/2” (81 x 88mm)

Compare the 16-80mm Carl Zeiss technical data:

  • Lens Type : Standard Zoom
  • Focal Length 16-80mm (35mm equivalent 24 – 120mm)
  • Lens Mount Type: Sony A-mount, in-body motor focusing via mechanical drive coupling
  • Aperture (Max.) : f/3.5 – 4.5
  • Aperture (Min.) : f/22 – 29
  • Filter Diameter : 62mm
  • Lens Groups-Elements : 10 groups, 14 elements
  • Minimum Focus Distance : 14.4” (36cm)
  • Aspheric Elements : 2 aspheric
  • Distance Encoder : Yes
  • Distance Scale : Yes
  • Angle of View: 83°-20°
  • Non-rotating Filter Thread : Yes
  • Aperture : 7 blades (Circular aperture)
  • Lens Weight : 15.7 oz (445g)
  • Magnification : x 0.24
  • Dimensions (Approx.) : 2 7/8 x 3 3/8” (72 x 83mm)
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Equipment Reviews, Lenses - Alpha Mount

Sony’s Zeiss 24mm f/2 Distagon ZA SSM T* reviewed

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The Sony Zeiss 24mm f/2 SSM Distagon ZA T* is probably the best, or equal to the best, in its class. It may perhaps be the best ever 84° angle fast lens ever made for the general SLR system market, and I would happy to pitch it against any of the current equivalent offerings for medium format digital.

The initial journey with the 24mm f/2 was not one of intensive companionship – I am long past the stage of getting hold of a wonderful lens and then shoehorning all my photographs into that lens’s view just because I love the glass. I’ve been through that phase. I remember when I was 18 and my then fiancée (Shirley – still here!) bought me a brand new 35mm f/3.5 SMC Takumar, my first ever multicoated lens as well as my first new boxed product. I shot almost everything with that lens for a month…

A full-frame Alpha 900 study at full f/2 aperture. Check the sharpness in the central – very limited – sharp focus zone by clicking the image for a full size version.

My review of the 24mm appears in the British Journal of Photography for January 2012 but was written in November, and at the end I comment that I do not think I would buy one. Well, between writing that and publication – after returning the test lens loaned to me by Paul Genge of Sony UK – I placed my order. I sold a set of lenses including a 28mm f/2 Minolta RS and a 17-35mm Konica Minolta D to pay for it.

Check current availability and price at B&H Photo Video (opens in a new window will not lose this page).

Why?

It was partly medium format which persuaded me. I’ve been experimenting with MF digital, first using a Hasselblad with a Phase One P20 and then shifting to a Mamiya 645 AFII with a 22 megapixel ZD 37 x 49mm back. Once you put the Zeiss on the Alpha 900, the image quality jumps to match the level of a similar MF pixel count. And without spending into the tens of thousands you can’t match the angle of view at a higher pixel count.

These two cameras both shoot 22 megapixels over a 16 x 12″ print shape (the Alpha 900 being cropped) and both were current in 2008 – though the Mamiya ZD model was shortly to disappear. And the two lenses have similar coverage.

I looked at the corners of my MF shots on a 35mm lens (nearly identical angle of view) – to be clean, they demanded f/11. And then I looked at the corners on the Zeiss, which are even cleaner by f/4. Finally, I considered what Sony may have in store – 36 megapixels on full frame. Everything I’ve seen from the 24mm – including its performance on the A77 and A55 – indicates it will not run out of resolution even if full frame goes well over 50 megapixels.

Then I had the job of looking back over the Alpha 900, Alpha 55 and Alpha 77 pictures taken with the 24mm, and preparing some comparison shots. This was when I realised that my normal line-up of zooms, no matter how good, never got the same from any camera – APS-C or full frame – as this CZ prime. It may be bulky, take large filters, and cost nearly £1,000 but no other solution on any format from NEX through A77 to MF offered the same as the 24mm on Alpha 900. You will, however, be surprised later on to see just how well the tiny NEX 16mm f/2.8 does in comparison when both lenses are stopped down to f/8.

The 35mm 2:3 format shape offers a bit of vertical composition ‘rise or fall’ potential compared to to 3:4 shape of my Mamiya with 35mm wide–angle. Beyond this, the 24mm offers both CD and PD focus with different adaptors on the NEX system, and smooth near-silent AF during video on the Alpha 65/77 and future models. It’s both future-proof and a future classic.

Photojournalism or architecture

Because the 24mm has a fast f/2 maximum aperture, it’s seen as a choice for news, documentary, reportage, sports, and close quarters party or family shooting. Though a little vulnerable because of its size, it does this job well. Unlike tele lenses, any mark on the front glass of a wide-angle like this will show in pictures when the aperture is stopped down. Special care should always be taken of retrofocus and fisheye lenses with vulnerable front elements, my own lens will get a Sigma EX DG 72mm UV filter. Why Sigma? I ran a series of ad hoc tests on filters and these turned out to be just as good as Hoya Pro 1 Digital at half the price, and with better multicoating.

At f/2, struggling with light for a hand-held shot with 1/40th at ISO 1600 on the Alpha 55, the 24mm showed surprisingly clean imaging from the boat to the lights on the cliff top.

Here’s a shot taken at f/2.5, 2/3rds of a stop down from wide open – a sensible aperture to give that hint of extra depth of field and improved optical performance. Click the image to view a full size A55 image on pBase.

When fitted to my A55 or A77, the 35mm-equivalent field of view is also a good general lens for photojournalism (what you get is more or less a Fuji X100 equivalent, but hardly pocketable). The performance over the APS-C field of view is so good that working at full aperture carries little penalty at all except restricted depth of field. The geometry and field flatness over the restricted field mean  you could use the lens for artwork copying and get a better result than the 50mm f/1.4 of 30mm f/2.8 SAM macro will produce.

Over full frame, this technical excellence makes the lens attractive to the commercial, industrial and architectural photographer. Whenever you need to apply a strong software correction, focal length figures are thrown out of the window. For example, once the on-board lens correction in the A77 is applied to the 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM lens at 16mm the true minimum focal length equivalent becomes close to 17mm not 16mm.

Hasselblad’s 28mm superwide for its HD series cameras has strong barrel distortion, relying on in-camera and Phocus raw software converter functions to remove it. So while the lens claims to be a 17mm equivalent, that is only true over absolute full-frame 645. On their digital sensors, it’s only equal to a 21mm and the correction means the true crop is more like a 23mm.

A second effect of applying any in-camera or post-process distortion correction is loss of true image pixels. Either you crop the frame after sampling down, or the image is interpolated upwards to fill the frame. Both solutions are far from satisfactory because unlike a fixed interpolation, the value ranges from 0 to whatever maximum is involved (typically between 3% and 7%) and all of this is never a clean ratio.

Above: a sea horizon (the top of the crop is the top of the frame, and it is full width). Top, CZ 16-80mm at 16mm 0n Alpha 77, uncorrected, showing complex wave-form distortion as well as vignetting despite stopping down to f/11. Centre: CZ 24mm on Alpha 900, uncorrected, at f/13. Bottom: 24mm after applying a 2% barrel distortion correction. Click image to view a larger version.

Here the 24mm CZ shines. It really uses all the 24 megapixels of the A900 or indeed the A77, because geometric correction rarely needs to be applied. It has a true 24mm focal length which does not need to be quietly changed to 25mm or 26mm by applying a lens profile. If a 35mm retrofocus AF lens was made for MF digital to this standard, even without the f/2 aperture, it would be hailed as a world-beater. The most that’s needed is a correction of 2% (+, removing barrel distortion) in Adobe Camera Raw and this restores something like a sea horizon near the top of a landscape format frame to a perfect straight line.

No correction is applied here to this full frame 24mm Alpha 900 image – a central horizon, and straight lines which are not parallel to the frame edge, make the 2% distortion (similar to many standard 50mm lenses) no issue at all.

For many subjects, depending on the distance and a ‘rigour’ of the shot (the sea horizon is the most demanding example) no correction at all will be needed. This applies to most interiors, and always to scenes like mountain views or forest landscapes where there is no perfectly flat horizon.

The Alpha 900 is so close to MF digital quality I should really forget the attractions of MF systems. Nearly everything I see from them which impresses me is down to using prime lenses of first quality like the Zeiss and Mamiya 80mm f/2.8 standards and working in a methodical way often using a tripod, minimum ISO, mirror-up operation. Applying the same parameters to Alpha full frame lifts the end result to match – and the CZ 24mm f/2 is a key to unlock that quality.

At f/14, the 24mm is not losing detail sharpness on the Alpha 900 as long as the correct raw processing parameters are applied. To secure this depth of field, f/14 was needed – a medium format camera would require f/27. Holding the camera, viewing and composing this shot were all aided by the ergonomics, weight and viewfinder quality of the Alpha 900. Click image for a full size version on pBase.

This is a dual-purpose or multi-purpose lens. Where the 16mm focal length of the NEX SEL 16mm f/2.8, the Alpha SAL 16-50mm f/2.8, the CZ 16-80mm or SAL 16-105mm all cover the same nominal angle not one of these has the same neutral geometry, even illumination and good corner to corner sharpness at wider apertures. Corrected by software, they don’t have the same true angle and the outer field can become noisy because of extra sensor-mapping gain applied to reduce vignetting.

The size and SEL comparison!

But I would like to show you something surprising. I am a great fan of the 16mm NEX f/2.8 pancake, which is one of the few such lenses made to have a positive (pincushion) simple distortion pattern and a cup not cap shaped field of focus. It is a revolutionary inverted telephoto design of great simplicity, with only 5 elements, enabling the lens to be 16mm focal length yet have a rear node position over 20mm from the sensor – thus avoiding all kinds of vignetting and colour shift problems.

People who don’t understand how to use a focus plane where the corners are focused FURTHER than the centre – the exact opposite of the CZ 24mm f/2 where the corners are focused CLOSER than the centre – do tests like landscapes wide open and wonder why the grass either side of their feet dissolves into blur. Actually all the little 16mm needs is modest stopping down, as would be applied by any professional using a Super Angulon for that matter, to f/8.

First of all, have a look at some lens sizes. I like this shot, as it shows just how big CZ had to make the 24mm to get what they did. It dwarfs the SEL 16mm for NEX and the classic Minolta 28mm f/2 RS:

I’d like you to see the exact comparison between Alpha 900 with 24mm CZ and NEX-5 with SEL 16mm.

This is the A900 and 24mm, entirely uncorrected and uncropped – the building on the right actually does not have a straight wall, don’t be fooled into thinking there’s a sudden burst of barrel distortion! Aperture f/8.

This the NEX with 16mm, corrected in ACR; I’ve tried to keep the camera positions very close but this was real-time shooting and with viewfinder versus screen composition, not so easy. You can see that the 16mm has slightly less true angle of view when corrected but don’t judge from the foreground flower tub, just check the horizontal angle. This is also at f/8.

You can click each image and view a full size JPEG. I have made both of them 24 megapixels, exporting from the NEX to the same size file as the Alpha 900. That may be unfair but you can judge. My opinion is that both the NEX 14 megapixel sensor and the SEL 16mm are underestimated by far too many owners; as far as ISO noise handling goes, the 16mm f/2.8 on NEX is actually as ‘fast’ as the 24mm f/2 on Alpha 900 but that comparison may change with future full frame bodies. As for depth of field, the f/8 shot on APS-C would need to be at f/13 on full frame to match, but in practice both are well covered.

Using the NEX 16mm in different conditions would produce a different result – wide open in a room interior, the corners would be likely to look very blurred. My scene above conforms to the cup-shape focus plane of the NEX lens, and works against the cap-shape focus plane of the CZ 24mm.

Remember as a general rule: barrel distortion = corners focused close than centre. Pincushion distortion = corners focused further away than centre. Moustache or wave form = a doughnut normally of closer focus between centre and corners, but when a full frame lens with this type of distortion (like the 16-35mm CZf/2.8 – or a more extreme example, Canon’s 24-105mm f/4 L) is used on APS-C, you get this doughnut at the corners and more or less have straight barrel distortion not waveform. No distortion at a given distance usually means a flat focus field, the quality which Carl Zeiss highlighted when naming the Planar lens.

Alternatives to the 24mm

The best way to get the 84° coverage with similar near-perfect rendering is to go for the mid-range of a high end zoom. As it happens, Sigma’s 8-16mm is better at 16mm than any of the above-mentioned APS-C options and you can also get a pretty good 16mm from their 10-20mm options and Tamron’s 10-24mm. Tokina’s 11-16mm f/2.8 is weakest at 16mm, best at 11mm. The older Sony 11-18mm is not wonderful at the longer end.

On full format, 24mm at the bottom end of the 24-70mm CZ is no match, it has more distortion and softer corners; 24mm in the middle of the 16-35mm CZ f/2.8’s range is better but with strong complex distortion, more even than the Konica Minolta 17-35mm f/2.8-4 D lens (which manages f/3.2 wide open at 24mm). You might think Sigma’s 12-24mm full frame zoom could be good at 24mm, and perhaps version II HSM when it finally become available for Alpha will prove to be. The original, which I still use mainly for its superb 12mm results, places its worst extreme of field flatness deviation at the image edge when set to 24mm.

I have used Canon’s 24mm f/1.4 USMII and this is faster, larger and more expensive than the Sony CZ lens in almost perfect proportion. Like the CZ f/2 it is a nearly perfect lens, with a hint more barrel distortion and slightly soft extreme corners on full frame wide open. The same goes for the Nikon 24mm f/1.4. I’ve also used Canon’s 24mm TSE tilt-shift and this lens betters the CZ for technical and architectural uses, as it should – so does their 17mm f/4 TSE, which has no match in any format. But such lenses can’t also be used for everyday autofocus image grabbing whether professional or family.

Last question, then. If such a perfect lens can be made at f/2, surely all the affordable 24mm f/2.8 designs could be just as good? We wish! Wouldn’t it be great if the classic Minolta 24mm f/2.8 AF which Sony never transferred to the new Alpha range proved to have the same optical excellence as the CZ? It does not. Nor do the Canon 24mm f/2.8, or the Nikon, or anything made by Pentax or Olympus, or even Leica.

The 24mm f/2 used at f/2.8 on the Alpha 55. Try this with a classic Minolta 24mm f/2.8 and even on APS-C you won’t get the same corner to corner even illumination. Here the focus is on the distance, not the tourists – they are also showing a surprising amount of movement at 1/40th. Click the image for a full size view.

This 24mm is the most recent AF 24mm prime lens to have been designed for full format. Zeiss have designed a slightly more complex manual focus 25mm f/2 Distagon for Cosina partnered manufacture, available for Canon and Nikon, since Sony showed the 24mm at photokina 2010. But Sony’s full-frame DSLR rivals, Canon and Nikon, have not gone for this sub-£1,000 RRP ‘moderately fast’ 24mm niche.

If there’s one competitor, it is Sigma’s excellent 24mm f/1.8 EX DG, which uses a larger 77mm front diameter glass unit to reduce vignetting to the absolute minimum. Distortion is higher, and the lens at present has no HSM version. This makes it less future-proof for Alpha system owners, and also less compatible with NEX and with video shooting in general.

Features of the 24mm

Because it’s a fixed focal length, the 24mm is a very plain lens – it has only two controls and one moving ring. There is an AF/MF switch, though unlike SAM lenses this lens can always be controlled from the body. With SAM type lenses (built in non-supersonic focus motor) it is essential to use only the lens switch, and never to use the body switch instead while leaving the lens set to AF. This is because any attempt to focus manually may damage the gears and motor unless the switch on the lens is specifically disengaged.

Manual focus or held focus can be set or toggled using the single on-lens button. New Alpha models like the 77 allow a wider range of functions to be assigned to the lens button, which is described in the menus as a Focus Hold button. Direct Manual Focus is also supported on bodies which offer DMF, meaning that once focus is confirmed and locked by your pressure on the shutter button, you can fine-tune focus by eye before firing.

The manual focus action is very smooth and well balanced, not too light and not too short in throw (which can be an issue with shorter focal lengths. The focus scale is minimal, behind a traditional Minolta-style clear window, with a depth of field indicator to the minimum f/22 aperture. Really, such markings mean little today as we expect so much from higher resolution sensors. It is time that Sony, and others, built parameter-governed DoF calculation into firmware.

Here, f/5.6 was judged to be fine for the degree of differential focus wanted – at ISO 400, by tungsten kitchen spotlights and window light mixed, on the Alpha 77 hand-held with SteadyShot and manual ‘peaking’ focus.

The CZ design is clearly corrected for medium distance work but retains its performance for close-ups. Unlike Sigma’s design which achieves 1:2.7 image scale, or the new manual Zeiss 25mm which focuses down to 18cm and 1:4, the Alpha lens focuses to 19cm (actually, I make it 18cm as the scale goes beyond the 19cm marking) and manages a 1:3.4 image. Don’t be fooled by distances! The front element of the CZ is already 12.2cm from the sensor plane, and the lens hood takes another 3cm or so. The actual clearance when shooting at close range is minimal. For comparison, the SEL 16mm f/2.8 for NEX will only focus down to 24cm, and the front of this lens is only 40mm from the sensor, leaving a clear 20cm between camera and subject. The Nikon and Canon f/1.4 designs are limited to 25cm and are, quite simply, nothing like as useful for close-ups as the CZ.

You might think that the 16-50mm f/2.8 or the 16-80mm CZ could match the combination of wide angle and close focus found on the 24mm – but not so. To get similar close-ups even at a 24mm setting is not possible – an extra 6 or 7cm in minimum focus distance, when you are talking an 83-84° angle of view, makes a big difference.

Moving in to minimum focus, the bottom wing of the lens hood was only 1cm away from the subject – under 19cm from bread roll to sensor, but only 6.8cm from bread roll to front element. At f/3.2, a hand-held 1/40th was needed (the closer you get, the less you can rely on SS to handle speeds like 1/15th). Focus peaking again enabled the manual focus point to be precisely judged. Great bokeh too.

With a non-rotating front thread, 72mm is one of the classic Minolta sizes. It is necessary to use slimline filters, as with the 20mm f/2.8. It’s interesting to compare the revived older lens with the newer one. The 20mm has only five mount contacts, being non-D specification where the 24mm has eight and reports much more accurate focus data. The 20mm has no lens button, uses screw drive focus, and has a close limit of 25cm at which it has a 1:7.7 image scale. There is also a considerable difference in the build and feel of the CZ; I have no doubt it contains some plastic, but it feels like a good solid piece of engineering and is stated by Sony to have a metal lens barrel. Not metal-skinned plastic, like NEX lenses.

As for coatings, Minolta’s legacy was a use of multiple layer (super achromatic) coatings to rebalance both the contrast and the colour transmission of the entire AF lens range (except designs made by third parties, like the 100-400mm APO). This advantage over other makes was never capitalised on, and made some Minolta designs seem lower in contrast than competitor’s equivalents. No-one ever complained about the colour though! Zeiss’s path from 1975 onwards was to use multicoatings a different way, maximising contrast and light transmission but permitting each lens design to have its own colour transmission quality and variation in contrast. Contax RTS lenses were always praised for their resistance to flare and their extreme macrocontrast.

Since the advent of digital, both overall contrast and colour transmission have become less critical – no need for packs of filters to balance lenses for repro purposes, no need to test Kodachrome with a clip-test to set this up. Just post process or shoot a WB card to taste. Also, Sony Alpha lenses are made in many places – the old Minolta unit, the new CZ-Sony collaboration, co-developed with Tamron and apparently also with Sigma, built by Shanghai Optical or some other owned and partnership facilities in China, made in Thailand but not apparently any more in Malaysia…

While distortion associated with viewpoint and perspective perception is always a companion to shorter focal lengths, over the field of the Alpha 77 (equal to a 35mm lens view or so, in full-frame terms) shapes and solids look natural. At f/4, and ISO 1250, I’ve chosen to downsize this 77 file to 3600 x 2400 pixels (click the image to open). This still allows you to see how clean the light sources in-shot are, with absence of colour fringes. Depending on conditions 1 pixel CA cancelling may be needed with the 24mm.

So, we have here a lens with a Zeiss design and a T* coating which is entirely unlike any Minolta legacy design and will surprise those used to the way ex-Minolta lenses perform. It is fairly immune to flare, not entirely so when confronted with bright sources just outside the image margin, but without the strings of coloured patches associated with 24mms and light sources in the shot. It focuses silently and at a speed which means you may not notice it.

The lens itself weighs 555g, and at 76mm length and 78mm diameter it’s smaller than the 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM which weighs 22g more. I’m not a big fan of lenses you can not clasp in one hand while also operating the lens release mount of a camera; optics this size and weight are about the safe limit. You can not compared the lens-juggling friendliness of the 28mm f/2, for example, with either the 24mm or 16-50mm and even the 16-80mm zoom is much easier to handle in the field. It’s best to remove or fit the hood before changing the lens, don’t leave it in storage position.

The hood reverses over the lens neatly. The whole item, when in this configuration, is a bit large to handle for safe and secure lens changing.

The finish is lustrous, with rubber rib grips that collect dust and dander readily. The supplied lens hood is surprisingly flexible plastic, with a slight spatter finish to the exterior and a kind of semi-flock paint on the inside. It is efficient, but a poor fit with a not very firm bayonet locking action. It’s easy to get the alignment wrong and it’s not as firm or solid as most other Sony hoods. The rear lens cap is still the frustrating one-orientation only design inherited from Minolta, which leaves even those with a quarter of a century of lenscap-fitting experience fumbling for the correct position.

There is of course a Zeiss front lens cap and you get a free blue badge on the lens itself!

Format, pixel count and cropping

For many years when using film I found wide-angle zooms were not essential, standard zooms were useful, and tele zooms were vital. Generally, with any wide-angle you can zoom with your feet or by doing little more than leaning forward or back a bit. Either that or you simply need the widest lens you can get. Whenever I fit my Sigma 8-16mm or 12-24mm on their respective formats it’s the 8mm or 12mm end which is needed. I only end up zooming in if for some reason I decide to leave the lens on, and move to a different situation without time to switch lenses.

With film, you could crop and enlarge. Small pixel count DSLRs made that difficult or impossible – when you are trying to make 6 megapixels do a full page magazine image, cropping is not an option. Zooming in to fill the frame every time became vital from 2000 to 2008 when the first full frame 24 megapixel models arrived.

I think that 24 megapixels has finally made cropping an alternative to zooming. You may need 9 or maybe 12 megapixels, or if you are shooting entirely for the web you may need no more than 2 megapixels. Fixed focal lengths of exceptional quality, sharp all over the frame in the plane of focus, start to be useful. It has never been a good option to crop wide-angle zoom shots asymmetrically, using just one corner. With a lens like the 24mm you can crop any composition out of the high resolution frame and it will not look so different from an on-axis shot with a narrow angle lens.

Lens resolution really does count, as I have found. For three years I used the Alpha 900 with a range of lenses, including the 24-85mm Minolta RS I keep for convenience. When working with medium format lenses on adaptors, I could see that zooms while ‘sharp enough’ usually came nowhere near realising the potential of the 900. Then, using the 24mm, I saw the same pixel-level sharpness pop out. After a month using the 24mm (kindly loaned by Paul Genge) my ordered Alpha 77 finally arrived. I had already seen how the 24mm got the maximum from 16 megapixel APS-C, and this was followed by discovering its power to do the same at 24 megapixel APS-C.

A standard Sony leather-look lens posing pouch is supplied.

How far can this go? If Sony’s 24 megapixel APS-C sensor formed the basis for a full-framer, it would be a 60 megapixel monster and match all but the most expensive medium format image sizes. I believe the 24mm CZ could go there if Sony chose to.

And that, in the end, is why I changed my mind about owning one. The hour or two of useful daylight and howling gales outside have not allowed me to make much use of it yet – but this is a lens for the long term. And for tomorrow’s Alphas as well as today’s.

– David Kilpatrick

Footnote: added February 2016 – I’m now selling this lens, as I don’t think Sony is likely to produce an A99 model II with functions that will restore what I want to have (notably, GPS – they are most likely to drop this). I’m looking at a move to native FE-mount lenses and probably the 25mm f/2 CZ Batis, even though it’s weaker for close-ups, vignetting and distortion.

Here is a recent example of a full aperture shot on the A7RII with LA-EA3 adaptor –

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/162677066

2
DK's ramblings, Equipment Reviews, Lenses - Alpha Mount

Sony Alpha 77 & 65 Firmware v1.04 download

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The download is approximately 65MB of data in a Mac .dmg mountable disk image, or some other stuff for Windows.

The process will take about seven to ten minutes overall including downloading, opening and completing the procedure. You need a battery for the camera with at least three bars showing – preferably fully charged – and your computer to camera USB cable. The actual transfer to the camera takes about four minutes follow by 30 seconds of internal processing.

During the Mac update, you may see this window when the camera is turned off for the upload from computer to camera, and at the end of the process:

Do not worry about this – it refers only to the Mass Storage connection. Do not let this distraction interrupt your process.

SLT-A65 Firmware Upgrade v 1.04

Windows

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/478855

Apple Macintosh
http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/478884

SLT-A77V Firmware Upgrade v1.04

Windows
http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/478891

Apple Macintosh
http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/478893

Features:
Adds auto-correction of JPEGs for two lenses:
Vario-Sonnar T * DT 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA (SAL1680Z)
Sony DT 16-105mm F3.5-5.6 (SAL16105)
Improved ‘usability’ – remains to be discovered what that means
Improved image quality (presumed to be JPEG quality and noise levels)
Faster command/menu/setting response (less time lag between control wheel and updated screen info)

Example: correcting the 16-80mm CZ lens wide open at 16mm – focused on an A2 target, a very close distance which exaggerates the distortion level of the lens:

Above: uncorrected image

Above: in-camera correction. For full size versions which allow you to examine the CA (very prominent at f/3.5) and the degree to which it is corrected in the Fine JPEG, click the images. As you can see the image is enlarged by correction, so not quite as much coverage is achieved. But it’s less than you imagine; a fully corrected 16mm shot ends up being similar to a 16.35mm lens on the vertical and horizonal axes, or a 16.55mm lens on the diagonal. That’s still wider than a rectilinear perfect 17mm, so it’s better to use a bendy 16mm than lay out for a Zeiss MF 18mm, if you want coverage. And even Zeiss 18mms show some curvature.

We’ve tested the 16-50mm as well and BOY does that lens distort at 16mm – far worse than the CZ – which makes it clear that the in-camera lens correction goes hand in hand with this lens. To get any kind of straight line image, it’s going to be necessary to use the correction or a profile for raw conversion in a program like Adobe Camera Raw which accepts lens profiles.

The responsiveness of control wheels changing settings is greatly improved – altering +/- EV compensation for example now responds almost in real time as you shift the control. No significant improvement can be detected so far in image quality despite the claims, at least with the 100 or so test shots we’ve taken at different ISOs using a Color Checker, and other spot checks for Low/Normal/High NR. But there are so many modes on the A77 including panoramas, multishot, DRO, that the improvement may well be specific functions which Sony will explain in more detail.

6
Cameras (DSLR), Firmware Updates, News

Image Data Converter v4 – download now

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Sony’s Image Data Converter latest version – 4.0 – will handle all Alpha raw files from A100 to A77, and all NEX raw files. It offers improvements in performance and stability, but it also eliminates the need for the Lightbox application (found in v3) as a separate item. You simply browse for a folder of images, and IDC now shows a regular thumbnail browser with image information not unlike Adobe Bridge.

Double-clicking the thumb opens the image as expected in the raw editor. This has all the features of v3 are a bit more, but at least on a latest MacBook Pro with 2GB memory it seemed to crash and quit (normally after processing the file) rather too often.

One new feature, found when you save the file and not in the main processing controls, is a crop with Inclination Control and a grid:

Testing Alpha 77 raw files on the new software, the Bayer conversion seemed to be incredibly noisy and the noise reduction left fine detail heavily smeared much the same as for in-camera JPEGs, but the colour styles, DRO settings and some other aspects read from camera EXIF data are retained. It can not be recommended as a main choice for raw conversion, and certainly not for high ISO images, but it’s available and is a fairly small application to install on laptops or less powerful machines.

Download links:

Mac OSX .dmg installer

PC/Windows .exe installer

– DK

6
Cameras (DSLR), News, NEX System, Software Reviews, Uncategorized

Alpha 77/65 Firmware Update to 1.03

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After a little over a week of using the the Alpha 77 in firmware version 1.02 (as delivered in UK in late September), our Alpha 77 body locked up during a concert gig shoot when using the SAM 28-75mm lens which had been fitted for the first time that day. It is not possible to say whether the lock-up was caused by the lens, but after resetting the camera using the recommended button press and switch off/on procedure, no settings were lost and it returned to normal operation.

The reset procedure has now been officially published by Sony, at the end of the instructions for installing Firmware Version 1.03. At the time of writing this upgrade only appears to be found on Sony Asia websites. It is an international upgrade and not specific to the region. Here is the reset or recovery procedure to use if your A77/65 locks up and its screen menus disappear. Typical symptoms include loss of the lens aperture display (A77 top screen, blank dashes appear as if a lens is not fitted), the ability to view some menus but not change parameters, input from most buttons not working, and a visible faint light appearing in the EVF after the camera is turned off (unless the battery is removed entirely).

We recommend, before doing this procedure, that you turn the camera off and remove the battery for a few seconds.

  1. Turn ON the camera.
  2. Press MENU, Play, MOVIE buttons simultaneously.
  3. While Pressing these buttons, turn OFF the camera.
  4. Release your fingers, and wait over 30 seconds.
  5. Press MENU, Play, MOVIE buttons simultaneously again.
  6. While Pressing these buttons, now turn ON the camera.
  7. Release your fingers.

Please try again to perform updating procedure after camera is rebooted.

The download process is not a load-to-card firmware, it is an update performed by either a Mac or PC with the camera connected by USB cable. It is necessary to have the camera either AC adaptor powered or with a fully charged battery, and the computer should ideally be running a clean state without other processes (i.e., not rendering, downloading, exporting, playing Flash or other media, performing backups). Sony recommends closing all programs but for many users this will not be a practical option. As long as all I/O and processor intensive tasks are shut down you should be able to keep essential programs, such as Sony’s web page on your browser, running. If in doubt follow Sony instructions and close all programs, do a restart, then run the firmware updater. We had so many programs running on the Mac it proved necessary to do a clean restart before running the updater.

Please note that the downloaded updater program is over 68MB and the updating process for the camera takes over 5 minutes.

The Alpha 77 firmware updater page for Mac OS is:

Europe/UK link – just change the camera name box for A65, this link gives access to all upgrades associated with each model:

http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/crl/slt/slt.aspx?site=odw_en_GB&m=SLT-A77

Asia link (works with all regions):

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/474605

For Windows PC:

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/474591

The A65 update is here:

Mac OS:

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/474599

Windows PC:

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/474564

 

2
Cameras (DSLR), Firmware Updates, Troubleshooting

Sony – please add gain control to A77 sound

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When I had the Canon 60D and 600D cameras for the usual brief period of magazine review loan, one of the things I could have tested more thoroughly was the excellent implementation of sound input gain control. Since it worked, and worked really well, I had no need to. Any system with auto gain, in contrast, needs to be hauled out to big rock music gigs, into busy urban environments, stuck close to the speaker at public events and so on.

This is the screen from the Canon 600D, which is not an expensive camera. Being realistic, it and the 60D with their usefully articulated rear screens and 18 megapixel filesize are more than decent competition from some months ago for the forthcoming Alpha 77. At the moment it seems as if Sony has leapfrogged Canon, but when you actually look at the capabilities of the 60/600 for practical everyday work they remain competitive.

This audio control screen is one of the main reasons why. I read people, Sony users, on forums saying that lack of audio control is quite simply a deal-breaker. And I know why. I am an occasional musician and occasionally my wife will press the MOVIE button on an Alpha or NEX aimed at me. It’s a complete lottery as to whether than button is pressed during a quiet microsecond between notes, in dead silence, with a full PA sound level or whatever. When making a recording using one of these cameras, I will often ask the subject to speak or play a loud chord so that I can press MOVIE and get a low auto mic gain preset. The worst scenario is to press MOVIE in total silence because the auto gain will then try to boost the sound to pick up the birds outside the window and the floorboards creaking. And it will stay on that gain level for the entire take.

What this means in practice is that different takes have different gain levels. It would be even worse if the gain was dynamic during the take, varying with the level so that quiet moments suddenly get rewarded by an increase in hiss and irrelevant noises. There are plenty of camcorder devices which do that and they are unusable.

Auto gain – which applies to both the internal and external mic feeds for the Alpha 77, and also to the NEX models and earlier Alphas – is simply not acceptable as the only option in an age where users like to film concerts and gigs, live music, bands, parades, festivals and noisy events. Small condensor mics are very prone to clipping (distorting loud sounds) in what are known as ‘high sound pressure’ environments. That is, stuff which hurts your ears if you are a dog or under 30.

You can avoid high sound pressure clipping by using a top quality external plug-in mic, as you are never going to eliminate it with the internal mics. But you can only do so reliably if the camera offers manual control of audio level. Nikon’s cameras – even the expensive D3S – only offer three levels of sound gain and no ability to monitor or test the effect. Canon’s latest models have an exemplary interface with 22 visible dB (deciBel) levels and an even finer graded adjustment with a continuous Rec. Level scale. This applies to either the internal (mono, less satisfactory) mic or external stereo.

Although Canon’s official line is that the external mic socket is for mic only, not for line mixers, it is in fact compatible with any good quality line source you can control for volume level. The setup above is just an imaginary studio shot, not real recording, but shows two Behringer condensor mics routed through a Mackie Onyx Satellite twin mic preamp. I used the headphone output, with its controllable volume, to feed the Canon 600D. There did not appear to be any impedance issues but of course I started with the sound output at zero and used the Canon’s manual sound monitor to adjust it.

This is not advanced audio. This is basic home recording stuff. It’s well within the target owner bracket of the Alpha 77. Sony, if Canon can do this, so can you. Even just implementing three manually set High, Normal, Low fixed volume (gain) settings like Nikon would be a partial cure. Nikon’s solution is not total, and I sold my Nikon D5000 because of the terrible clipping which happened on any setting when trying to record amplified solo gigs. Even little 40W solo amps and a simple vocal and guitar would send the Nikon into a crackle of distorted mess. The Sony mics seems to be much better and do not clip so readily. They are stereo and I’d rate the sound quality from the internal mics on NEX and Alpha so far to be much better than Canon’s internal mono (the AVCHD recording standard helps too). But without proper control of sound, the Alpha 77 is hamstrung. It is indeed a deal-breaker for some buyers.

It can be fixed if the firmware allows access to that function.

The video area issue

While you are at it, fix the HD video framing screen marks on some earlier and current models – we hope it has been sorted in the new ones.

It’s simple enough. The Sony CMOS 14 megapixel sensor crops to 16:9 for panoramic shots (you can select yo shoot in this format if you want) and also crop to 16:9 for HD1080 video. But these two crops are not the same. The still 16:9 just trims a bit off the top and bottom of the image. The HD video format trims even more and also takes some off both ends, zooming in (in effect) on an overall sensor crop.

When you shoot normal 3:2 ratio 35mm shape shots, and press the MOVIE button, the resulting crop is so dramatic that you can cut someone’s head off in the movie having thought it was well within the frame for stills.

As you can see in the shot above, the NEX does display some faint corner crop marks to indicate the video frame. But no-one I have shown the camera to actually notices these crops at all, especially if other grids or marking are displayed. Setting the camera to 16:9 stills improves the position, the faint crop marks are now equally distant from all four corners but still unlikely to be clearly visible. It’s clear from forum comments and messages elsewhere that many owners have never spotted these marks at all. The frame corner markings are not easily seen against some subjects (example above, lower marks), and you need to know where they are in order to recognise them.

This issue is not present in the Alpha 55, where the movie is only cropped top and bottom, and slightly bolder frame crop marks are shown in the finder. Even so, two very clear lines which can be turned on or off would be a better indicator and help users frame video correctly before pressing the record button. If you set 16:9 still shooting on the A55, you can go into movie capture without any change to the image framing.

Note that the ends of the composition are cropped, as well as the top and bottom, when pressing MOVIE Record from the startpoint of a 3:2 format still shot on the NEX-3 and NEX-5 with their 14 megapixel sensors. When shooting HD video, note that frame corners for the 4:3 TV format (non-HD crop) are displayed.

In an ideal world, the HD movie would be the full 16:9 still size as on the A55, giving you the best use of wide-angle lenses. But that is probably not possible because of the way HD1080 is extracted from the overall sensor area of the NEX-3/5.

So, what we need is simple enough – a firmware option to display the HD Movie crop area far more distinctly on the EVF or rear LCD screen, whatever still shooting mode is being used. Ideally it should be a complete rectangle to show the actual area which will be active when you press MOVIE and record.

Like the audio control issue, this is a firmware fix and could also be applied to earlier models like the NEX-5. It’s probably a simpler fix than audio.

Of more concern is whether or not the 24 megapixel sensor behaves like the 14 megapixel (HD movies cropped all round) or like the 16 megapixel sensor (HD movies cropped top and bottom only). So far this has not been made clear by early testers or Sony sources. If it is a cropped HD, let’s hope that a very clear and obvious movie-frame preview can be added, or the MOVIE  button function changed so that one press activates the movie frame view, the next press starts record, the next press ends record. I would actually like to see a menu option where ending a recording does not exit movie mode, but leaves you able to press the movie button again to resume filming, and to end movie capture you need instead to press the shutter button (with or without a still capture).

– David Kilpatrick

6
Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, HD Video, NEX System

Sony launches new range Alpha, NEX

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All the predicted new models from Sony were unveiled today – the Alpha 77, Alpha 65, NEX-7, NEX-5n and NEX-VG20.

Full details are up on Sony’s websites. The A77/65 cameras will be on sale from October 2011 onwards. View Sony press information online.

Those who grab the cameras will find the virtual 1.09X 100% field of view given by the OLED finders looks to be visually 10% bigger than the largest APS-C viewfinders made, an experience close to using a full frame DSLR with an optical prism (1.09X at 23mm eyepoint).

The Alpha 77 is launched with the new 16-50mm f/2.8 SSM (not SAM as rumoured!) lens, and the Alpha 65 shares the same new 2.3 megapixel OLED viewfinder technology. The burst speed of the 77 is revealed to be 12 frames per second (predictions have ranged from 10 to 15) with the A65 achieving 10. The new 19-point, 11-cross point AF module is fitted to the A77 only, the A65 has a simpler 15-point, 3-cross module.

Both have the 24.3 megapixel CMOS sensor also found in the new NEX-7 model, but only the A77 allows ISO 50 capture (all allow 16,000). The A77 has a fully articulated 3-way swivelling rear screen and the A65 a simpler 2-directional hinge. HD video is upgraded to full 50/60 frames 1080 progressive (no longer 25/30p or 1080i) with full manual control.

The A77 has a semipro spec 1/8,000th shutter speeded to 1/250th for X sync, and rated for 150,000 cycles (tests will probably showe it uses a hybrid electronic/mechanical timing method to reduce shutter wear, but you’ll have to look elsewhere to confirm that, as we are not at the launch event). It has the expected GPS onboard.

The A65 is regular plastic-skin construction (see strap lugs, above) but the A77 is moisture/dust sealed and so, according to the information, are ther 16-50mm and the new HVL-F43AM flash and VG-C77AM vertical grip. The 77 uses full size NP-FM500H batteries.

Paul Genge, Technical Field Sales Manager for Sony UK, will be online for a one-hour live video Q&A session on the company’s Facebook page from 7.30pm GMT – visit www.facebook.com/SonyUK to partticipate.

Key points: auto ISO remains 100-1600 not expanded in range on the A65, but can be user set for 100-12,800 on the A77, which also has separately set 50 and 16,000 options plus a multishot 25,600 (the A65 also has this high speed mode). The A77 offers JPEG Extra Fine, the A65 does not.

The viewfinder magnification (eyepiece/screen combination) is not stated but is superior to the A55 with a half-inch OLED.

On the A77 only, exposure bracketing has been expanded to 3 frames at 2EV and 3EV intervals, in addition to 3 or 5 frames at 1/3, 1/2, or 2/3 EV; the A65 offers only 1/3 or 2/3 for 3 frames. Peculiarly, neither offers 1 EV bracketing.

The A77 or A65 normal motordrive with full AF/AE is 8fps (slow speed 3fps), the higher speeds are obtained with Continuous Advance Priority (fixed settings during burst). Both can achieve 13 raws, 17 fine JPEGs before slowing.

It doesn’t look as if either accepts the HVL-F58AM as a wireless controller, but both have built-in wireless. The rumour of CF card compatibility in the A77 was false, the cameras have dual MemoryStick PRO Duo/SD drives.

The NEX-7

The professional NEX has the 24.3 megapixel sensor, ultra-fast response with startup and focus time improvements, the same OLED viewfinder as the A77/65 built in to the body, the same full HD 1080/50/25p movie (Europe, 60/30 US) and the same sensitivity range as the A77. Manual refocusing is possible during video, 10fps bursts can be shot, and a leather case turns the camera into a Leica-like for eye level use.

The NEX-7 has the slower 1/4,000th with 1/160th sync shutter found in the A65 so it’s not all professionally-biased. And it’s got a small buffer, allowing a mere 6 raw frames or 4 raw+JPEG in a burst, 10 JPEGs at Fine res (no Extra Fine option is offered).

All the pre-existing bells and whistles remain included, such as Sweep Pan, 3D Pan, etc.

Please note: the OLED viewfinder on all these cameras is a power hog. With the NEX, for example, the rated battery life is 350 images using the finder, 430 images using the rear screen. The bigger battery of the A77 can still only power 470 shots (because of GPS?) where the A65 manages a respectable 510. Switching to the rear screen for composition increases these figures to 530 and 560.

There is NO new updated standard lens for the NEX and the existing 18-55mm will fight it out with the increased 24 megapixels!

No GPS. No info on potential GPS attachment.

View press info online.

The NEX-5n

The 16.1 megapixel sensor, also found in the new video VG20 model, gets into the updated NEX-5 which has the same improvements in response time and focusing as the 7 (claimed doubling of readout speed from the CD-AF system).

Its USP appears to be the ability to simulate a preview of adjustments on the screen and adjust them using touch control. It has 10fps burst.

There is a new EVF attachment. View press release online.

A new battery powered LE-EA2 adaptor which allows autofocus with ALL Alpha lenses including Minolta body-drive types back to 1985 is also to be available, above. It includes a downward-facing SLT pellicle mirror (don’t know why they did not use this design in regular cameras) and a Phase Detect AF module so the NEX can behave exactly like an Alpha 55. Note the screw drive focus coupling.

Looks like a decent lens-line-up, but me, I prefer more pancakes for my breakfast, not just a stack on one…

Along with the two new NEX models, the Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm f/1.8, the Sony E 50mm f/1.8 OSS and the telephoto zoom E 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 OSS are to be launched. Availability of the new NEX gear should be quick – from September for the 5n, November for the 7.

The NEX-VG20

Aye well, it’s 16 megapixel video formfactor model as per VG10. See the info online. It claims the best ever video from such a camera – but they say the same about the ‘still’ models and they are probably right.

Sorry about a few of Sony’s uncropped image files with loads of white round them, they always do this and we will crop them later. But I’m due 100 miles away for a major Associateship and Fellowship annual judging to see some good photography and I have already made myself late with this! The article will be revised tonight. – David

 

 

 

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Cameras (DSLR), HD Video, Lenses - Alpha Mount, News, NEX System

Watch the birdie – will Sony’s GPS surprise?

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Before reading this article, which has attracted a lot of traffic and attention, please remember this is my personal speculation and could be entirely wrong (I’ll be very disappointed if it is miles off target and they omit GPS… or my reading-between-the-lines turns out to relate to a different product like a superzoom pocket camera with improved GPS).

There are plenty of detailed rumours about the specifications of the forthcoming Alpha 77, Alpha 65, NEX-7 and NEX-5n to be found on the Sonyalpharumours website:

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sr5-the-full-a77-a65-nex-7-and-nex-5n-specs/

I’m not here to confirm or deny any of this (like most mainstream journalists, even those with some connection to Sony, I don’t get advance information and I am not running a camera-test website which demands a pre-production preview under strict non-disclosure terms).

The image currently circulating most, purporting to show a new Alpha – 77 or 65. Real or not, it looks good enough.

The 12fps stated maximum shooting speed of the semi-pro specification A77 fits in with information given to me as long as three years ago. A vaguely Alpha 700 like prototype was being tested in the Australasia region with 15fps. Most of the other specifications, such as the magnesium or magalloy body, were apparent right from the first mockups being shown if you know your Alpha construction. The strap lugs were the giveaway. You can tell an A900/850/700 type camera (solid metal carcase under a plastic skin) from an A1/2/3/4/5xx Alpha by the strap lugs connected through the skin to the casting.

But what Sonyalpharumours doesn’t elaborate on its something I believe Sony has put into the new Alpha 77 which will make it the ultimate cameras for bird watchers, aircraft spotters, wilderness ramblers, explorers, police forces and the military. It has GPS. I think that when it is seen by the press later this month the GPS will be a big point.

It will be the fastest locking-on GPS built in to any camera, and it will be the first to record ALL the data you need. That will include not only the latitude and longitude and height above sea level, but also the compass direction the camera is aiming in and the inclination of the camera. Combined with very accurate focal length, focus distance and AF locus data, this will make it possible to use the Alpha 77 for photogrammetry (measurement, mapping, object size identification).

I parked illegally and jumped out of the car for this shot of Bamburgh Castle from the village’s main road. For once, the Alpha 55 GPS locked on instantly and gave me the exact location of the camera on the Google Earth terrain view below.

But two days later I spent ten minutes, using a tripod, carefully photographing an uncommon slightly edible mushroom in our garden over 30 miles from this shot. Needless to say, all the frames of the mushroom display the GPS data from Bamburgh as it had failed to update its position.

This is Leucoagaricus nympharum – white field mushroom with ‘dancing maidens’ on its distinctive cap. Some sources state it is edible. For me, it was. For Shirley – noted as one to avoid for the future… but a great photographic subject. Natural light, CZ 16-80mm, 1/3rd of a second at f/14, 80mm, ISO 100, manual focus and settings.

The GPS in my Alpha 55 has been a real help in travel photography. I use Media Pro, the Phase One cataloguing and keywording software. Since this moved away from Microsoft ownership it no longer has its own own Microsoft Virtual Earth pane to open when GPS embedded data is found. Instead, it opens my web browser to the usual Google Map and Earth page. It’s not as neat as having the map tab within the Media Pro software but it works just as well.

However, the A55 GPS frequently doesn’t get a signal during many minutes of shooting at a new location. I have entire shoots of places, lasting several minutes in clear open conditions, wrongly tagged for the last spot visited. Fortunately, if I have left the camera switched on I sometimes find the correct location attached to the next place en route…

The Alpha 77 will, I believe, see an end to poor GPS and it will add the vital compass and inclination functions. Combined with the 24 megapixel resolution, near-silent mirrorfree high speed sequences, and the 1.4X and 2X teleconverter functions (cropping the sensor field but retaining full HD 1080p video, we hope) this will make the 77 the world’s best camera for wildlife safaris. And for those who like to log their natural history subjects, the accurate GPS tagging is the closest thing you can get to digital evidence of the authenticity of your shot.

All major camera companies have their eye on government and military budgets. It was the US forces’ decision to buy Topcon SLR cameras in the 1960s which gave that small but excellent camera brand a few years of glory. They achieved it by making a camera which was tougher and more versatile (in some ways) that the rival Nikon F – with accurate TTL metering that did not need a bulky prism head.

At different times Olympus, Nikon, Leica, Hasselblad and even Minolta have been favourites for government and military use. I think Sony, realising what the high resolution and very fast capture rate of their new technology mean to such users, will have sealed the deal by upgrading the GPS. The Alpha 77 will not only be the world’s best wildlife and wilnderness companion, it will also be the best evidence camera, surveillance camera and spy’s best friend.

Of course this is all pure speculation. It is based on a well-grounded hunch, and on what I would do myself, if I was in charge of the Sony development plan for the A77. There’s no way I would let another GPS module out in the world with less reliability than the average pocket digicam’s version. I would want my top SLR (SLT) GPS to be a world-beater.

Now you’ll just have to wait and see. But wouldn’t it be good if I’m right?

– David KIlpatrick

7
Cameras (DSLR), DK's ramblings, News

Wait for the NEX SLT, folks…

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That is, the next slot in Sony’s programme of new product releases. Almost exactly five years after the Alpha 100 was launched to the world (also a Wednesday in the second week of June, back in 2006) Sony selected an auspicious date to announce the NEX-C3 and the Alpha A35. But these cameras, rather like the Alpha 100 in its day, are not what we are waiting for.

So – what’s new? 16.2 megapixels, 5.5fps native size, 7fps using a 1.4X crop (about 8 megapixels), no articulated rear screen, some candy functions in the menus for technophobes, and that accessible D-Range button can be made into a rapid custom control.

Everyone has suggested that a NEX-7 will be what they want. I rather think they will be get a NEX-C5, applying the same transforms to the 5 as the C3 (Compact 3) applies to the 3. That means it will have proper HD video, which the C3 lacks being restricted to MPEG4 HD720. Already, the rustle in the undergrowth is that the diminutive C3 misses the mark for this one single reason only. Sure, a 16.2 megapixel sensor (supposedly a new version, not just borrowed from the A55/580) is a welcome upgrade but NEX is a multipurpose system, and HD720 is back in 2006 not in 2011.

Nice mic slots, nice big CZ 16-80mm shown on the adaptor – but this, dear Sony, misses the point. We actually want the CZ 16-80mm to be updated to an SSM design so that it will focus on the NEX, and be better on the Alpha bodies, and so that its slightly manky mechanical design can be turned into something so smooth existing 16-80mm owners queue up to buy the replacement.

Good points – the shift in position of the stereo microphones to the front of the camera, the change to using a separate cover for the memory card instead of having to open the battery compartment. There’s a claim that along with a 20% better battery life, greater heat efficiency means the new cameras won’t cut out before 29 minutes is up when filming HD, even if you use SSS on the A35. Of course the NEX has no SSS but still managed to overheat, at least in the NEX-5, unless you were savvy enough to shift the rear screen away from contact with the camera back – in which case it generally keeps filming OK.

The operating times, startup, focusing speed are all reported to be much improved – by a factor of two or better. Only the image review time is worse due to the larger file size. Sony’s information makes it clear that very strong noise reduction is applied and this may affect raw files as well as JPEGs.

The new 30mm f/3.5 Macro SEL is theoretically interesting, but not so much for me personally as we have already got the 30mm f/2.8 SAM and the NEX adaptor. Eventually, you come to terms with the simple fact that a 2.5cm working distance for 1:1 shots prevents you shooting half the 1:1 shots which present themselves. You disturb the butterfly, hit bits of the plant, or cast the lens’s own shadow across the picture.

The firmware update (see end of story) to provide a ‘focus confirm’ overlay for manual focusing is actually of far more interest to the macro photographer – along with almost any other specification of macro lens except 30mm f/3.5. These lenses are fun, I love the SAM 30mm, but it’s not the answer.

The new HVL-F20S flashgun (based on the HVL-F20AM only in the design of its rotating reflector/diffuser) has changed a load since it was previewed with a mockup based on the Alpha model. Sony has decided to power it from the NEX battery, much as Minolta did with flashguns like the 316i in the early 1990s. That’s almost certainly because the NEX Smart Connector is simply not capable of holding the gun with a couple of AA cells in it, the weight would be too much.

In an ideal world, this new flashgun would do for the NEX system what its orginator does for the Alpha 900 and 850 – act as a remote wireless flash commander. But it does not, leaving NEX outside the main Alpha system still. If you want remote flash (or even just a more powerful flash mounted on a bracket beside your camera) the Nissin Di 866 MkII remains your best bet, programmable to fire correctly in synch with the NEX and to use its own auto-exposure cell for metering.

Alpha 35 – one step forward, two steps back

The Alpha 35 is similarly not earth-shattering news, especially if you own an Alpha 55 with GPS function and rather better overall performance in all respects except (perhaps) ultimate high ISO. The firmware updates for both NEX and SLT models, to be available from June 20th, add most of the benefits of the new models along with some of the child-friendly hipsta stuff. Again, wait until the next round. A higher end SLT camera is firmly promised, it’s been prototyped and mocked up and preproduced and somewhere as I write someone is actually using it.

Losing the articulated rear LCD (see above), not even replacing it with a tilting one, is a big sacrifice. The 7fps 1.4X digital tele conversion mode – with continuous AF tracking – is interesting and reminiscent of the sensor crop mode of Nikon’s first CMOS, the D2X, which was itself developed from a Sony sensor (the Cybershot DSC R-1). It shows that there are genetic traits in the Sony line that won’t be forgotten.

But is there really much point to this camera? Not much. Unlike the NEX-C3 which sees a significant body size reduction and style change, the A35 contrives to be a poor relation of either the A33 or the A55 because it lacks that excellent, reversible, twist and swivel rear screen.

Photoclubalpha has been a photographer’s thing not just a camera owner’s thing – a small difference, these days, but important. For photographers any reason to prefer the new models to what you’ve got may depend on small hidden differences which come to light as people use them. Certainly the provision of functions with changed names because no-one can be expected to understand what an aperture is, what a shutter speed is (and so on) is no reason to want the new models. Probably the reverse!

Video enthusiasts may like to note that the firmware update for the A55/33 allows all the overlaid text to be removed from the live view, which can be output from the HDMI port to surprisingly high quality. Recording devices to accept HDMI signals like this are just starting to appear at affordable prices. There’s some potential to experiment with the image provided for LV (Focus Check Live View more so than Quick AF LV) once fed into other systems free from overlays.

Version 04 firmware update for NEX-5, NEX-3
Available from June 20th, a firmware upgrade for existing NEX-5 and NEX-3 cameras adds the new ‘Picture Effect’ function as introduced on the new NEX‑C3. It also adds a Peaking function to assist with more precise manual focusing. Available free to registered users, latest Version 04 firmware update for NEX-5/NEX-3 can be downloaded from:
NEX-3
Windows:
http://support.sonyeurope.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_NEX3_V04_WIN&site=odw_en_GB
MAC OS:
http://support.sonyeurope.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_NEX3_V04_MAC&site=odw_en_GB
NEX-5
Windows:
http://support.sonyeurope.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_NEX5_V04_WIN&site=odw_en_GB
MAC OS:
http://support.sonyeurope.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_NEX5_V04_MAC&site=odw_en_GB

Editor’s note June 9th: please note that these URLs will not work – they are incorrectly transcribed by Sony. The URLs should be similar to those for the A33, A55 with a hyphen between sony-europe. Unfortunately, Sony has issued press releases and web pages with the incorrect URLs. We have changed the link so that it will work when the time comes.

Version 2.00 firmware update for α33, α55
Available from June 20th, a firmware upgrade for existing α33 and α55 cameras by Sony adds several creative and operational enhancements. Support for the ‘Picture Effect’ function featured on the new α35 is now offered. High-Speed Synch is supported during wireless operation with a compatible external flash (only α55). Ergonomics are further improved with revised menus and a new mode that lets users switch off shooting parameters overlaid on screen for clear, uncluttered composition. The camera’s Digital Level Gauge can also be displayed when shooting via the optional CLM-V55 external LCD monitor. Frequently used features can now be custom-assigned to the D-RANGE button for rapid, menu-free access.

Available free to registered users, from the 20th of June the latest GB English Version 2.00 firmware update for α33 and α55 can be downloaded from:
A33
Windows:
http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_A33_V2_WIN&site=odw_en_GB
MAC OS:
http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_A33_V2_MAC&site=odw_en_GB
A55
Windows:
http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_A55_V2_WIN&site=odw_en_GB
MAC OS:
http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/downloads/downloads.aspx?f=FW_A55_V2_MAC&site=odw_en_GB

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Cameras (DSLR), HD Video, News, NEX System
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