Cameracraft magazine – Taking your practical photography further
Tamron’s new ultra wide angle zoom for APS-C/DX is getting a bit of a blasting from reviewers. Now, when I see this happen, I get curious. Lens testing is often badly designed for such zooms, involving test chart targets at distances which are extremely close and result in very bad figures caused mainly by a strong curvature of field (dished, ‘cap’ shape relative to the camera) when gets worse in effect the closer you focus.
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SONY’s stand was a real brightener for Focus. Gone were the black and orange colours I criticised at photokina, which for two successive years created a black hole compared to Canon’s oasis of light. Instead, huge white silks extended to the roof with bright spots and floods creating an inviting zone of pure light. White and orange rules!
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Stock library Getty Images has added the Sony Alpha 900 to its rather restricted list of approved cameras – a very recent move, as it happened between the writing/research for my article appearing in the British Journal of Photography on February 18th, and publication. See: http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=840375
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Sony has announced another release of Cyber-shot pocket cameras, without giving any price indications at this stage. 720p movie mode is present in the three of the camera types, and a new GPS tracking unit is separate, not built-in.
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SONY has a stand at Focus on Imaging in the UK after an absence of three years for the Alpha brand from this major annual photo fair, said to the be largest national show in Europe with the exception of photokina. On Stand L28 – right next to the Canon exhibit – the UK’s technical sales executive Paul Genge has lined up a nonstop programme of speakers and demonstrations.
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United Kingdom / Republic of Ireland, 02 February, 2009: Canon today announces the launch of the EOS Professional Network (EPN) across the UK & Ireland. The Network will consist of EOS Professional Centres and EOS Professional Stockists. This may sound similar to Sony’s ACE dealer concept – but read the small print! It includes hire stock. Canon is fighting back seriously.
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Support for the Nikon D3X is finally added in release-candidate (better than beta) versions of the two main Adobe raw file conversion utilities. There may also be improvements in A900 and other Sony raw file handling – it is worth acquiring the pre-release version to check this out. The downloads will be available on the Adobe Labs site from 20.00hrs GMT on Friday, January 23rd, 2009.
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After just a short while working with full frame, high resolution DSLRs the need for tilt lenses has really come home to me. Most lenses deliver their best results at fairly wide apertures like f8, it’s easy for detail to begin to look soft and lacking impact if you are forced to stop down to f22 to get everything sharp. Tilt adaptors and tilt lenses solve the problem. This article is repeated here after originally appearing on dPhotoexpert (and similar instrument images, in my first D3X test report for the British Journal).
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This set of full size shots was taken with the still life left set up, because the Nikon and Canon cameras were not here at the same time. The report originally appeared in December 2008 on photoclubalpha. It compares the A900, 5DMkII and D3X using the converters supplied by the makers – Image Data Converter SR2, Digital Photo Professional, and Capture NX2. Each small image in the article can be clicked to open a Level 10 quality full size JPEG – beware, the largest is over 13MB of data.
Sony’s new back-illuminated CMOS sensor design makes its first appearance – along with technology borrowed from the Alpha system – in a new HD Handycam video model, the HDR-XR520VE/500VE. Hopefully presaging future DSLR developments, the range also includes models with built-in GPS tracking to record the location of shots as you film.
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