Let the Nex 6 episodic review begin !!!

disclaimer time. This is the start of a series of blogs about my impressions of the Nex-6 camera and some of the lenses you can use with it. I paid full price for the camera body at Precision Camera in Austin, Texas. I was not offered any financial or product consideration or quid pro quo from either the retailer or from Sony or any party related to Sony. I am answerable for my purchase only to God and my wife. If you don't like my opinions about the camera or the review, go write your own.

Let's get the critical stuff out of the way first and that would be: Why did I buy a Nex 6 when I already own a Nex 7, and how do I like the way it feels and handles?

Many years ago, in a moment of extreme photographic hubris, I took a trip to Paris with Belinda and brought along with me only one camera. It was a Leica M3. I'd bought it a couple weeks earlier from a well known camera technician and Leica specialist who told me he'd stripped the camera all the way down, and restored it to "like new" condition before thoroughly testing it. I also brought along one 50mm Summicron lens and a freezer baggie full of film.  On our first night in Paris a screw came loose somewhere inside the camera and got itself wedged into the film advance gears and that was the end of that Leica's usefulness for the trip. Since we would be there for two weeks and one of the main reasons for our  trip was to take some fun and interesting photographs it seemed obvious to me that I had only two choices: Find a trustworthy camera repair person in Paris and convince him to repair a Leica overnight for someone he'd never met before and would probably never see again, or, go to the FNAC store and buy a suitable camera to use for the rest of the trip.

I chose the second path and bought a Contax Aria with a little Zeiss zoom lens. A nice camera but nothing special and soon divested of when I got back to Austin. (The Leica was repaired and returned to me within an hour of presenting it to the original seller with my critique. We are still friends and still do business together. Everyone deserves to be able to make one non-fatal mistake....).  The point of my long story is that it's never a good idea to leave home for a wonderful trip, excursion, event, job, etc. without a back-up camera. A redundant tool that can be instantly pressed into service should your primary tool become unresponsive.  No one likes an unresponsive tool.

As most of my readers know I bought a Sony Nex 7 earlier this year and have been thoroughly enjoying it. It's a great camera. But as I continued to accrue lenses for it I started to think it would be wise to have a good and very similar back-up for the original, just in case. And, as I'm planning some out of town trips in the next few months for the express purpose of photographing I figured I'd go ahead and commit to a second Nex body. Logic says that it's good to get two identical cameras and it makes perfect sense: afterall, you bought the first camera for a reason. I bought a second Nex 7 which developed a problem and I sent it back to the dealer. I had the choice of having them refund my money or having a new body shipped to me. At the time the idea of also buying an a99 was percolating in my head so I just had the seller credit my card for the camera.

I went out to buy the Sony a99 yesterday and, as I was waiting for everything to get sorted and written up I made the mistake of asking to play with the store's demo Nex 6. It was great. It's so much like the Nex 7 but it feels and generates files that seem a little crisper (but we'll get on to that...). The finder on the model I fondled was identical to the one on my Nex 7 and the menus, not counting silly stuff like wi-fi and apps, were nearly identical to the ones I've become accustomed to on the 7.  You only live once I thought and added both the Nex-6 and the Sigma 19mm lens for the Nex cameras to the total tally. I'd purchased the 30mm Sigma just the day before.

If the Nex 6 tested out to my satisfaction and the files were good and rich and sharp I would have satisfied my photographer paranoia and I would be ready to do some day trips and weekend trips for the sole reason of shooting images with the comforting thought that I was as prepared as any boy scout. If you are tired of reading I'll skip right now to the conclusion: Based on my half day of shooting and then looking carefully at a hundred or so files at 100% in Lightroom I would say that I am very, very pleased with the Nex 6 and am glad to make its acquaintance.  It complements the Nex 7 and they overlap each other in very complementary ways.  For more detail, please read on.

This image of the Nex 6 was taken with a Sony a99 camera and the Sigma 70mm Macro lens. It is a direct, out of camera Jpeg. It was shot in the studio at ISO 6400. I've included a 100% (unretouched) crop below for your  pixel peeping pleasure....

The 6 looks a lot like the 7 everywhere except in the material of the body covering and the switch of the Tri-Navi dials to more conventional mode and concentric control dial. I worked with both during the day and didn't have problems changing back and forth. Both cameras are more comfortable in my hands than any of the micro four thirds cameras I've used except for the the Olympus Pen EP 3 which is the prettiest and more ergonomic Pen camera that company has ever made.

Part of my newfound prejudice in favor of the Nex 6 is the fact that I coupled it with the 30mm Sigma lens. It's a lens that comes close to my all time favorite focal length of 50mm on a full frame camera and, I've come to find out, it is exquisitely sharp. It may be the best cheap lens I've ever purchased. I haven't had time to test the 19mm Sigma yet but if it has the same DNA as the 30mm lens I will be delighted. You can judge for yourself from the photos presented below but I will tell you that, looked at large (100%) it make the original 18-55mm Sony kit lens look a bit anemic.

While the system performance is important, and is the only set of parameters that can be objectively measured, I find it difficult to use a camera whose feel I don't enjoy. Here's where everyone is different. What I like in a camera others may not, and vice versa. I'm right eyed so the finder on the top left of the camera feels just right to me. I have small to medium sized hands and if you have large hands you may find the button placement too tight and the grip too small. But for me these cameras are functionally well imagined. The bigger DSLT's are a whole different ballgame and evoke a different way of holding and working that has its own feel and structure. Not better or worse, just different.

This is a 100% crop from the shot just above, included to show the performance of the a99 at ISO 6400 with no retouching or post process noise reduction.

What are the things I like about the Nex 6?  Well, first off the less dense sensor in this camera is better at doing files in low light and at higher ISOs than the Nex 7. How much better? How about a stop and a half. While I'm sure that some of the improvement comes from a newly redesigned 16 megapixel sensor I'm equally sure that Sony is catching up with Nikon on figuring out how to introduce in camera noise reduction that is less smeary than the last generation and also has more monochromatic noise and less chroma (color splotchy) noise. Both of these things give us files that appear less noisy and more detailed and, for the most part, that's a good thing. So why not just get rid of the Nex 7 and get another Nex 6? Good question but I have the suspicion that the Nex 7 files are better at the other end of the spectrum; at the lowest ISOs.  Both cameras are really great imaging machines. If I needed the most resolution and detail with the  widest dynamic range I think the Nex 7 will be the leader. I'll test them head to head someday just to see but for now I'm happy to own a low noise camera and an uber-detailed camera. As I said, they cross over each other nicely.

I came into the kitchen last night and one small halogen can light was on at low intensity over the work table. I hand held the camera with the 19mm lens on  it (no image stabilization) and shot a few frames using the auto-ISO function. The white balance is very, very good for a low intensity halogen source while the  exposure, using manual metering, is both right on the money and exactly as I saw it (pre-chimped) in the electronic viewfinder. See the image below for a 100% crop.

100% crop of the frame at ISO 2000. Nex 6 and 19mm Sigma.

While this generation of Sony Nex cameras (the Nex5R has the same basic sensor) is not going to kick sand in the face of something like a Nikon D4 it certainly is as good as the Nikon D7000 or any of the other Sony chip toting APS-C cameras and perhaps better than a number of them. I'll say right up front that I found the files to be relatively noise free up to 800. Very good up to 3200 and usable even at 6400 (albeit at smaller sizes when in the nose bleed territory). But as a general, all around town camera, working at sane ISO's like 100, 200, and 400 it is the IQ equal of any APS-C camera on the market today at just about any price. That's pretty darn good.  So, good noise handling and good hand handling. Let's go on.

It was a lovely day in Austin. A bit overcast but not too warm and not too cold. Belinda joined me for a Sunday walk around downtown. I carried the 6, equipped with the 30mm Sigma and old a spare battery in one pocket.  Here's what I observed as we walked and I stopped from time to time to shoot a few images:

The camera seems to wake up slower than the 7. Some have conjectured the slow start may be lens dependent, and since I bought the camera without the new kit lens and have only use the Sigma I can't be sure. But I know that from the time I flip the "on" switch till the time the camera is ready to shoot can take four or five seconds. With this in mind I rarely turned the camera totally off but preferred to let ut fall asleep. When the camera was awake it focused very quickly. A bit quicker than my 7 and not much slower than a typical mid-level, conventional DSLR. 

In many daylight scenes the camera seems to like to underexpose by 1/3 to 2/3s of a stop in order, I suppose, to protect the highlights. I liked most of my daylight scenes best with a +1/3 stop adjustment. Of course, when I'm shooting in manual I mostly judge the exposure by the look of the image in the EVF and what I'm seeing in the live histogram.

A few reviews have nicked the 6 for not being perfectly white balanced under artificial light conditions but I think this is mostly ramped up criticism coming from writers who feel hell bent to be "balanced."  And by that I mean they feel that they have to come up with some negatives in a camera review to balance out any analysis of a camera that's overwhelmingly good. My experience with the camera, both under florescent light and tungsten light is that it is exceedingly good at coming to a convincing white balance. Probably better than a number of regular DSLRs, with the added benefit that you can see what the camera is choosing for a white balance in the EVF as you are analyzing the scene, even before you shoot it. It's a simple matter to dial in a more accurate WB in real time. But hardly necessary. All of the images in this report were done with AWB in Jpeg and they are as accurate as I can remember.

While I know that most advanced photographers like to shoot raw I tend to shoot my casual photographs in Jpeg. I usually set the camera to the largest file size and the lowest compression (highest quality) and rarely am I unhappy that I have foregone the ritual RAW dance. I am beginning to think of RAW files as something that only needs to be done on very critical shoots and by owners of OVF cameras who don't have the luxury of both pre-chimping their shots and having a good, reliable review/preview image to view. The screen on the backs of most cameras is rarely reliable because of all the ambient light falling on it. Rear screens are really only usable for reliable file review if you both to carry along and use something like a Zacuto or Hoodman loupe. With an EVF your view of the image is sheltered from the ambient light and different light color temperatures giving you a much more accurate rendition of how the scene will look on your monitor back in the studio.

I've been using the Nex system since mid Summer and I have two real complaints, one which is solved by spending more money and the other time will be solved by time and the building success of the system. The first is the meager number of exposures you get per charged battery.  With batteries that have been charged three or four times I'm getting around 500-600 exposures. I'd like to get more because I'm a pretty promiscuous shooter. That problem is solvable by buying more batteries. I have six between my two Nex cameras and that more than enough for a comfortable weekend of shooting or a long commercial job.

I take off Sony points for making 6 owners charge their batteries in camera with one of those silly-ass USB chargers. But my work around was to buy two aftermarket batteries, complete with their own charger so now I can charge two batteries at a and still be able to shoot. Yes, the batteries seem to all perform exactly the same.  

The second problem really is a paucity of fun lenses with which to shoot. But those seem to be dribbling and drabbling onto the market at a quickening pace. The new wide angle Sony zoom is a great addition which I'm sure I'll buy at some point but what I really want are more fast, long lenses. I'd love to see a 70mm 1.8 and maybe a 90mm f2.0.  In the meantime I am very happy with the 50mm 1.8 OSS and I am happy with my brief experiences with the Sigma lenses.  Additionally, I've had mixed success with Olympus manual Pen FT lenses and Fotodiox lens adapters. All the longer lenses work well at wide open to middling apertures but the shorter lenses (20 and 25 mm) seem to have magenta patches that start around f8 and get worse and worse as I stop down. It probably has to do with the angle at which the light strikes the sensor lenses. I don't really know.

My recommendation to anyone buy one of the Sony Nex cameras is to pick up the primes.  Pick up the primes. I don't have first hand experience with the 16mm, but that's mostly because I've heard so many complaints about it. I can vouch for the two Sigmas, the 19 and the 30mm and I've heard great things about the Zeiss 24mm.  Again, if the system proves to be a marketing success I'm sure that the third party lenses will begin to arrive, en mass, in a short amount of time.

In the meantime I'm also having good success with the Nex 7 and regular series Alpha DSLT lenses, via a Sony adapter.  I use the 35mm DT, the 50mm DT, the 85mm 2.8 and even the longer zooms on the Nex 7 (and soon on the Nex 6) without any fringing or discoloration. I like using the LAEA-1 adapter since it adds no mirror or glass between the camera and the lens but I do find that particular adapter might as well give up the pretention of providing AF because it's slower than third world mail and hunts more than Cajuns. I take advantage of Sony's well implemented focus peaking and focus all of the adapted lenses manually. It works very, very well. In cases where I'm making important shots I use the focusing magnifier to fine focus at much greater magnifications and this makes the process dead accurate. 

Using auto-ISO in Aperture preferred priority the 6 does a good job of matching up ISO with shutter speeds that I can handhold with great sharpness and I like that. On the Nex 6 the auto-ISO goes all the way up to ISO 3200 and even there the camera makes really good files. What good is capping the ISO at a lower ISO if unsharpness from handholding the camera ruins the image anyway?

 The image above and the three images just below were shot at the W Hotel this afternoon. Most of the images are from the conference and event spaces on the second floor and are in low light. The camera was set to f4 and, via auto ISO, set shutter speeds of around 1/60th and ISO of anywhere from 1600 to 3200. All of the images were perfectly exposed by the camera. Pretty cool. I'm not so thrilled with all the white furniture in the space or the really forced modernesque paintings, loaded with lots of sharp angles and diagonals. Seems like a blend of 1999 and high school art class at the Star Fleet academy but I can't blame the W's bad taste on a little Sony camera...

So the real question that seems always implied when people get carried away and start buying these little cameras is--------Why would you buy these when you already have camera bags full of real cameras that can already make amazing images? Why buy a slower, less featured camera?

It's not just fashion. Really. These cameras do some things that we used to value in the days of yore. They are small and light which makes them easy to pack and carry around. A significant value is that they don't look like big professional cameras so no one really pays any more attention to them than they do to a cellphone camera. Advantage? I spent a half hour rummaging around the W Hotel and was never stopped or questioned by the staff. They saw the small camera and just assumed, "tourist/guest." That in itself is extremely valuable. I'm betting I could get into places which would be off limits for "pro cameras" and still be able to make convincing and technically good images.

The cameras a visually and aurally quiet. There's still some shutter noise but it's a fraction of the noise that conventional moving mirror camera make.

But it's mostly because, when used properly, there's no difference in the files between these small, easy to use cameras and their best lenses and the images that come squirting out of the slamming noisy V8 "professional" cameras----just a lot less drama and chaos. 

Absolutely freaking good automatic color balance under an avalanche of mixed lights. And darn nice candy.

The bottom line is that cameras and photography are changing faster than we ever imagined. All the things we thought were prerequisites to good photographs are dissolving in the proof of new technologies. The sensors in the Nex 6 and Nex 7 may be the very best on offer in ANY APS-C camera on the market today. The EVF finder is a powerful tool for both still photographers and (even moreso) for video makers. And I haven't even touched on the glitzy stuff like the built in HDR or Multi-Frame Noise Reduction or the ten frames per second mode, or the 60 fps full HD video modes, and the wonderful color rendering from these cameras.  We'll do that on another blog. 

For now I give the Nex 6 my highest award:  I bought one for myself. Yes, I could run an imaging business with it.  Optimally? Maybe not. Successfully? Better than with the tools we had for ten times the money just five years ago, and we made a lot of people happy with those.

Oh look. Out of coffee. I'm off to see a dress rehearsal. A different kind of scouting.

More to come.

Amazon current has the Sigma 19mm and 30mm lenses for Sony on sale for $149 !!!

When it rains it pours. Two new cameras come into VSL studios.

I think my friends knew that this would be inevitable. I was on the fence about buying the Sony a99 until I spent a few quiet hours handling one and then I knew I had to have it. I've played with a Nikon D800 and I shot a few things with a Canon 5Dmk3 but in my humble opinion the Sony a99 is currently the best all around photographic production tool for most professionals right now. I picked one up today from the folks at Precision Camera and I couldn't be more pleased. I went right into the menus and, after having spent many months with the a77's I doubt I'll have to consult the manual for anything other than how to set up the focusing range stuff.

To Sony's credit they left all the stuff that worked well alone. The menus now seem absolutely logical to me. And just as importantly the batteries are interchangeable between my Sony a99, a77 and a57's. What a nice touch! Instead of having to wait for the battery in the box to charge I could toss a fully charged battery from the Sony drawer into the camera and get started configuring the camera to my preferences.

What led me to water and forced me to drink? With the local economy recovering I've had several large, and venerable clients come back into the fold and now we're booked up in December, right into the holidays. Several of the jobs are multi-day corporate events with lots of available light shooting and even though I am now more comfortable shooting high ISO with both the a77 and the a57 the images I've seen from the a99 are at least two stops cleaner. That, and the fact that Michael Johnston at the Online Photographer upped the blogger ante by plunking down for a Nikon D800 and some jolly lenses and you know that we really must keep up with the Johnstons. (just kidding, really!)

My first real test of the camera will be at Zachary Scott Theater this week when we do the dress rehearsal shoot for White Christmas. It should be a hell of a lot of fun.

I have also done several video projects lately and missed having manual audio level controls and a headphone output on camera. To say I am excited about the a99 is an understatement. Looking through the viewfinder is a big affirmation of my decision to go all EVF all the time.  I cannot see much difference, if any, between a good optical finder and the EVF in this camera.  I'm heading out to shoot some stuff just for fun in a few minutes so I guess this is the first in a series of rolling reviews on what is now my new flagship production camera. Thank you, Ian, for putting one aside for me.  You know me too well.

But wait, there's more.

I also picked up a Sony Nex 6 to add to my Nex 7's.  Why? I like the new interface and I like being able to choose a less dense, less noisy sensor for certain kinds of shooting and it seemed like the right thing to do while I was already in the middle of hemorrhaging money. I just happened to have an extra battery and memory card in my pocket so I had the camera strapped, lensed and fully operational before I even stepped out the door from the store. It's going to be a busy week breaking in cameras and taking test shots but I guess that's part of what I signed on for.  So far the Nex 6 is working well with images snapping in to focus and the finder showing sharp and snappy images.

I have the 19 mm Sigma on the Nex 6 and the 30mm Sigma on the Nex 7 and we'll be testing all of the permutations of those combinations in the very near future as well. So, two new Sony cameras in two days along with two lenses in two days. I guess I am officially getting over my Post Recession Trauma Disorder and getting on with my life as a photographer.   Off to shoot and look.

We'll know more soon. 

A repeat: One of my favorite "technical" blogs of 2012...

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/05/interesting-job-with-mixed-light.html

Celebrity Baby Photo.

Mamiya 6 camera. 75mm lens.

An interesting lens. Not sexy, just useful and apparently very sharp.

The Sigma 30mm f2.8 for the Sony Nex.

For quite a while the web-o-sphere has been shaping our desires when it comes to the gear we lust after. The Shelby Cobras of the lens world are the fast glass crowd. If you are looking for an 85mm portrait lens chances are you're lusting for an f1.4 or even an f1.2, even though you know that the f1.8 or the f2.8 will all function very well at the aperture of f4 you'll need to keep someone's face in sharp focus....  In the 50mm's we've been locked in a love hate relationship with the ultra fast fifties since, well....the 50's.

Even in micro four thirds and the Nex family the underlying rythme of the drums is a hope for more and more fast glass to come to market. So in the midst of all this Sigma goes all counterintuitive? What the heck are they thinking?

They've introduced two optics that are very interesting by dint of not being obviously interesting at all. They are a 19mm and a 30mm set of prime focal lengths with the plebeian maximum aperture of.....2.8.  But before you dismiss them out of hand I have two cogent things to say that may push you to consider adding one or both to your selection/collection of optics for your mirrorless camera. 1.  According to all accounts and every review site I've stumbled across in my Quixotic research, these lenses are both very sharp wide open and maintain that sharpness as they are stopped down.  And, 2. They are tiny and dirt cheap. (That's actually three points altogether).

Each lens is available for around $199. They are plain matte black (think very discrete) and don't come with image stabilization. No big deal for Olympus shooters who have world class IS built in to their cameras but a possible non-starter for our shakier brethren shooting Sony Nex.  What they do have is new configurations complete with aspheric elements and small, sharp elements.

Here's what Erwin Puts, the world's leading expert on Leica optics (with the exception of Leica engineers, of course) about slower lenses: (to paraphrase) Every time you increase the diameter of a lens element (essential in the design of fast glass) you increase the complexity of grinding and finishing that glass by a factor of 8X. It is far, far easier to design a high performance (meaning great image quality) lens with a slower (smaller) aperture than to make one with a large aperture.

And this is why most fast 50mm lenses, for example, are soft and of low contrast when used wide open, with atrocious corner performance, and only get better when stopped down a couple of stops. It is also why fast lenses that can  be used at their maximum f-stops cost thousands of dollars.  

I am putting down my keyboard in about 60 seconds to walk out the door, get in my car and drive over to Precision Camera to pick up a 30mm Sigma for the Nex that they have on hold for me. I haven't decided if I will also pick up the 19 mm but I sure am considering it. I'll have my first report on your desk in the morning.  Bye.

Making Movies. What's more important than the gear?

My recommendation for a great book on making films, videos and for better visual story telling.

As a commercial photographer I see people rush to embrace video all the time. They figure that all their cameras come equipped with HD video and stereo sound so how hard can it be. If you trawl the web for information you'll find lots and lots and lots of technical information about the gear, how to use the gear, where to buy the gear and how to measure the gear but you'll find very, very little about how to make a visually compelling video that tells a story without losing the audience.

If you need to read about which camera to choose or how to make a slider work you can go to Phillip Bloom's site or peek in at Vincent Laforet's blog. They'll tell you about bit depth and codexes and focus following rings made out of titanium and unicorn horn. And don't get them started on fluid head tripods or you'll be there all day.

But, just as in still photography, the technical stuff is just the top layer. The congealed fat on the top of the påte in the mould. You need to dig down under the top layer to really make a useful and watchable project because so much of film making is about how to shoot scenes for continuity of action, so that the time line makes sense, so that they are believable.

I'm always looking for books that teach me how to see rather than how to capture and it's no different in making movies and videos. I ordered this book, Cinematography: Theory and Practice, by Blain Brown, about six months ago and I've just recently had time to sit down and start thoroughly digesting the information.

Brown discusses lighting but only in as much as how it affects mood and action. His real job in this book is to teach you why a film makes sense to viewers and how you can maximize good story telling practice to make better projects. At nearly 400 pages and an accompanying DVD it dives into good detail.

Chapters include: Writing with motion.  Shooting methods. Visual language. Language of the lens.  Visual storytelling.  Cinematic Continuity, Lighting basics. HD Cinematography. Camera Movement. Image Control and much, much more. It is complete with good illustrations and has zero body fat = no fluff.

If you've plowed through workshops and DVD's and endless blogs and you now know which camera has the lowest signal to noise ratio at ISO650 and which slider has the lowest coefficient of friction and how a jib arm works but you understanding of visual storytelling hasn't improved one lick then this is a great book for you (and for me).  It's dense, informative, well written and a tier above all the meaningless crap that the technogeeks love to spew.

You will learn more than you thought possible if you read this thing cover to cover. And it will improve your videos and your still photography. I can almost guarantee it.

It's a different way to come at learning more about imaging. And it may just resonate with your brain in a different and better way than the prototypical stuff from yet another stills only photographer.  I'm re-reading it as soon as I finish it. It's really that good.

I took the day off and wandered around with this lens to see how it would work with my Sony Nex 7.

Being able to use legacy lenses is a wonderful reason to own one of the mirrorless cameras. Any one of the mirrorless cameras.  But don't do a search for lens company called, "Legacy." That's just what everyone calls older lenses that, against all logic, can be made to fit on new cameras. 

Mirrorless cameras.  

Right of the bat I've got to tell you that I love the Sony Nex 7 and the files it produces. But I'm tired of continually buying lenses for this camera and that so I decided to try the self-reliant, after all civilization collapses approach to putting lenses on the front of the camera. I reached into the Olympus Pen FT drawer and pulled out some of my favorites. They came to my camera pre-bought. That's the nice thing about leaving old stuff in the drawers long enough: sometimes it becomes new stuff all over again.

I thought about this lens when I looked at the price for the Zeiss 24mm lens that's made for the Nex cameras. Now, I've sure that the Zeiss optic is stunning to use and rests in the hand in such a perfect way that once you pick it up you'll never want to put it down. But it's also not a focal length ( about 37mm on a FF) that I rush to pick up when I make photographs. A great 50mm eq. gets my attention every time but 35-37 is really nothing special or particularly inviting for me and the thought of spending $1000 on a lens I'll use sparingly was too much.

The 25mm Olympus G. Zuiko Auto-W f2.8 is a lens I picked up in 1985 for $65. It's absolutely solid and the focusing ring is as smooth as the day it came into the studio. The glass is clean and the aperture ring still turns and click stops with authority. I didn't use this lens much on my original Pen cameras because I was more captivated by the fast 40, 42 and 60mm lenses. I had no idea how it would work on a very modern digital camera with a very high resolution sensor but with nothing to lose but time and shoe leather I was game.

I packed a very small bag with the 60mm 1.5 and an extra battery for the Nex 7. I stuck in my iPhone and a couple bucks as well as my car key and parked the car in front of Barton Springs Pool. The whole park was empty today. Thursdays the pool is closed for cleaning and the rest of the park is being decorated for the annual Trail of Lights.  I set the camera to manual exposure, big jpegs, fine, landscape creative setting, etc.

I've shared with you all recently that I am not particularly gifted with the use of wide angle and even moderately wide angle lenses but someone left a shred of advice in one of the comments. That was to use the near/far relationships for drama and depth. So that's where I started. The image above is the spill way at the end of the Barton Springs Pool. Those are the lunar rocks in the foreground. Well, not really lunar rocks but if you lit them just right and waited until it was dark outside and....

The lens is lower in contrast than current lens designs so I added some contrast and a little saturation in post. Good lesson. More contrast. Easy to do.

I use the Sony Nex 7 in the bottom of a leather never ready case as it adds some more grip-able surface to the camera and protects at least part of the camera from my episodes of not paying attention and then walking into doors or repeatedly dropping the camera down concrete stairs.  (Is that covered under warranty?). I was looking for purple fringe around the leaves in the image above but I was disappointed. No fringe. No purple.

This is what I'm talking about when I think about wide angle chaos. I like the brightly color trees but look at all that crap in the foreground. Never happens to me with a 50mm or longer lens... (Is that an Olympus blue sky or a Sony blue sky?).

So, I'm walking along the south shore of Lady Bird Lake (yes, really. They re-named it after Mrs. Johnson) and I'm about to pass under the Lamar bridge and I actually thought,  "Someone is going to take me to task for shooting nothing but distant shots and they'll complain that it's hard to see if the lens is sharp, or whatever. I should find something I can shoot at the near focusing limit of the lens." And just then I notice that someone has systematically stacked dozens and dozens of flat river rocks on top of each other in little pyramids. Almost like a wild, impromtu Zen garden. (What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything."  Bazinga.)

So I crouched down and put my elbows on a little wall of rocks and carefully focused using the focusing magnification and I put the focus on the stack of rocks on the left hand side of the frame.  Thought perhaps we could do a bokeh test at the same time.  To make everything more obvious I included a close up section of the foreground rock construction in the frame below. It is a crop from the image above.

In my seat of the pants analysis the lens is adequately sharp. Wonderfully sharp compared to some I have used... If you click on the image above it will open bigger in it's own window but the brilliantly programmed Blogger software will probably throw you back to the beginning of the article when you dismiss the window. (21st century? Right...)

Gotcha's? You bet. This lens wasn't designed to work with sensors. Film works differently. For the most part everything is hunky dory but I found out the hard way that once you stop down past f8 you will start to get a magenta color shift around the edge of the frame. Go to f16 and it's absolutely pronounced. About 26 points of magenta.  Very apparent in the sky areas. The image above was shot at f16 and it was gruesome. I tried to neutralize it with the adjustment brush in Lightroom but was stymied by sheer laziness. That's why there's still some magenta in the top left and on the far right of the frame. Oh, I meant to leave it in there to illustrate the copy.....That's the ticket.

I stumbled around the downtown area for a while being drawn in by clementines and appalled by all the relentless building. Everywhere you turn in Austin companies are digging GIANT pits that will become parking structures which will sit at the bottom of high rise resident towers.  It's like we're playing trust funder musical chairs. They're moving here in droves because of our city's reputation as one of the coolest places to live on the planet. And here I do have to take some blame for being a living example.....(meant as a joke. Notation for the humor challenged.)... of my city's coolness...But at some point it will be like bacteria on a petri dish and they'll realize that by sheer numbers they've sucked all the coolness out of the city and everyone will start moving somewhere else. I'm already looking.  Desert? Patagonia? San Angelo?

But the clementines were attractive and useful and if you hit the image above and blow it up a bit you'll see lots of good detail and great color.

This image is my bold attempt to be a landscape guy. I like the image but I think the sky is blah. I guess I could drag the image into Portrait Professional and see if I could enhance it with some pouty lips and bold irises.

Somewhere along the course of the walk I lost a couple of dollars to a coffee shop and eighty nine cents to Whole Foods for a vegan chocolate donut. It tasted pretty good and it gives you a small dose of inner smugness knowing that most of the people around you didn't have a vegan chocolate donut.  Sorry dudes.  But eventually all walks lead back to my pool and I made it over to the Western Hills Athletic Club early enough to take calming photos of the water and lane lines.  Don't the black lines on the bottom of the pool remind you of the declining curves in the DXO tests charts for signal-to-noise over increasing ISO? That means we've been reading too many camera reviews.

At ten minutes of noon I put up the camera and got my bag of swim goodies out of the car. Hand paddles, a gaggle of Speedo Endurance Jammers, my own special goggles with the green straps and my training fins----which failed utterly today.  It was seventy degrees and sunny when I hit the pool. The water was clean and clear. We had a good group at practice today. 

I goofed around too much and got the stink eye from the coach. But that's what happens when you skip out on work and take the day off. Youthful exuberance.  I spent the rest of the day laying on the floor of the studio alternately napping and re-reading the Hobbit with my dog. I'd read her the exciting passages and she'd just look at me and shake her head. Every once and a while I'd give her a dog treat, just to keep her interested.  Like trying a new lens.  It works.

When in doubt about the artistic integrity of one of your images just 

dunk it into Snapseed and pound it with the grunge filter. Then everyone 

will know it's art.

Funniest thing I saw on the web today: My first book, Minimalist Lighting, which usually sells at Amazon at a discount (like all the other books on Amazon.com) was on NOT SALE today for its actual printed list price of $34.95.  I have no clue.

If you're feeling perky go do some shopping on Amazon and use one of the links below to get there. Your purchase of ANYTHING on Amazon will support my blog and it won't cost you a pfennig. Such a deal. Buy a car...please.

The right lens for the job.

This is a portrait of my friend, Jennifer.  We were kidding around in the studio and she ducked into her ski clothes. I thought it was a fun look for an August day in central Texas so I asked her to step in front of a big chocolaty brown and beige canvas backdrop that we used to keep set up at the very back of the old studio on San Marcos St. and I snapped away with my favorite camera and my favorite tight portrait lens.

The camera was a Hasselblad. You can tell by the two little indentions on the left side of the frame in the black surround. Each back has notches on the left side so you can quickly tell which back your film from. Helped if one of your backs developed a light leak...

The lens was/is one of my all time favorites, the Carl Zeiss 180mm f4 for Hasselblad. It's wickedly sharp and has no weaknesses I know of. The 150mm Sonnars flared if you had direct light hitting the front element. The 180 also focused tight enough to get an uncropped headshot like the one above.  

If you do the mumbo-jumbo math of equivalence then this lens is the same angle of view as a 90 on a full frame 35mm camera and a 60mm on an APS-C camera. I tend to linger around this focal length for most of my work but with the APS-C I've settled into two different portrait lenses.

One my Alpha cameras (Sony a77 and a57) I like using the 70mm Sigma Macro 2.8. It's one of the sharpest lenses I've found for the cropped frame camera and the more I use it the more I love it. I'd use it on my Nex-7 if the size discrepancy wasn't so enormous....

On the Nex-7 I turn to the wonderful and elegant 60mm 1.5 Pen FT lens which covers the format with no corner darkening and, stopped down one or two stops, is sharp in a kind way. Three stops down and it becomes a dermatological pore discovery tool. Too sharp to keep friends posing on a regular basis. 

I'd like to think I'm the master of all focal lengths but to be honest really wide angles just baffle me. I don't get it. Who would want to include so much stuff in a shot? Really.  And the long stuff is fun to play with but in the end, monotonous. I'm right at home from the normal 50mm focal length to just about 135mm (all focal lengths based on 35mm FF). Go outside this range and I'm outside my comfort zone.  Interesting to think that one's choice of subject and then focal length are so important in setting a personal style. But there it is...