The Amazing Sony A1/A7/A9/APS-C & Anything else welcome Mega Thread!

I made the mistake of buying the kit lens, i thought for only £200 extra over body price it would keep me happy for a while, but while the quality seems ok, the primary reason i went FF was to have increased DOF control over M43, and putting a fast prime on M43 gives me similar control to a kit lens on the A7.

I went to shoot some old tractors yesterday and i found I enjoyed shooting more with my GX7 and 75mm F1.8 than i did with the A7 and the kit lens, I think having the 55mm F1.8 will make the A7 far more enjoyable (to me)
 
sinar said:
I made the mistake of buying the kit lens, i thought for only £200 extra over body price it would keep me happy for a while, but while the quality seems ok, the primary reason i went FF was to have increased DOF control over M43, and putting a fast prime on M43 gives me similar control to a kit lens on the A7.

I went to shoot some old tractors yesterday and i found I enjoyed shooting more with my GX7 and 75mm F1.8 than i did with the A7 and the kit lens, I think having the 55mm F1.8 will make the A7 far more enjoyable (to me)
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I bought the kit lens and I think it's worthwhile having.

Dunno about the DoF thing though. Although I'm a bit of a shallow DoF fan much of the time I'm looking for deeper DoF and with FF I spend the majority of my time at f4 to f8 at the widest so this wouldn't be that much of an issue, if at all, with the kit lens, f3.5-5.6.

A kit lens on MFT is more of an issue as if the light is anything other than very good (Good light? Here? Chance would be a fine thing!) you're probably looking at rising ISO's and possibly diffraction issues if you look close enough. Personally I think that MFT needs wider aperture zooms so you can stay in the FF equivalent range which for me would equate to f2-f4 but of course with a MFT kit lens this is impossible unless you go for the f2.8's and they are a bit dear.

Having said all that the main thing is to get the 55mm! :D
 
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The last time I had an Ax I also had the 55/1.8 as my main lens and loved it. This time round, I've got the Loxia 50 and love it just a little more. Sometimes I miss AF and think about getting a 55/1.8 as well but one thing I found with the AF combo is that it wouldn't always focus exactly where I wanted it to. This is never a problem with the Loxia but I do miss shots by the whole zoom-in to focus thing as focus peaking just isn't accurate enough - or my technique with it is rubbish of course :)
 
I think it's a question of aperture and how close you look at your pictures.

I find that at f1.x focus peaking works quite well as not much is twinkling and I find that pictures stand up quite well to pixel peeping but at f8 the whole image twinkles and whole images may look good but when you pixel peep it may be that you wont have critical focus on your subject.

What I tend to do is focus wide open and then stop the lens down with either magnification or not as the case may be.

Currently have a 85mm f2 on my camera. Not that it matters as I was set to go out yesterday evening but there was no light and complete cloud cover and it's rained all day today :(

Lovely shot above BTW :D
 
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I agree Alan. At F2 not much twinkles but even if the peaking is bang on the eyeball I can still miss focus by a tad in a way that focus magnify doesn't. Of course, I do look far to closely and like to see eyeball and eyelash nice and sharp :)
 
I did and also looked at it on my Iphone because I'm on a work Dell laptop but the detail in the top half of the shot seems to be 'mushy' as a
best description which is why I assumed it's suffered from compression?
 
How could I resist the 55mm f1.8 when ebay give me a 10% voucher to take the price down to £440 delivered.
It's still expensive but doesn't quite sting as much.
Roll on delivery day!
 
f2.8 zooms coming? Faster primes too? Sounds expensive :D Good job we're all made of money posers :D

"6) Lenses:Our lenses have to be better than Canon’s. That is my mission. We have already made a 35mm F1.4 and 90mm macro – both were based on customer’s requirements, and also we have a full F4 zoom lineup, so our next lenses will be at the upper end of the lineup. And also aperture. A F2.8 lineup is necessary, and brighter [primes]."

From here...

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/tele...-are-high-on-the-priority-list/#disqus_thread
 
funny how after years of not really listening to a mount customers they now find success with e mount and listening to customers.

if they do 2.8 zooms, wonder if they can get any real size/weight gains over dslr style lenses. Oh a thought for the budget minded, lae3 plus Sal50 or 85mm would be possible with a7r2
 
pingu666 said:
funny how after years of not really listening to a mount customers they now find success with e mount and listening to customers.

if they do 2.8 zooms, wonder if they can get any real size/weight gains over dslr style lenses. Oh a thought for the budget minded, lae3 plus Sal50 or 85mm would be possible with a7r2
Click to expand...
If they can use the new "do" technology they can
 
pingu666 said:
if they do 2.8 zooms, wonder if they can get any real size/weight gains over dslr style lenses.
Click to expand...

I think that's the key one right there and probably the reason they focused on the F4 zooms first, its going to be very hard to make size reductions with say a 24-70 f2.8, theres a reason that the different variants (Canon/Nikon/Tamron) are all there or there about the same size!
 
Does anyone use the older sony flashes with the mount adapters? Just looking at buying a flash for my a7. I was thinking the hvl 20 with a hvl42 for off camera but could probably get 2 hvl 42 for same price with the adapter - I presume they are fully functional with the adapter.
 
I can recommend the Nissin i40 flash for the A7, not cheap @ £148 though :)
 
I managed a few hours away last evening so I thought I'd shoot the sunset from the pier but as luck would have it the almost cloudless sky turned to a band of thick cloud where the sunset was, oh well...

As this is a gear forum... I'm constantly impressed by the gear.

I got there sometime between 21:00 and 21:45 (times included to give you some idea of the light levels) and this shot of the pier was taken at 22:01 at a modest ISO 640. I took my tripod but I just couldn't bring myself to do a silky water shot :D I prefer to see some waves :D



Another pier shot at 22:17 and this time at ISO 5,000.



At 22:05 this is a 100% crop from another ISO 5,000 shot, it'll be strangled a bit by Photobucked here but it's nice on my screen and I can read the number on the boat and it's sharp too.



Woollen thingies on the pier at 22:14 and ISO 8,000.



Looking back to land from the pier at 22:15 and ISO 16,000.



Woollen things on the pier at 22:07 and ISO 20,000.



All of these look good on my screen and would be fine for screen viewing or even quite large prints. As always I'm impressed :D

With my 5D I'd have been limited to ISO 3,200 and I'd probably have had to shoot everything at f1.4 but with the A7 I can shoot at ISO silly in manual mode with the shutter speed set to 1/100 and more reasonable apertures and just let the ISO float up and down. I took 35mm f1.8, 85mm f2 and 135mm f2.8 and shot from wide open to f8 with most shots being in the f4-f8 range. Wonderful :D
 
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PS. The gear...



All fits in an old camcorder bag, and weighs next to nothing :D



:D
 
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jonneymendoza said:
I am close to pre ordering the a7r2 but want to get it from Amazon UK
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I know it's tempting but aren't you also tempted to wait until the reviews come out? This could mean waiting longer if they sell out though. Why are you so keen to buy from Amazon?

I'm tempted but to be honest the A7 does pretty much everything I want... but IBIS and electronic shutter would be nice :D
 
My rational for going ahead and preordering is:-
  • all my Canon gear is now gone (well apart from an SX50HS)
  • me and my Sig. devoid of a body
  • the price will probably be set for a while
  • and I can't wait :naughty:
 
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