Auto-Chinon 135mm F2.8 for K-mount, handheld in front of my A700.
It seems to have a good old-school look, which clears up very well. It produced very contrasty, saturated pictures on my Pentax P30t. Pity I’m selling both (hit me an email at my About Me! page.)
And here’s the huge Sony Carl Zeiss ZA Sonnar T* 135mm F1.8 in Alpha mount versus a little Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm F2.8 in M42 mount.
Here’s the beercan-sized, beercan-weighted Sigma 50-150mm F2.8 EX DC II HSM! For APS-C fans, this is a great lens.
Speaking of the great Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan, here’s a 100% crop from the A700. This is the center window of the Petronas Twin Towers Skybridge!
And here is its replacement, the Minolta 70-210mm F3.5-4.5 RS, with a focus hold button and a collapsible design. That means it is much shorter than the beercan at 70mm.
Here is the Minolta 75-300mm F4.5-5.6 “big beercan” (extending zoom) with the Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan (internal zoom). The big beercan adds a focus limiter switch which is great considering it focuses really slowly, even on the A700, while the beercan zips away.
At least it lives up to the name, at 300mm F5.6, with beercan-esque painterly bokeh.
Now for something else – a wide-angle converter put on reverse!
That’s right, the cheapo Octagon 0.45x wide-angle converter.
Now for something rare – the Sigma 28-70mm F2.8 Zen.
Sharp wide open!
Then there’s the Olympus Zuiko Digital 40-150mm F4-5.6 which is identical in size to its brother the Olympus Zuiko Digital 14-42mm F3.5-5.6.
Which, of course, is still much taller than the Olympus E-420 with the super compact Olympus Zuiko Digital 25mm F2.8 pancake lens.
And here’s one shot with the pancake! At F2.8 and on a 2x crop sensor the separation is quite mild. Quite like a 50mm at F5.6 on full-frame.
The Minolta 28mm F2.8 has a nice minimum focusing distance.
The Minolta 35mm F1.4 Original is sharp and yet dreamy wide open.
I feel like picking up Anthony Kiedis’ book, Scar Tissue. I saw it in Borders, picked it up, and read until my legs went numb. While standing. This man was a poet and he had the methods!
I feel like making some real gritty art.
I saw Marilyn Manson on a Channel V special, and Googled if he was married. Indeed he was, to burlesque superstar Dita Von Teese. And they’d break door hinges in loud hotel romps.
Apparently, she never failed to turn him on. And yet, he had an affair with Evan Rachel Wood. He also says she wasn’t supportive of his lifestyle (I suppose, the drugs.) He was a painter. He directed a movie. His artwork was bought by quite a few, including Anthony’s bassist, Flea. Watch any other rock band these days and you see some pu–y video where they are standing around in a studio (or hangar). I believe all of Nickelback’s videos are shot in such fashion.
At the same time, I tell myself that I have no time to make art. Making art needs a setup. You can’t just Photoshop your way to everything.
Speaking of Flea, I’d been enqueuing Red Hot Chili Peppers – Show Me Your Soul into my Winamp playlist every now and then.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are my inspiration in more ways than one. See how Flea bobs his head? That’s how I bob my head when I’m playing air-bass to some bass-popping song. Heck, that’s how a lot of bassists bob their heads. There’s also that thing Anthony does with his hand (poking the air, but you know what it is… right?)
And yes, the song has got the cure to fever, it’s got a lot of cowbell!
Oh and Flea also appears in James Brown – Sex Machine. Flea’s distinctive head bob appears in 1:51-2:03. And there’s “take it to the bridge” which isn’t a Timbaland line. The Godfather Of Soul said it first!
Do me a favor; if you know me personally, watch the video. If you think I’m just a metalhead, really, no, I thrive on funk.
I was having breakfast at the cafeteria near my office and they play an enjoyable dose of rock kapak. I heard a honky blaring guitar tone. I remembered this most recently when I heard Jack White’s collaboration with Alicia Keys on the James Bond soundtrack. I remember making this awesome, raw, elephant-like sound once many years ago, with my Creative SB Live! EAX sound effects and my (sister’s) Yamaha F-210 guitar, with a cheap microphone sitting in the soundhole.
My soundcard since died, I think. The recordings sit in my hard disk. The only physical pedal I have, a Jimi Hendrix wah pedal, is with my cousin who would send me the occasional recording he made. And he would always astound me as he’d always explore new sounds. Last one I heard had better sounding drum machines than the last. Maybe it’s the former Malaysian music reviewer in me talking but we tend to compare everything to an international artiste (as reference, and so we sound cool) so I’d say I’d like to believe that he is sounding more like Depeche Mode and Daft Punk. Simply because I enjoy them so much, and few people make music as progressively cool as they do.
I’d meet him about 3 times a year during family gatherings. I used to meet him on MSN but I don’t go on MSN anymore. It’s just very counter-productive; I feel like I cannot get anything done when Alt-Tabbing between chat windows and Photoshop or anything.
If fate led me to rocking out properly (like passing that exam and buying that yummy butterscotch-flavored Ibanez) I might’ve been a rock star.
When I hear music so unique, it makes me wish more people tried to copy these bands. Sly And The Family Stone. Prince. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Faith No More. Daft Punk. That’s why when I hear somebody who sounds remotely like that, I’m like hey check these dudes out.
Who is the most copied band of all time? Nirvana (and their Seattle scene.) Great, pick the least technically adept of all bands to adapt. Maybe we could also call Green Day a template to be reused.
I watched every video on “Tales Of Mere Existence”. Each video hit me. I know this, I thought. I could do this, I thought.
I remember that I could draw. I still doodle during meetings. My colleagues can see various robot warriors if they were sitting on my side of the table.
Most recently, my simple drawing of a clamp adaptor got itself a slot on Flickr: How to draw a diagram.
I always wondered why people could not draw simple things like cylinders and cubes correctly, with the right perspective. I don’t expect people to solve the Rubik’s Cube, but drawing it properly would do it justice.
I feel like doing some good classic DIY. The last proper thing I did was a tilt-shift, but the one I’m most proud of is my infrared Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens camera. You can’t call it a SLR because there’s no mirror. Screw Micro Four Thirds, I was there first! With a Fujifilm somemore!
To this day, when I walk into YL Camera, those that have seen the infrared camera tell the others how ingenious I am. I miss that feeling, of being ingenious. It’s one thing to walk into a camera shop toting the latest Sony Alpha 900 and HVL-F58AM rotating flash, and another thing toting a tiny camera that does infrared and has a superb telephoto range.
And there are those I’d like to share this sense of pride with but they won’t come with me into that shop and hear them speak praises of me. There, in those camera shops, I am a rock star.
I don’t have a yearning to be the best. I just have a yearning to be unique, to make something nobody else has thought of. I’m sorry, I do not think that getting a 100% is an accomplishment. All it means is that you can adhere to a standard with no mistakes. A standard somebody else has made, some examiner.
When I ask my children if they have done something useful in their life, I mean to ask if they’ve invented or conjured something that nobody has thought of. I’d be more proud if my son was a conman who came up with a clever, never-heard-of modus operandi, than if he was an honest stockbroker who played it safe.
So I took the Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye with a 1.5x teleconverter on my Sony Alpha 700 around town, shooting at F8 and manual focus at 1 meter, with the camera hanging down at arm’s length. The teleconverter and APS-C crop factor gives it a similiar look to the 16mm F2.8 diagonal fisheye on full-frame.
EXIF included again, for my second round with the A900!
Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 at 24mm F3.5. I love the light falloff that comes naturally from using non-telecentric lenses on the A900! It only appears sometimes and I don’t know how to replicate it.
Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 at 105mm F4.5.
This is a 100% crop. I didn’t even know that there was a URL!
Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 at 105mm F6.3 ISO200. 100% crop, with some Hue Saturation Lightness to reduce the chromatic aberration.
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8. 100% crop! Ahmike shot this.
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8. That’s the Zeiss color right there in the flamin’ red mountain.
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8. More of that fountain!
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8. Focusing accuracy is amazing with the A900 at all distances!
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8.
100% crop. Spot on! Some NR applied.
Minolta 50mm F1.4 at F1.4. Not sure if Ahmike or KJ took this picture. Slightly out-of-focus (operator error.) Szetoo and I and a frame.
IZ A900?
Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 EX DG Macro at 24mm F2.8 minimum focus distance. Very typical Sigma bokeh.
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8.
Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at 135mm F1.8, ISO2000. Noise can be greatly reduced by setting Contrast -3, Saturation -3, Sharpness +3, Lightness -2, Zone -1. It gives a subtle look which contrasty lenses can counter with saturated color.
A 100% crop of the previous picture. The other eye is in focus, not this one, but I show you this crop as it shows more shadow. Without resorting to RAW, this is how clean I could get it with High ISO NR set to Normal.
And now, for my first proper shots from the Sony Alpha 900! All EXIF data is included.
Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan at 210mm F8. I always shoot plants with Daylight WB to give the green its color. DRO Level 3 helped, too.
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 17mm F2.8. Note how shallow the depth of field is… even my watch is out-of-focus. I love the natural light fall-off at the edges, and I waited for the sunlight to hit my hands to pull extra attention to it.
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 17mm F16. This is with DRO Level 3. Hmm wait what’s that on the second floor?
Right, it’s a person.
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 17mm F2.8. This is with DRO Level 5. Did I mention that I love the light fall-off?
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 17mm F2.8. This is with DRO Level 5.
Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan at 210mm F4. This is a 50% crop! Despite the A900 having only a 10.58 megapixel APS-C crop mode, it is actually advantageous when tracking – the AF assist sensors spread around do a much better job than the center double-cross AF sensor of the A700 (which packed 12.2 megapixels in APS-C) or the A350 (which packed 14.2 megapixels in APS-C). Also, the AF sensors of the A900 are only in the APS-C area, so you know if your subject is off the frame. Being able to see outside your APS-C area, when APS-C capture mode is selected, is very useful for fast-flying birds.
Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan at 210mm F4. This is a 100% crop.
Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan at 210mm F4. This is in APS-C capture mode.
Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan at 130mm F4. This is in APS-C capture mode, regrettably; if I had quickly switched back to full-frame capture mode, I could zoom in at 210mm and get a shallower depth of field. But I still like this picture, the car was glowing and begging me to take its picture! DRO Level 3 boosted the background.
On the LRT, I tweaked my Creative Style: Vivid to -3 Contrast, -3 Saturation, +3 Sharpness, -2 Brightness and -1 Zone. This gave a muted look to the pictures that will follow (but they also decrease noise dramatically.)
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 35mm F4. My friend asked if I was afraid to whip out my camera – I said no, knowing the location and the conditions. In this case I wasn’t brandishing a battery grip (though I wish my Minolta 50mm F1.4 was on, for ultimate stealth.)
Oh, and what’s he going to do, get up? That would’ve made a more interesting picture…
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 17mm F3.2, cropped. Later at Tarita Low Yat, a photographer (who has a food book coming up with pictures from his A350!) checks out the A900 + F58 + battery package. I gave him a few pointers but I had to go so I didn’t see the deal through. 🙁
Yes, that’s the kit lens on it. Told him how to bypass auto-APS-C mode, too!
Minolta 50mm F1.4 at 50mm F1.4, ISO1600, WB set at 3200K M4. Gotta love how F1.4 throws everything else into defocus. That’s a wonderful camera by the way, the Canon Ixus 870 IS… 28mm wide and pretty darn good macro! Of course, the Panasonic LX-3 was all sold out…
Minolta 50mm F1.4 at 50mm F1.4, ISO1600, WB set at 3200K M4. This alone granted the setting memory slot #2!
This is what I’ve been looking for all this while – INSPIRATION! And the A900 renewed it. If the solid rubber grip, 100% bright viewfinder and pump-action shotgun mirror slap don’t inspire you to shoot some magical pictures, I don’t know what will.
And then, there was the Minolta 16mm F2.6 diagonal fisheye, which finally looks like a fisheye when on the A900!
I stuck my hand in for this.
Free tea and coffee.
I like the built-in B12 filter of the Minolta 16mm F2.8 diagonal fisheye (which is also there on the Sony). It is used for film bodies, where daylight film is loaded but you are shooting in tungsten lighting. This would thus correct the color!
Likewise, the orange filter allows tungsten film to be used in daylight. Then there’s the red filter, great for increasing contrast in black-and-white shots.
Then, there was the Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 DC Macro, at 17mm F2.8 at minimum focusing distance.
What I found amazing was the minimum focus distance of 20cm, which actually resulted in a working distance much, much closer than any other lens I’ve ever used!
The smaller LCS-SC5 and the bigger LCS-SC20 on display (which I’d never seen before.)
A special edition Sony 28mm F2.8 (the focus ring had come off!)
The unreleased but well-acclaimed Sony Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 16-35mm F2.8 ZA SSM (what a mouthful, and I’m never sure of the sequence). This lens is the Canon killer – most Canon wide-angle lenses are poor performers, while Zeiss does well in that department. Behind is the Sony 70-400mm F4-5.6 G SSM, another possibly amazing optic. Normal tele zooms that reach 400mm are rather poor but this should be sharp wide open.
The unknown wooden “super tele-photo fixed” lens makes an appearance here! Looks like a possible Sony 600mm F4 G SSM indeed.
This is the “tele-photo fixed” lens. Some hope that this mock will be a Sony 200mm F4 G SSM Macro. We’ll see!
There are two captions – one is “large aperture, wide angle fixed” and the other “wide angle fixed”. The left one looks too identical to the 16-35mm so we’ll leave that out (and it has TWO rings, meaning the sign might be wrong.)
So that leaves this to be what some hope to be a 35mm F1.8 or a 24mm F1.4. I do hope it’s the 24mm though. 😀
Price cuts on the retail prices! This is the fourth and last slide showing the price cuts.
Now nobody can say that the Sony retail prices are more expensive in Malaysia (when in fact, they are close to Canon retail prices.)
Interestingly though, the Sony 70-200mm F2.8G SSM was RM8599 retail at one point.
Sony 50mm F2.8 Macro and my watch.
This is what happens when you get exposed to too many great lenses – you get poisoned. This, with the Tokina AT-X 400mm F5.6!
A display unit of the Sony 300mm F2.8G SSM. There’s a slight dent, which explains why there is no hood on this one.
The rare as heck Minolta 100mm F2.8 Soft Focus lens.
This is what it makes, softness from 0 to 3 that you can dial in.
Of course, nothing beats the Minolta/Sony 135mm F2.8/T4.5 Smooth Transition Focus lens. Whatever in focus is sharp as heck, while anything out of focus is reduced to creamy blobs. This is different from the Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8, which makes out-of-focus points become uniformly-lit circular discs.
Anyone who mistakes a Smooth Transition Focus for a Soft Focus should be beaten with one of those wooden mock lenses.
Closing time! A big roll case and cameras stacked like so. Ouch!
I’ve been bitten by the pyramid scheme of the glorious 100% coverage 0.73x magnification viewfinder of the Sony Alpha 900.
It’s the brightest viewfinder I’ve seen among the “affordable” full-frame dSLRs available (even looking through a Canon 5D MkII, I felt like I was looking through a polarizer.) The A900’s viewfinder is so big, you feel like you could live inside it. But not just that – it’s also very bright! I guess I’ll skip the optional Type-M precision focus screen to have the joy of a viewfinder that doesn’t look like it’s there at all.
oooH, a top LCD panel to hush the whiners who never understood why the Minolta Dynax 7 had the LCD at the back and at such a font size.
Coincidentally, most settings always showed inside the viewfinder, which is what I loved about the A700. I can tweak Drive mode and it would show inside the viewfinder!
A beefier grip with a curve fits my hand perfectly.
I will whine about the missing Eye-Start Continuous AF (I used it to activate AF-C because I usually use Direct Manual Focus). This was half due to users not wanting the feature (or using it) and due to EU regulations that ban nickel (which some people are supposedly allergic to.) The grip sensor found on the A700 was made of nickel, and EU models shipped without the grip sensor!
Devoid of stickers except at the bottom. NOM!
Mirror slap is felt when the mirror goes back down. I like it, it’s like a pump-action shotgun!
So what was the first shot I took of it? My faithful Sony Alpha 700, that’s what. Okay perhaps a more glamorous shot should’ve been done.
It’s taking a break for a long-needed servicing and maintenance. So no pixel-peeping comparison shots!
Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT versus Boon’s Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5.
Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 at 24mm F3.5. Yes light fall-off I know, but it looks… nice!
Minolta 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 at 105mm F4.5.
So what do 24.6 megapixels mean? It means that a 100% crop is that big!
Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX at 17mm F7.1.
100% crop! Madness. Try to spot what I was zooming in on, on the picture above!
Yes, it would seem rather noisy at ISO800. But make it a 66% crop and you get the same noise levels as the A700. I should’ve been able to get more sharpness at say F16 as diffraction doesn’t kick in so soon for bigger sensors. If my ol’ Sigma was up to it, that is.
The A900 definitely outresolves my eyes. However, much care must be taken to focusing due to the shallow depth of field caused by being closer to the subject when using a full-frame SLR.
Minolta 50mm F1.4 at F1.4. The A900 seems to pull much better glow and potential from this lens. I know I was inspired indeed! (Though not him, he was tired of waiting for his turn to touch it.)
So I had to sell some stuff which I don’t use much anyway (and will continue to offload.) Thanks to Anas, Ken, Jeffry, Yeong, Wong, Alexes, Malek, George and of course Alex (I owe you big time man!)
And now, we rewind to the Sony Alpha Convention 2008, a 3-day event at Meridien KL, KL Sentral. Wow I finally have Chinese squinty eyes in this one!
My lightsaber of daylight-to-tungsten gel.
There were various talks – this is a capture off Grant Corban’s excellent wedding photography talk.
Everybody took screenshots. 🙂
Some talks had the bad timing of being right after a hearty lunch.
Lunch, you say? Milk chocolate fondue, that was a first for me!
You could also be snapping babes with the Harleys parked in the hall.
Uhuh.
Macdude‘s talk even had a hands-on with studio lighting!
While I never got possession of the radio trigger, I used my F58 flash to trigger KJ’s F42 flash wirelessly.
(Cut to an A900 with the Minolta 16mm F2.8 diagonal fisheye.) Oh, and then there was a talk by George, the Product Manager of the Sony Alpha brand in Malaysia, for those walk-ins (400 seats were for Alpha customers only.) What I felt was really cool was that he was, at that time, explaining something technical I care a lot about – White Balance, in Kelvins. Ironic that it all started when he asked me to turn off AWB…
…and let’s crop this 24.6 megapixel file.
Ted-is-my-friend and some girl who wants to be his friend. With Ted’s A900 + 50mm F1.4.
On the last day, prizes were given out – the A700 + Sony 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DT went to Azrin for a blog contest.
Then there was the participation contest – ask a good question during the talks, and get a sticker. This uncle got the most stickers! There was a certain look on his face when he saw the crowd of green eyes. I think it was fear. After all, he just won an A900.
That, and you never know the exact point when they will jump.
So maybe you test the waters…
…or you divert to other cutesy things.
Oh and fragrant cockroaches (not that I’ve smelt… and that’s not my hand.)
Pinky!
“Just a bit more!”
So then we had an idea. What if we used the strobe function of my HVL-F56AM?
17mm F7.1 ISO200 at 1/10th of a second. It was probably 10 times at 100 Hertz at 1/32th power.
This was the first lucky shot, and it was also the last – every other time we tried, we’d fire the shutter and capture the sugar glider already landed. Either that, or we fired too early. It wouldn’t reliably jump, either.
I’d loved to have used a longer shutter speed to allow more time to catch the sugar glider… but longer shutter speeds would burn out the background, which was full of ambient light. Thus the only place this can happen is in a dark, dark studio…
