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

trevorbray said:
Just checked how much I shoot 50mm <5% Having second thoughts now.
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Its the same for me and I don't really "get along" with this focal length. I have been through pretty much all the 50mm options on e-mount (inc. canon EF options) apart from the 50GM.
I normally use this focal length for shooting landscapes and for that purpose my zoom has me covered.
 
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I could not make my mind up wide or standard or 85 mm so last week i decided on the 24/105 f4 and i'm really pleased with it as a family day type of lens I think the only other lens i may get is the 135 f 1.8 for portraits although i do have the FE 70/200 f2.8 and that works quite well .

Rob
 
GyRob said:
I could not make my mind up wide or standard or 85 mm so last week i decided on the 24/105 f4 and i'm really pleased with it as a family day type of lens I think the only other lens i may get is the 135 f 1.8 for portraits although i do have the FE 70/200 f2.8 and that works quite well .

Rob
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I have the 24-105mm and use it a lot.
I have the 85mm f1.8 which I use for portraits.
I'd love the 135mm f1.8 but not sure I could justify the cost for occasional use.
 
I struggle to see the attraction of 135mm or longer focal lengths when used with wide apertures for portraits as you're going to need a lot of room and a megaphone for anything other than a tight shot and there's going to be next to no depth. That's fine if it's the look you want I suppose and at least you'll get large round bokeh balls. I don't know what I'd use a 135mm f1.8 for.
 
woof woof said:
I struggle to see the attraction of 135mm or longer focal lengths when used with wide apertures for portraits as you're going to need a lot of room and a megaphone for anything other than a tight shot and there's going to be next to no depth. That's fine if it's the look you want I suppose and at least you'll get large round bokeh balls. I don't know what I'd use a 135mm f1.8 for.
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I get what you're saying, but just about everytime is see a portrait that I really really like it's nearly always taken with the 135mm 1.8, so I guess that's the look that I want....
 
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woof woof said:
I struggle to see the attraction of 135mm or longer focal lengths when used with wide apertures for portraits as you're going to need a lot of room and a megaphone for anything other than a tight shot and there's going to be next to no depth. That's fine if it's the look you want I suppose and at least you'll get large round bokeh balls. I don't know what I'd use a 135mm f1.8 for.
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The attraction is tight portraits with shallow depth of field ;)

You'll find a lot of the pro family portrait photographers shoot at 135 for exactly that reason. The Canon 135 F2 L was incredibly popular for that very reason.
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
I get what you're saying, but just about everytime is see a portrait that I really really like it's nearly always taken with the 135mm 1.8
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KitsuneAndy said:
The attraction is tight portraits with shallow depth of field ;)

You'll find a lot of the pro family portrait photographers shoot at 135 for exactly that reason. The Canon 135 F2 L was incredibly popular for that very reason.
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How far away would you need to be to take a family portrait?

I just struggle to think of lenses like this as anything other than a people picture lens giving that look (tight and with shallow depth.) What else can / is this sort of lens used for and how many times could the picture have been taken with a maybe more practical and versatile 70-200mm f2.8?

I can see the appeal... but it's just not for me. There just aren't enough locations and people I'd want to take pictures of at those locations. I suppose 135mm + f1.x does give a look... just not one I want to see that often :D As always good luck to people who love this lens and the look it gives.
 
I like 135mm but it's not too long for most times for me. I simply crop my 85mm which is close enough. Gives roughly 130mm f2 equivalent in APS-C mode with still plenty pixels to spare ;)
 
woof woof said:
I suppose 135mm + f1.x does give a look... just not one I want to see that often :D As always good luck to people who love this lens and the look it gives.
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Unlike the A-mount version of the 135mm/1.8 the e-mount version doesn't support TCs :(
If it did I'd have kept it.
That would have made it more versatile since you can use it instead of a 70-200mm/2.8 in a smaller package. So could have 200mm f2.4 and 270mm f3.6 with TCs.
 
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woof woof said:
How far away would you need to be to take a family portrait?

I just struggle to think of lenses like this as anything other than a people picture lens giving that look (tight and with shallow depth.) What else can / is this sort of lens used for and how many times could the picture have been taken with a maybe more practical and versatile 70-200mm f2.8?

I can see the appeal... but it's just not for me. There just aren't enough locations and people I'd want to take pictures of at those locations. I suppose 135mm + f1.x does give a look... just not one I want to see that often :D As always good luck to people who love this lens and the look it gives.
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0 times if you shoot wider than 2.8 :)

But for some, there's zero use for it, as you say.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
0 times if you shoot wider than 2.8 :)

But for some, there's zero use for it, as you say.
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It certainly has next to zero appeal to me even as a some time gear fondler with more money than sense but I'm not a professional or even amateur portrait shooter so I struggle to see a use for it, or another use for it. Googling for example pictures brings up a load of mostly people and dog shots. I don't know what else people would use these for. I can see the need for a portrait photographer taking that shot all day long but I wouldn't want to take that picture or pay for it either.

I do think shallow DoF is done to death and I do normally like someone's head to be in the depth. As always, good luck to the lovers of these lenses and the look they give but maybe wrongly they're just one trick ponies for me.

PS.
Soz for the buzzkill :D
 
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nandbytes said:
I like 135mm but it's not too long for most times for me. I simply crop my 85mm which is close enough. Gives roughly 130mm f2 equivalent in APS-C mode with still plenty pixels to spare ;)
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Yup.

I think sometimes there's a reluctance to crop and I feel that sometimes too but if keeping the end result in mind we can visualise the end result, take the picture, crop it later and still have a big enough file, fine :D
 
woof woof said:
Yup.

I think sometimes there's a reluctance to crop and I feel that sometimes too but if keeping the end result in mind we can visualise the end result, take the picture, crop it later and still have a big enough file, fine :D
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I have been shooting with high res sensor for nearly 5 years now. even after cropping I have plenty more megapixels to spare and still print very large.
 
nandbytes said:
I have been shooting with high res sensor for nearly 5 years now. even after cropping I have plenty more megapixels to spare and still print very large.
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Speaking of printing, my printer does A4 size. If I wanted to print a photo of mine much larger to frame for the wall, it would have to go to a professional printer, I guess that's what most people do? How big can a sensor like in my a6600 print to without looking pixelated?
 
Merlin5 said:
Speaking of printing, my printer does A4 size. If I wanted to print a photo of mine much larger to frame for the wall, it would have to go to a professional printer, I guess that's what most people do? How big can a sensor like in my a6600 print to without looking pixelated?
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Bigger than you realistically want to hang no the wall. You got to remember that when you print big, you don't stand 12 inches from it like your phone so even if it looks pixelated at 1 foot away, you are not going to look at it that close if the photo is 6 feet diagonally.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Bigger than you realistically want to hang no the wall. You got to remember that when you print big, you don't stand 12 inches from it like your phone so even if it looks pixelated at 1 foot away, you are not going to look at it that close if the photo is 6 feet diagonally.
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Thanks Raymond, good to know. What about a photo I've heavily cropped in, how would I know it's not going to look pixelated even from a few feet away? Also, I export my processed photos from lightroom as tiff files for Flickr. Would I send the tiff file to a printer and any idea how much it costs on average to print a photo let's say about 3 foot by 2 foot?
 
Merlin5 said:
Thanks Raymond, good to know. What about a photo I've heavily cropped in, how would I know it's not going to look pixelated even from a few feet away? Also, I export my processed photos from lightroom as tiff files for Flickr. Would I send the tiff file to a printer and any idea how much it costs on average to print a photo let's say about 3 foot by 2 foot?
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I've printed a 8mp file from a Canon 30D to 30x20 before. It looks fine.

36x24. It should be fine. Unless you REALLY cropped it heavily. What is the native res of the file?
 
Raymond Lin said:
I've printed a 8mp file from a Canon 30D to 30x20 before. It looks fine.

36x24. It should be fine. Unless you REALLY cropped it heavily. What is the native res of the file?
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I haven't chosen any particular photo, was just curious for future printing. Where do I find out native resolution?
 
If you want a rough idea what a really big picture will look like you could maybe crop an A4 sized picture out of the full sized file and print it.
 
woof woof said:
If you want a rough idea what a really big picture will look like you could maybe crop an A4 sized picture out of the full sized file and print it.
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Do you mean crop my photo and print it A4? Sounds like a good idea, I'll try that.
 
Merlin5 said:
Do you mean crop my photo and print it A4? Sounds like a good idea, I'll try that.
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No, this number on the corner in LR. I mean what is the file size? Ideally you want 300dpi, you don't need higher than that but you can get away with less. It also depends on the print media, if it is canvas you can get away with less than gloss paper.

aVubkVy.png
 
Raymond Lin said:
No, this number on the corner in LR. I mean what is the file size? Ideally you want 300dpi, you don't need higher than that but you can get away with less. It also depends on the print media, if it is canvas you can get away with less than gloss paper.

aVubkVy.png
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Ah right, thanks, I understand now. I'll boot up my laptop later and look at a cropped photo of mine and give you the number in the corner of LR.
 
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Merlin5 said:
Do you mean crop my photo and print it A4? Sounds like a good idea, I'll try that.
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I mean... Think how big a picture you'd like and cut an A4 sized slice from that whole big picture and print it to fill an A4 sheet. That could give you an idea how pixelated it'd be and at what viewing distance it'd be ok for you.
 
Merlin5 said:
Speaking of printing, my printer does A4 size. If I wanted to print a photo of mine much larger to frame for the wall, it would have to go to a professional printer, I guess that's what most people do? How big can a sensor like in my a6600 print to without looking pixelated?
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My printer does up to A3+ size prints and that is now as large as I print. I don't really bother with bigger prints since in the house viewing distance isn't great for much larger prints anyway and I don't sell prints.
I do have few larger prints from professional printers but only one of them is on the wall. :(

but as commented above you can print much bigger with the A6600 but you can easily get to A3+ even at 300DPI (though that's not required). basically all i am saying is you are not limited by your sensor or your megapixels, don't worry about it :)
 
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The rumour site reports on A1 issues...


"SAR reader PJP summed up some of the issues the Sony A1 is currently showing:

1) IBIS issue. IBIS takes 5 second to stabilise when the camera is moved from hanging on its strap to pictures / video taking position.
2) Battery drain is very fast.
3) EVF blackouts whilst in sunny environments."


For whatever reason I'm having problems with the link so here it is on youtube.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkfyXUcW0D0
 
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Raymond Lin said:
No, this number on the corner in LR. I mean what is the file size? Ideally you want 300dpi, you don't need higher than that but you can get away with less. It also depends on the print media, if it is canvas you can get away with less than gloss paper.

aVubkVy.png
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Right, I've looked at my Robin photo that I posted and it's basically a very very small rectangle in the centre of the whole image. I'm not printing it, but small birds are probably the best examples of the heaviest cropping I'm likely to do. The non crop is 6000 x 4000 and after cropping it's 1179 x 786.
 
Merlin5 said:
Right, I've looked at my Robin photo that I posted and it's basically a very very small rectangle in the centre of the whole image. I'm not printing it, but small birds are probably the best examples of the heaviest cropping I'm likely to do. The non crop is 6000 x 4000 and after cropping it's 1179 x 786.
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We needed to print images for the camera club but only had Digital Competition entries limited to 1600px horizontal and 1200px vertical. I printed them all to around A4 and they were all absolutely fine. Yes a very close look at a part of the image with bags of detail might have given the game away but you would only have noticed if you had a comparison to look at. My own minimum DPI is 200dpi but you can definitely get away with less. I think you will be fine printing your image in or around A4 but ideally you really want more pixels as the printer or your editing software will be filling in the gaps with colours it determines to be correct rather than those that were there on the day.
 
The bigger you print the less PPI you need for the image to look good, because the viewing distance increases. A 42" 4K TV is only 100ppi.

DPI doesn't change, that's a physical property of the printer.
 
Don't forget that Lightroom, On1 etc can all upscale for printing, and although you won't get more detail you will reduce pixelation.
 
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