Around DHS, mirrorless and old lens too

zackiedawg

zackiedawg

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Staff member
Just some shots to share from my trip last month - the first night up there, we traditionally arrive in the mid-afternoon, check in, then head over to DHS that first day. ; I hadn't unpacked my DSLR and gear yet, so I was traveling with my NEX-5N and the kit lens & 16mm lens, as well as my old (1970's vintage) Konica Hexanon 40mm F1.8 lens, just for some manual focusing play. ; Didn't shoot too much there that first day, as we were mostly thinking about dinner, but here are a few...

Kit lens snap of Echo Lake restaurant and apartments - nice warm light:
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A few shots from the Jack Sparrow Pirate Experience thing, using the old manual focus Konica wide open:
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Kept the old Konica mounted for some scenery snaps at F5.6 to F8 or so...Brown Derby:
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The Hat:
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Tower of Terror, warm sunset light:
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The Caddy:
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Crossroads, taken with the 16mm and ECU 1 (12mm) converter:
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Parting shot before heading to dinner, with the 16mm+ECU (12mm) converter:
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We walked over from Boardwalk where we were staying...then hit the busses over to Old Key West, where we boated to Marketplace, ate at Rainforest, then boated over to French Quarter for coffee & beignets, boated back to Marketplace, and bussed back to Boardwalk. ; I enjoy riding around a lot of the various transportations almost as much as the parks and visiting resorts!

Comments, questions, critique always welcomed. ; Not my finest shooting - just casual spontaneous stuff on a growling stomach!
 
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I am impressed with the colors that your Sony makes! are you doing much to them in post? The colors all look very real and natural.
 
Love that Tower of Terror shot and the last one. ; I too am a fan of the transportation. ; I love that all is taken care for me and I can relax (usually)
 
Thanks Craig - I don't really do anything to them in post...I'm a lazy processor - while I love photography, I love the taking of the photo, not the processing part - so I shoot mostly in JPG (98% of the time), mostly do all my settings/adjustments in camera, and work the contrast and exposure for the effects I'm looking for. ; My post processing regime tends to be small cropping for compositional changes, straightening, and resizing to post online. ; Color I never adjust, saturation sometimes I'll boost a touch if I think I need it, and I'll occasionally pull up shadows on underexposures if I flub a shot a bit.


The main thing for me, no matter which camera I'm shooting with, is setting up the JPG color and shooting profile to match my taste - my Canons, Fujis, and Sonys have all pretty much put out similar colors once I tuned them to my liking. ; On Sony cameras, I find 'vivid' setting in the color profiles to be best, but turning saturation and sharpness down -1 each. ; That works on both the NEX and my DSLR. ; With Canon P&S, it was usually Standard with saturation +1 and sharpness +2. ; Fuji P&S for me was 'Landscape' with contrast -1 and sharpness -2. ; Once you get the JPG profile tuned to your preferences and style, then it's just working the exposure and WB when shooting to avoid any work afterwards! ; (if you LIKE post processing, then none of that matters - some folks love the process of working over a RAW file and fine-tuning everything at the computer...I just get very bored very quickly when I have to sit in front of a computer processing photos).
 
Indeed Jeff - the relaxing and surrendering it all to Disney to get around can be nice...and some of the transportation is just fun - I like boats in particular, the smaller the better - so those Fort Wilderness Campground boats from MK with the canopy tops, and the SunSeekers from Marketplace, are always favorites to just go for a cruise.


Admittedly, a very crowded bus is my least favorite form of transportation, but if I can score a seat and it has AC, and I don't have to do the driving after a long day in the parks, I'll take it!
 
thanks Justin! I too shoot jpeg and hate post processing.
However, my Nikon continually shoots over orange/warm, no matter what white balance or saturation settings I use. That is the main reason I am considering Sony over Nikon. My D80 always got the color right, the D300 doesn't get it.
 
I presume you tried some of the 'preset' color profiles? ; I found, for example, with Fuji P&S cameras a propensity for my taste to lean a little too 'blueish' - keeping it in standard profile and trying to adjust the saturation didn't cure the problem at all - but if you start messing around with some of the preset profiles that alter the 'color', I found landscape moved the blues down a notch and bumped up green a bit, so working with that profile gave me the right color and saturation, only requiring slight mods to contrast and sharpness. ; With Sony, I find their 'vivid' setting does nicely to boost both colors and contrast, but will tend to be too oversaturated - so turning saturation down to -1 gives me the nicer color settings yet avoids oversaturating the reds too much. ; Standard profile didn't have enough pop, and turning up saturation still renders the colors a bit too much towards the reddish spectrum with Sony cams...but switch to vivid or portrait and move saturation down, you get a different effect. ; I wonder if Nikon has the same effect with their preset profiles - you might experiment a bit and see if one of the other profiles gets the colors cooler where you might want them, then adjust saturation/contrast/sharpness to fine-tune it your way.


Sony does tend to render nice cooler blue skies and outdoor colors, though some find the indoor tends towards much warmer color and more saturated reds. ; White balance adjustments will usually handle that issue, as it seems to be mostly how Auto WB adjusts to flourescent and incandescent light.
 
Brown Derby and Crossroads are my favorites. ; The gradual sky color change in Crossroads is wonderful. ; The NEX colors do look great.


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Thank you Peter. ; I do wish I shot a few more of that sky - we were headed for the busses to get to dinner, and on the bus ride out of the park and over to Key West, the skies were really beautiful - that same two-color transition grew bolder as the sun set further. ; But the skies ended up rewarding me the next day, so no complaints!
 
Nice work Justin. How do you like using old manual lenses on the Nex. I actually like using them. The only problem I find is the coatings on the older glass really sucks. I guess over time the lenses get better and better in terms of technology and coatings. The older lenses I have are terrible with flare, definitely when shot into the sunlight.
 
I enjoy the old lenses thoroughly ; - and you're right - they definitely don't play as well as newer lenses when it comes to things like flare resistance, CA, etc...the coatings weren't at today's level for sure. ; But with a little effort paid to avoiding direct sun in the shot, a cheap lens hood to make sure you cut off the side-light intrusion, and you can do pretty well with those old lenses. ; The main thing for me is that it's just so FUN - pick up an old lens for $10, one originally designed for a 35mm film SLR camera and so pretty decent optics, and on the mirrorless cameras you just set them to M or A mode (my favorites)...and it's like going back in time - aperture ring on the lens to set aperture, camera jog wheel to set shutter speed (or in A mode, let the camera choose that with TTL metering), and set the ISO level desired, turn a nice, mechanically-linked focus ring and watch the peaking to know when you're dialed in, and fire. ; It's quiet, it's visceral, and it's a lot of fun.
 
Justin,
Thanks for the pointer of setting the profile in the Canon- P&S- being someone- who only over the last year- has stepped out of Auto- little by little some of the things ya'll say here finally make sense....
Though I am one of those who can get lost in post process-( and most times its a pleasant lost) cause I do so many other things artistically with some of my images..
 
You're welcome. ; I can't say if all Canon P&S are equal, or if they've changed over the years since I had one...but pretty much any new camera I get, P&S, mirrorless, or DSLR, one of the very first things I do is snap some test shots around my yard and house (the same subjects each time, so I have some reference and comparison to past cameras), and adjust/tune the settings of the JPG to get it as close as possible to the look I like. ; Though all brands are a little different with their default JPG processing, I haven't yet run into a camera or sensor that I couldn't get pretty much the same output from. ; It's one of those things too that you can't say there's a definitive right or wrong with, because everyone has different tastes and preferences - some like warmer, some cooler, some more saturated, some less, some contrasty, some flatter...I guess that's why they give us those tools in the camera to tune them to our preference!
 
Question-
Can the focus soften over time-( with a PS to where it is not as crisp- or is it just my eyes-
Will sharpen in camera affect that-

Thanks,
 
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