TL: DR Software is where it's at! Photolab 9 and Affinity are literally magic. Bringing out my old gear rather than buying the 100mm macro for £1000+.
The photo is simply a stack from the Sony a55 + Tamron 90mm, auto corrections applied in DxO PL9 with no noise reduction, and stacked in Affinity. Who needs new gear! (DxO cost me £££ though). (Also I've not played with the high noise from real world use yet so maybe it will fail there)
To start, I'm very much a hobby photographer. Got some shots I'm proud of but mostly I'm about my daughter and dog.
Anyway, struggling with GAS at the moment and got me looking back through my old gear. Started out with Sony's SLT a-55 back in 2005ish and loved it for sports but the noise was just unmanageable for wildlife. Editing was done in Photoshop CS6 from the school I was working at back then. Swapped the kit lens to the sigma 18-250mm, great lens. Tamron 90mm macro. And then the Sigma (Bigma) 50-500mm! This never really worked for me as anything over ISO 800 was a mess and noise reduction just blurred everything. Completely in awe of pros getting sharp shots!
Anyway, 2014ish upgraded to the original A7 and didn't push much at all as had no money, only used the kit and a nifty 50. Blown away by the noise control and how easy it was to get beautiful photos. Still using the pre subscription Lightroom 6.
A couple of months ago managed to hold myself back from the A7iv/A7v and bought a secondhand A7c. The auto focus on this thing is astounding. Focus tracking is cheat mode! So I added the 70-200 GMii. Utterly gorgeous. So good, it's even gorgeous with the 2x teleconverter.
I NEED the 24-70, 100mm macro, a 14 or 16mm something and finally the 400-800mm.
However, with the advent of AI noise reduction etc, do I really need these things. The photos above, although not demanding, just effortlessly achieved a focus stack which I used to pull my hair out trying to do 10-15 years ago. I refused to pay subscriptions and big money for software for so long and I think this was a mistake. New hardware, although impressive, not nearly as impressive as the software.
I'm not going to pretend I've cured my GAS but at least I can survive until I've properly saved for these lenses... Maybe I'll buy a Minolta/alpha mount to E mount
One of the pre stacked images
The photo is simply a stack from the Sony a55 + Tamron 90mm, auto corrections applied in DxO PL9 with no noise reduction, and stacked in Affinity. Who needs new gear! (DxO cost me £££ though). (Also I've not played with the high noise from real world use yet so maybe it will fail there)
To start, I'm very much a hobby photographer. Got some shots I'm proud of but mostly I'm about my daughter and dog.
Anyway, struggling with GAS at the moment and got me looking back through my old gear. Started out with Sony's SLT a-55 back in 2005ish and loved it for sports but the noise was just unmanageable for wildlife. Editing was done in Photoshop CS6 from the school I was working at back then. Swapped the kit lens to the sigma 18-250mm, great lens. Tamron 90mm macro. And then the Sigma (Bigma) 50-500mm! This never really worked for me as anything over ISO 800 was a mess and noise reduction just blurred everything. Completely in awe of pros getting sharp shots!
Anyway, 2014ish upgraded to the original A7 and didn't push much at all as had no money, only used the kit and a nifty 50. Blown away by the noise control and how easy it was to get beautiful photos. Still using the pre subscription Lightroom 6.
A couple of months ago managed to hold myself back from the A7iv/A7v and bought a secondhand A7c. The auto focus on this thing is astounding. Focus tracking is cheat mode! So I added the 70-200 GMii. Utterly gorgeous. So good, it's even gorgeous with the 2x teleconverter.
I NEED the 24-70, 100mm macro, a 14 or 16mm something and finally the 400-800mm.
However, with the advent of AI noise reduction etc, do I really need these things. The photos above, although not demanding, just effortlessly achieved a focus stack which I used to pull my hair out trying to do 10-15 years ago. I refused to pay subscriptions and big money for software for so long and I think this was a mistake. New hardware, although impressive, not nearly as impressive as the software.
I'm not going to pretend I've cured my GAS but at least I can survive until I've properly saved for these lenses... Maybe I'll buy a Minolta/alpha mount to E mount
One of the pre stacked images
