gear dump, system change

[gary]

all the micro 4/3 gear is going to keh this week. i am going to yosemite the last week in april, it started out as a steam photo charter and when i map quested the town, i realized no way am i going to within 100 miles of yosemite and not venturing into the park, so now its another 10 day gary odyssey, trains planes and automobiles, including routing home via houston and dallas for an already planned 2 park baseball trip. i just can't bring myself to hike around in yosemite with heavy canon L gear. and i got tired of waiting for canon to get into mirrorless in a serious way. i looked into upgrading again in M4/3, either the new panasonic gh-4, which is by all reviews a great camera, but too video-centric for me, not that much stills iq improvement over my gh3, olympus M1 was looked at, a better deal for stills only as it's on iq par with the gh4 and $400 cheaper. BUT, lo and behold a little online research, more out of random curiosity than any real knowledge got me looking at the sony full frame mirror less bodies, and the more i looked, the more i found positive, the only negatives, and this was across all reviews, is the crappy battery life. something i'm sure sony will in upgrade bodies correct. the deciding factor was when i sat down and added up the weights for the sony A7II and the 3 lenses i would carry 16-35 f4, 24-70 f4, 70-200f4, and the total weight came up to half what the equivalent canon gear would be on my back, a very very big consideration in a high altitude hiking situation. i'm at least getting enough from keh to cover the body and the 55mm f1.8 that will be my first lens, and i can rent the 16-35 and the 70-200 from lens rentals. so that'll give me time to start acquiring lenses as money allows, and also gives sony time to bring more to market, rumors abound on the net that sony is bringing a number of fast zeiss partnered primes to the party in 2015 and 2016. with the light weight of the mirror less primes, i could easily see myself doing primes only below 70mm, i.e.: 12, 24, 35, 55 and zooms past that. and while i am still a fan of M4/3, i just need the full frame pop to do justice to yosemite, and i couldn't spend into a 3rd system, plus who knows, i may end up with my own version of frankencamera, an adapter and some of my canon L glass with this tiny little funny looking body hanging off the end. so as of tonight, M4/3 going, and sony A7II preordered and 55mm f1.8 on order.

 

[zackiedawg]

Congrats - always fun getting new gear! I've been tempted on the full frames as well - happy with my crop frame e-mount so far, and I do more telephoto than landscape - but if I was facing serious landscape work like Yosemite and Yellowstone, I admit I might have ended up in the same boat as you, and making the same decision!

I may be picking up the 70-200 F4 anyway though, even for my A6000 - it really looks like a beauty. And don't worry about all the Franken-camera stuff - adapted lenses can be a bunch of fun! I love my Konica and Voigtlander lenses on my A6000 - and manual focusing brings back some fun.

 

[gary]

Well i might very well end up in some older manual focus primes. Some of those canon and nikon primes were legendary for their sharpness

 

[gary]

well ok, friday night went to bed with b&h showing the a7ii as still pre-order status. saturday late mooring the website changed to in stock, and sometime saturday afternoon my order status changed to ordered. just received shipping notice for ups pickup tomorrow. which is fine, i will be near the ups depot in late afternoon for pickup. so the sony pull gets stronger and stronger, now seriously thinking about an A6000 as a pocket backup and for ball games as the fps is much stronger than the full frame. and the goodness is that all the lenses for the a7ii can be used on the 6000. just read an interesting blog article last night by trey ratcliff forecasting the death of the mirrored dslr within 3 years. he's another pro who just dumped all his nikon gear to go sony full frame, of course he had a bunch of leica lenses to use via adapter, some very sweet fast leica primes that i cannot afford unless i win the lottery. he also thinks very highly of the new 16-35 f4 for landscape work, so i kind of think that'll be the next lens

 

[gary]

so the new camera has been here for a few days, spent the first 3 evenings just sitting there with it on my lap, going through the manual page by page, very necessary in this case as the sony menu interface is a completely new animal to me. not too bad, i had heard that the early nex menus were a ridiculous thing, similar to one of those bad translation things you sometimes see on the internet. cannot get over how light yet nice this feels in my hands, i haven't been able to shoot much as we have had both finger numbing painful cold, followed by torrential rains, followed by black ice last night, and this morning. sun coming out as i type this so i hope to get out of the backyard to give it a try. so here are 3, from the tripod, when i finally remembered to turn off the steady shot in camera stabilization, something easy to do on the lens in canon, requires a menu drill down in sony, but i'm liking the fact that i have 4 buttons that i can customize, i already made one for switching back and forth to manual focus/focus peaking, which seems really nice. so for landscape trips i'll set one to turn on and off the stabilization. i really like that every lens is now stabilized. these are at f11, f16, and f1., all manually focused using the focus peaking, straight outa camera, no post process other than raw to dng adobe conversion, and resized to file limit of 17K for upload to fanfare, but so far so good. and you need LR version 5.7.1, apparently adobe was caught a little short by this camera showing up on the market in larger numbers and such a rush on the supply, word is they are shipping every day from everyone who has them in stock. so the LR version has some lens profiles added, but only support for one new camera body on it. this one.

f11

f16

f1.8

 

[zackiedawg]

so the new camera has been here for a few days, spent the first 3 evenings just sitting there with it on my lap, going through the manual page by page, very necessary in this case as the sony menu interface is a completely new animal to me. not too bad, i had heard that the early nex menus were a ridiculous thing, similar to one of those bad translation things you sometimes see on the internet.

The menus have changed significantly with the last few newer cameras, from the A6000 and A7 onwards - much more logical, and much more friendly to use for photographers.

. so here are 3, from the tripod, when i finally remembered to turn off the steady shot in camera stabilization, something easy to do on the lens in canon, requires a menu drill down in sony, but i'm liking the fact that i have 4 buttons that i can customize, i already made one for switching back and forth to manual focus/focus peaking, which seems really nice. so for landscape trips i'll set one to turn on and off the stabilization.

Don't forget too that you have lots of spaces you can use to stick various controls in the Fn menu. Hitting that button will bring up a quick navi type menu with up to 12 different functions - I actually keep my steady shot on/off control in that menu - makes it easy to get to quickly without deep menu diving and doesn't take up a custom button. Also note: you should have up to 10 different buttons you can customize - aside from the C1 through C4 buttons, you can also customize the jog wheel buttons, and pretty much any of the other body buttons, as well as what the jog wheels control.

 

[gary]

justin, thanks for the pointers, it's nice to have all this customization available, i'm sure as i shoot more i'lll figure out what i want right to hand on 1 button for c1 to 4. it's more a matter of i'm trying out a lot of different things right now, i only have 3 months to figure this system out. i've pretty much decided that even if the photo charter gets canceled, go/nogo is 3/1, i'm going to yosemite anyway, i'll just reconfigure the trip to a 1 week trip, with 4 full days in yosemite. i bought michael frye's guide to yosemite photography, and late april is almost an ideal time to go. yes the high passes and road to glacier point will still be closed, but the waterfalls should be at peak in an average snow pack year, dogwoods along the merced should still be in good bloom, weather has a chance of being pleasant, especially in the daytime for hiking, and the hordes of summer should not be there. it'll still have a lot of people, but not the mass crowd urban experience that mid summer brings.
my only complaint right now is nothing more than rumors as to what native fast primes sony will be releasing this year and when, rumor has a 24mm f2 coming in february in fe mount, i'd really like to not go the adapter route right now, at least not for sony A or E mount lenses, i really would like to carry fast primes, say 16, 24, 55 to yosemite and other trips, but once again if it comes down to the trip i can rent the new 16-35 f4 from lens rentals, i'll be renting the 70-200 from them anyway as that's a lens i won't need for awhile yet to have everyday

 

[zackiedawg]

Yeah - looks like the sure things so far are the 35mm F1.4 Zeiss, the 28mm F2, and the 90mm F2.8. The 24mm F2 and 85mm F1.8 both seem to be the frontrunners of the rumors...should know something more by end of February. The 28mm F2 plus the wide adapter may solve the need too, if it hits the ground by then - it would give you an effective 21mm F2 that could be useful in Yosemite.

I bought the 70-200mm F4 last week - it actually just arrived at my home today (Security holding it for me until I get home). Looking forward to trying it out, and bringing it to Disney Friday (I'll just be bringing the A6000 and lenses with me this trip - the DSLR will stay home).

 

[gary]

let us know how you like that lens, that's on the future buy list for once i get my wider than 50mm solved

 

[zackiedawg]

I only got a chance for a quick handle this evening with the lens - build is very nice, solid and heavy feeling, but not compared to similar DSLR lenses - overall it still feels nicely compact but solid. I took 30-40 shots in the front yard and inside the house - light was already terrible so all shots are ISO1600 and up - dusk was on and it was rainy and cloudy too. But I mostly wanted to make sure focus worked properly, everything was aligned, etc. All seems to be working perfectly to spec. I don't think I'll get a chance to use it in daylight until Disney this weekend - at work from 8am to 6pm for the next 2 days, so I pretty much miss all the daylight.

 

[gary]

good to hear, well apparently SAS is just as bad as NAS or CAS. Sony acquisition syndrome . i wasn't going to do it, but i caved in and ordered the 35mm f2.8 sony zeiss when i got home from work, i'm doing a streetcar charter in philadelphia the day before the Super Bowl, and i kept reading such glowing reports about this lens for street shooting, i'll still have time before yosemite for sony to come out with something in the 24mm range, or i can rent that 16-35 for the trip, like i said, below 55mm i would really like to just have fast primes. i just was looking at someone's flickr stuff from a rhine river christmas cruise, the a7r, and just a couple primes for street shooting, and the new 70-200 for castles along the river from the boat, some good stuff there. so i might be mostly out of canon in a year or so, if the a7ii pans out for tripod landscapes like it promises, i'll be selling the 5dmk3 to get a 7dmk2 for sports and wildlife, keeping just a couple of zooms, 24-70 and 70-200 2.8, all the other L lenses get sold , and all the travel and street stuff will be sony shooting

 

[gary]

first shots from the 35mm f2.8 handheld, steady shot on, using autofocus. these are straight out of camera, to dng, lens profile corrected in LR 5.7. and file size limited to 17k for upload to fanfare. so far i'm really liking this sony full frame stuff. so much so that to go landscape wider i just ordered an older canon fd mount 17mm f4, it'll be all manual via a relatively inexpensive metabones adapter, but i've seen some great stuff from these old manual lenses. i've been working with the focus peaking colors thing already and i must say its pretty easy to get the hang of when a lot of the frame is in focus, and where as the color shows up on the monitor, especially magnifying in

the 2 phreds

 

[Tim]

nice colors for sure.

 

[gary]

so yesterday was a lot of this, this was taken from the jamesport fire department parking lot in mid afternoon, concluding about 2o hours of standby for me, we got off lucky, 1 call, and that was an ems call not until 4o pm, snow shoveling chest pains, still loving the sony, both shots handheld, 35mm f2.8, +1 exposure comp to keep the snow white, or as least as white as a grey post storm sky will let me have. we got about 22 inches here, orient on the tip of the north fork got 30. like i said, we got lucky call wise, south old, my old department in the 1970's had a working house fire saturday about 1pm 3 doors away from the house i grew up in, windy, temp in the low 30's, a frozen hydrant, and an old balloon construction house. that's the not so fun side of this firefighting thing i do.

and i ended up a little better than initial estimate at keh, so i was able to pull the trigger tonight on an A6000, bundled with the 55-210 to give me a little walk around, taking a hike camera. and my FE lenses will fit it, just with the focal conversion of the 1.5 factor.

 

[zackiedawg]

That should be a fun combo - the A6000 for walkaround and playing with the focus tracking/continuous focus which can be quite impressive. I'm looking forward to this weekend to get the chance to try some birds in flight with the 70-200.

Just one question...what's all that white stuff in your photos? Some kind of accident at a pillow-stuffing factory? Sugar silo blew up? Weird seeing everything covered in white - doesn't happen down here!

 

[gary]

well justin, standby for another explosion at the sugar silo, another 1-3 inches tomorrow, followed by another possible substantial drop on monday into tuesday, upwards of another 12 inches possible. running out pot places to put the stuff, the store parking lots already have huge mounds, the one at target will be a sledding hill by next week if this trends out as predicted
my canon fd 17mm f4 arrived today, in excellent grade from key, looks like it came straight from the factory, metabones adapter will be waiting for me tomorrow at ups depot, along with the A6000 and that 55-210. it'll be a busy day before the superbowl as i'll be out shooting with it all sunday morning for certain.

 

[zackiedawg]

I'm almost through with my photo sorting and editing - I have about 50 left to go through tonight, and then I'll go back and resize the ones I want to post online. I'll do a few 100% crops as well on the 70-200mm lens for those who want to know how it performs. I'm very pleased - I put it through some good tests at AK - with the horrible mixed light of the bird aviaries, and the challenge of shooting from the Kilimanjaro truck with no control over the light angle or timing...it performed beautifully. I want to get these photos done tonight, even if I'm up until 2am doing it, because I'm hoping to get a chance to do some light birding with the lens combo tomorrow. Tomorrow's temps are supposed to be 72, partly cloudy. Sunday 75, and Monday we're jumping all the way to 85 again. That would take care of that Target hill in no time.

 

[gary]

ok, i got out a couple of times with the canon 17mm f1.4 fd mount with the metabones fd to e adapter, what a strange throwback feeling to be manual focus again, but i think i'll get used to it, not sure how deep i'll get into it, i ended up selling some more canon lenses off, the 2 L lenses that i used the least, and the rebel body and 2 lenses i kept in the car in an old domke bag for fire buffing. that'll now be taken care of by the a6000 and a couple of zooms, 16-70 when i can get it and the 55-210 i got with the 6000. i ended up ordering the 16-35 after checking out a lot of great stuff on flicker, i decided having the convenience and lighter weight than my adapter and a couple of fd lenses might do me better for fly away trips. so here is one of my first with the 17mm right out of camera, the boat ramp at iron pier avenue in jamesport on a single digit, wind chill below zero, take 1 photo and get back in the car type of day, and yes that is salt spray turned to ice on the boat ramp dock parts

and here is one from today, again with the 17mm, this one did need post work since it was a real grey dull sky day, with very little contrast anywhere, this is river road, looking downstream from forge pond, off to my left is a wooden slide framework to allow people canoeing down the peconic river to carry across the road and get down into the lower river area to continue downstream