Somebody’s very happy today. Why?

That’s the first shot from his Sony Alpha 700. Shot with the Minolta 50mm F1.4 in camwhore arm’s length.

Launched in Malaysia on the 2nd of October 2007, with a recommended retail price of RM5499, body only, or RM6999 with Sony 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DT lens. Of course, shops in Sungei Wang will offer much, much cheaper prices.

Everything about it has been refined. The mode dial is easier to turn, and the buttons have the right amount of travel. You cannot help but feel the difference. The grip is better and leaves no leftover pinkies.

Autofocus is improved immensely; upon half-pressing it got to work immediately, unlike the A100 which sometimes went “oh, you want to focus?” with long dark zoom lenses.

It also works a lot better with lenses that are F2.8 and brighter, due to the more sensitive F2.8 sensors in the middle. There are also dual cross-type sensors in the middle… which I’d rather have than 11 cross-type sensors all over the place. One really good, consistent AF point would trump a few cross-type sensors.

More buttons, finally! The Drive, WB and ISO buttons are indeed a bit hard to reach with small hands, but the Quick Navi joystick and programmable C button attempts to circumvent that.

At least it’s on the right hand, so even though I have to relax my right-hand grip (until I figure out how I’m supposed to press it) it’s not as bad as having buttons on the top-left like the Nikon D200.

The things that matter most to me, like the AF/MF button and AEL button, are right there where I don’t have to move my right-hand at all.

The viewfinder now shows everything; I can even change Kelvin white balance and the Green/Magenta slider in the viewfinder!

The shutter is also very sensitive, but nicely so; the first few times I tried the A700 I ended up tripping the shutter without even pressing too hard.

And then there’s the beautiful 640×480 3″ LCD screen. Yes, Nikon has a claim to have announced their Nikons with 640×480 3″ screens first… but Sony put out their products way earlier. I love how pressing the AF/MF button in playback zooms straight to 100%. A 12 megapixel image, for example, gets zoomed to 6.7x (4272/640 = 6.7x). Zooming in any more would give a blurry interpolated image. Thus, it’s just there if you’re paranoid about checking focus while chimping… though the immense resolution is enough to tell you if it’s in blistering focus or not.

The included remote control! It has a button to trigger the shutter and 2 second delayed shutter. The other buttons on the remote only work when it is connected to a TV, like the sweet Sony HDMI-compatible PhotoTV.

There is a PC Sync socket, just like on the Minolta Dynax 7 and Konica Minolta 7 Digital. The Nikon SB-28 here, however, was triggered with an optical slave attached, and the Sony A700 pop-up flash set to Manual Power, 1/16th of a second. Yes, now even the pop-up flash can be set manually.

The Sony A700 next to the Dynax 7.

Back! There is one missing generation in between – the Konica Minolta 7 Digital, which was almost identical to the Dynax 7.

But anyway, on to the shots!

KJ is no longer underexposed, due to what seems to be much better exposure algorithms and better tonality. 50mm F2.8 1/80s ISO640. Xian Jin shot this, hence the weird in-between ISO setting. He likes the tonality, and so do I!

If not for the whites melting out, I’d say the blacks are pretty color film-like, never too black.

400mm F5.6 1/30s ISO3200. Finally, I can shoot moderately lit performances. The A700 worked the Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 well, with its strong, fast-focusing motor. It focused with confidence, unlike the A100 which would hunt at such focal lengths.

400mm F5.6 1/10s ISO6400. Surprisingly, it could still focus in such darkness! (Don’t tell me it’s the AF assist light working wonders, silly; I was zoomed at 400mm.)

400mm F5.6 1/4s ISO6400. Another friend who bought the A700 said that at IS06400, it could focus and see things the human eye could not see. All I saw were some dark figures!

And yes, this was handheld standing up, elbows unbraced.

To paraphrase a Sony Alpha Lenses book (which is much like the Canon EF Lens Work III book) about Super SteadyShot:

It also enables photographers to enjoy the benefits of image stabilization with large-aperture medium telephoto and wide-angle lenses, which by their very nature are extremely difficult to equip with optical stabilization systems.

That makes sense; that’s why you don’t see a simple 50mm getting IS/VR. There’s no space to shrink all the light and put it through a stabilizing lens, in the simple Gaussian designs of bright primes.

I don’t have a Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT anymore, as I sold it with the A100 to a friend. Yes, that means that I do not have anything DT, ADI, Sony, plastic mount, or F3.5-5.6! This leaves me with a gaping hole between 8mm and 28mm.

More testing will ensue. As you can tell by the time I posted this entry, I have not slept since I got the A700!

And so, I tried the Sony Alpha 700 with the Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 with AF-C and Drive High (5 fps); that thing felt like a… photon-blasting… submachine gun as I focus tracked a customer walking about Sony KLCC.

Gotta love the approach Sony is taking (or had to take) with the A700; put all the upgrades in the body (anti-shake, direct manual focus, fast AF), since they don’t have that many lenses out with built-in motors or full-time manual focus.

This link shows the A700 with Minolta 600mm F4G with 1.4x teleconverter, shooting birds in flight:
http://www.dyxum.com/dforum/forum_posts.asp?TID=21005&PN=1

I also went down to Sungei Wang Plaza, where I tried my Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 on it. Focus was indeed a lot faster, with a lot less hunting, and I tried focus tracking while panning the crowd walking outside the shop.

Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 at 200mm F5.6 ISO1600, with shutter speeds from 1/40 to 1/60 seconds. Wide AF, continuous AF mode, Drive High (5 frames per second).

What I really liked is how another person walked in front of him but the camera did not jump to focus on him instead.

Frankly, I cannot wait to get the A700 and use ISO6400 paired with the Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 and 1.4x Tamron teleconverter and 2x Kenko teleconverter (for indoor stalking) and the Minolta 50mm F1.4 (for extreme low-light situations.)

There’s also the improved Dynamic Range Optimizer, which in addition to the Sony A100’s DRO off, DRO on, and DRO+ modes, has 5 selectable levels of DRO. At DRO Level 5, everything is literally a High Dynamic Range image. It looks fake in the same way too, heh!

The HDR-like capabilities of the Sony A700 will make my Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye a lot more usable in scenes where there are a lot of bright lights, which made the Sony A100 prone to underexposing everything else.

Even with DRO turned off, the camera seems to bring in a lot more detail in the moderately dark areas, quite like looking at a LCD monitor instead of a CRT monitor. You can even see it on the 640×480 3″ LCD, the same one used on the Nikon D300.

The Sony A700 is not for everybody though; if you’re a daylight shooter you’ll appreciate the weak anti-aliasing filter of the Sony A100. That, paired with the superb, sharp, contrasty, extremely resolving Carl Zeiss lenses, make for pixel-peeping goodness.

And so, I literally, honestly, am going to eat cup noodles to save money. I’ve been doing so for 3 weeks already. People can say they’ll eat bread/noodles, but who really does?

So what if I lose hair? I have a bit too much of it at the moment, and I refuse to let a pair of scissors touch it, so this is a natural way to lighten my mane.

(It’s also better than the food they serve at the mamak at my new office.)

And now, for the official blog entry about my latest lens – the Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 A-mount for Minolta/Sony. Light passes from the lens to a Tamron 1.4x teleconverter and a Kenko 2x teleconverter before entering my Minolta Dynax 7 and going up my right-angle viewfinder. Also added for extra effect is a Sony HVL-F56AM flash.

It collapses to a more subtle size, one-third its extended, hooded length.

400mm F11 1/125s ISO400. 400mm is the bare minimum for bird photography, or birding, in short.

400mm F5.6 1/500s ISO320. If you think about it, 400mm F5.6 is like a 200mm F2.8 with a 2x teleconverter.

1100mm F16 1/15s ISO1600. When you stack teleconverters, the camera refuses to autofocus at F16, but tries unsuccessfully to autofocus at F11. At F8 it can, but finds quite a struggle.

1100mm F16 1/40s ISO800. Chromatic aberration is obvious with this lens. Stopping down one stop solves it.

1100mm F16 1/40s ISO400. Guess what this is!

1100mm F16 1/3s ISO1600. Stairway from Kinokuniya bookstore to Page One, taken from the bottom of KLCC Park.

1100mm F16 1/30s ISO1600. An unsuspecting dude at the 2nd floor cafeteria in KLCC.

1100mm F16 1/8s ISO1600. I should come here in the day to catch people in the Petronas Twin Towers Skybridge.

1100mm F16 1/2s ISO800. Guess what this is!

1100mm F22 1/125s ISO400. This might make it more obvious.

1100mm F16 1/160s ISO400. No? What about this? (Oh, if only somebody would shine a torchlight in his/her face as I took this picture.)

1100mm F16 1/125s ISO400. The moon, handheld!

100% crop.

And yes, Super SteadyShot on the Sony A100 works extra hard for extra long focal lengths. You can hear it compensating vigorously, and it works! I can get sharp shots at 1/125s 1100mm.

I got the lens second-hand, for real cheap; however, a new one wasn’t that expensive either. The tripod mount can be loosened and rotated around; I turn it about so my left hand can hold it like a camcorder, heh.

Ironic, then, that Canon and Nikon fans would brag that they have the most lenses… when I am the only guy I know who has the focal lengths from 8mm to 1100mm covered, on the Minolta/Sony A-mount. That’s a 137.5x zoom!

A Saturday a long time ago, I helped Macdude with his shoot for the Bantus Capoeira group. He used the trusty Minolta 24mm F2.8 with his Sony A100 and iISO hotshoe to ISO hotshoe and Cactus V2 remote triggers to trigger two cheap flashes pointed at brollies.

Why’d I mention it, if nothing from that appears in this entry? Because I love 24mm lenses, and flash hotshoe adapters. 😀

And so, I used strobe mode on my Sony HVL-F56AM flash mounted on my Sony A100. Note that some of the shots are panned to avoid the strobed actions of the performers from overlaying each other and getting overexposed. Also, if the performer was facing the right, I’d align him to the left of the frame, and shoot just as he is about to perform an action… while panning quickly so he’d be at the right of the frame.

18mm F8 1/4s ISO400 with flash on strobe mode, 9 Hertz, 3 times, 1/8th power (if I remember correctly.)

18mm F8 1/4s ISO400 with flash on strobe mode, 9 Hertz, 3 times, 1/8th power (if I remember correctly.)

18mm F6.3 1/4s ISO400 with flash on strobe mode, 9 Hertz, 3 times, 1/8th power (if I remember correctly.)

8mm fisheye F4 1/20s ISO800 with direct flash.

18mm F3.5 1/30s ISO1600 with direct flash.

Oh by the way they’re always performing on Saturday nights in the Telawi area of Jalan Bangsar. Go catch them, but try not to flash them unless you had permission.

The new Sony Alpha, called the A700, was just sneaked out through certain Sony sites, and promptly taken down. However, I managed to watch the intro flash, and grab a screenshot!

It feels like Sony is hitting on the trend done by Michael Bay with Transformers. Release little, bit by bit.

I absolutely love:
– AF/MF switch on the back! No other brand has this. They may have an AF On button, but not a toggle to go into MF when in AF, for all lenses, whether they support full-time manual focusing (called Direct Manual Focus on Minolta/Sony systems.)
– 12.24 megapixel ExMor CMOS sensor with ISO3200 and extra ISO6400, much cleaner than their noisy ol’ CCD.
– Sony Ericsson-style AF-point selector joystick. You can also navigate menus and shooting settings with this (note the screenshot at ISO400? I reckon it will allow you to jump from panel to panel.)
– vertical grip has everything, including the AF-point selector joystick!
– front and rear dials.
– changeable focusing screens. I might get a split-prism manual focus screen!
– separate AF illuminator.
– PC Sync terminal for studio light compatibility. This also means I can hook it to an adapter to bring it into a regular ISO hotshoe!
– kit lens is a 16-105mm F3.5-5.6 DT. After the APS-C crop, I love 24mm. I also felt that 70mm on APS-C wasn’t far enough, but 105mm was just nice. This would have all my favorite focal lengths!

This deserves special mention:

– double cross-type sensors in the middle, and a stronger AF motor. Honestly, this means a greater deal than 9 or more cross-type sensors because you get so much more accuracy and speed in one AF point. My Minolta Dynax 7 had double cross-type sensors and it was claimed to be the fastest AF film body of its time. The Sony A100 tended to hunt; it would overshoot the subject, focus back to close focus and then focus on the subject. The Dynax 7 didn’t hesitate; it went straight onto the subject and stayed there.

Rear view, not a screenshot, but stolen from another site.

Stuff that is worth mentioning, though I’m not rancid about it:
– 921

More geeking out!

Tamron 24-135mm F3.5-5.6 lens for Minolta/Sony A-mount

Apertures:
24mm onwards F3.5
28mm onwards F4
45mm onwards F4.5
50mm onwards F5
75mm onwards F5.6

Not as bright as the Minolta/Sony 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 sadly, but still beautiful as a walkaround on full frame. 24mm is phenomenal. 24mm on APS-C is still very convenient, and 135mm is sweet.

This is beautiful. Ribbed like a Star Wars starship. The gold ring is very captivating. Even the rear mount looks pretty, like the back of a Carl Zeiss 85mm F1.4. It also comes with a special Tamron 50th Anniversary cap. The Nikon and Canon versions don’t have this cap. Must be a bonus for the Alpha male (Alpha female where applicable).

Decent bokeh at 135mm F5.6.

Found at Bintang Maju, Maju Junction.

Minolta 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens for Minolta/Sony A-mount

Shot at 105mm F4.5 1/25th of a second.

I found this in Foto Miami, KL Plaza, Bintang Walk. Small, light and bright. Just a bit less wider than the classic 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens. If not for my Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm F2.8-3.8 I would’ve considered this. It’s decently sharp at 105mm F4.5, with the classic Minolta colors, and smooth bokeh.

I’m beginning to miss the Minolta 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens I sold; it was a good example of Minolta bokeh. Minolta had always been big on bokeh, throwing in circular apertures with all their RS (ReStyled) lenses.

Guess what’s different about this picture’s bokeh.

That’s right – a loose aperture blade!

Strangely, other than the misshaped bokeh, pictures from it look fine. This is for the Pentax K-mount. Yes, I held the lens in front of the Sony A100.

I found the Sigma EF-500 DG Super for Minolta/Sony iTTL mount. It does wireless TTL, HSS and manual power mode, feature-wise equivalent to the Sony HVL-F56AM I have. Those who are looking for this can find it in Kotaraya, just up the stairs, behind the big camera shop at the corner.

However, it is not as powerful; only at 105mm zoom does it give a guide number of 50 meters. In comparison, the Sony HVL-F56AM does 56 meters at 85mm zoom! It also requires a separate press to release the swivel heads in two directions, and its flash head is 1-2cm longer.

What if I put my Minolta 70-210mm F4.0 beercan lens with the Tamron 1.4x and Kenko 2x teleconverter? I get a better quality 600mm F11 lens, better than my previous 600mm F11 combo!

Since my beercan has very low levels of chromatic aberration, it does not show up with teleconverters.

A shot with the previous 600mm F11 combo would have colors bleeding onto the crow.

The creamy bokeh still shows.

(Just a plain beercan shot.)

My Sony HVL-F56AM flash came with a pouch; unfortunately, it did not come with a belt strap. I had a cobbler add on a leather strap so it could be strapped to my belt. It also fits a lens the size of the beercan (55mm filter diameter) as seen in the image on the right. However, I do not recommend putting heavy lenses and a flash on the left-side configuration.

I’ve also been experimenting with custom white balance as of late; this is at 5500 Kelvin, to give a more film-like color tone. Flourescent lights come in a variety of flavors; some green, some daylight-adjusted. Below is the Auto White Balance version.

I have too many 70-210mm lenses for the Minolta/Sony A-mount; from left: Minolta 70-210mm F4.0 beercan, Cosina 70-210mm F2.8-4.0 push-pull (Vivitar Series 1 rebadge), Sigma 70-210mm F4.0-5.6 push-pull (new!)

The Sigma is the most compact of the lot, but it was broke to begin with; it cannot focus to infinity at 70mm, and draws into regular focus as you push to 210mm. It reminds one of the old vari-focal zoom lenses, where you’d have to zoom first, then refocus! Modern lenses keep focus when you zoom in and out. I reckon something inside was misaligned.

It’s also aged as heck, pulled out of a box of junk (yet to be blogged about). Its rubber coating had melted and was sticky, which I had to file off tediously.

It makes for some trippy shots. Defocused images have a spherical distortion about them.

Focused wayyy beyond infinity, methinks.

And yet, you could spell portrait lens with this. All these shots were not post-processed; color tones were a result of playing around with white balance along the Kelvin line (2500K-9900K) and the Green-Magenta axis.

This is the 2500K end of Custom White Balance.

It gives a surreal, cool feel.

You can even induce iodine-like color onto your shots.

In other news, my Olympus OM-2000 is acting up; the mirror is starting to slide outwards. I suspect aging glue. However, nothing like a little nudge to get the mirror back into alignment on its plate.

A Canon EOS 300D disassembled. Yes, they use Sony LCD screens.

So what do I think of the news, with the Canon 40D, Canon 1Ds MkIII, Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 announced?

Well, Nikon finally did Live View properly, with contrast-based auto-focus (the Canon Live View works like Olympus, where you have to press the AF-On button to auto-focus in Live View). Nikon also has ISO 25600 (if you choose to choose ISO in 1/3rd stops I will confiscate the camera from you and slap you with one of those solid Nikkor lenses you pride yourself owning). Plus Nikon being on CMOS finally rids the noise levels associated with CCD sensors. They also have a sweeter Nikkor 14-24mm F2.8 full-frame lens out.

Of course, the 36×23.9mm FX sensor size is not true full-frame; full-frame is 36x24mm! Technically you’re getting a 1.004x crop factor.

September 4th 2007, however, is when I’d expect the new Sony to be announced.

Who knows, there might be somebody with one of those new Canon/Nikon bodies at the Sony launch. Though, it wouldn’t be new news… unless it was say, the unannounced Olympus or Pentax. 😮

…and that’s not all. This does not count my most recent acquisition, something in the lines of birding territory. 😀