Many many moons ago, I met with Lex, the then buyer of my Sony Alpha 100. We were at Chili’s, and I was explaining the camera functions to her, when this girl hobbled over next to our table and looked at us intently.

Take a picture, her pose told us. She leaned seductively against the chairs. We thought it was so cute! (Did she learn it from an older sister or aunt?)

She continued standing there. Oh, all right. I used my Sony Alpha 700 to shoot this one shot of her, to humor her.

She kept posing. I continued the conversation, and looked, and she was still posing!

I then tried the Sony Alpha 100 with body cap on to see how she’d react.

(I looked something like this. Thanks Lex for the shot!)

She immediately started crying! Must’ve been the body cap. Or did she already know what a lens was, feeling rejected by this long-haired-artistic-photographer-looking dude?

She ran over to her mom, who went, “uncle made you cry ah?” Her family proceeded to camwhore with their digital cameras, to cheer her up.

It could also be the A100’s different, more mechanical door-slamming sound, often said to be loud (though some say, satisfying) while the A700 had a quieter, more subtle mirror action. A friend said the A100 made his dogs go wild but the A700 made them pose willingly (or something like that!)

Some may realize how tele-centric I am with my lenses, so here’s a shootout of 7 lenses that can reach 210mm either by themselves or with the aid of teleconverters. All shot with the Sony A100 at F16, ISO Low-key 80 with flash on a certain morning of 20th September 2007.

Lenses involved, from right to left:

1. Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye (okay, it wasn’t included but it sneaked in because it thought it would look nice in the picture)
2. Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT (sold)
3. Minolta 28-80mm F3.5-5.6 Silver (sold)
4. Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm F2.8-3.8
5. Cosina 70-210mm F2.8-4 Macro
6. Minolta 70-210mm F4 “beercan”
7. Tamron 200-400mm F5.6

The battered, misaligned elements, melted rubber Sigma 70-210mm F4-5.6 opted to skip the photo shoot.

Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT with Tamron 1.4x and Kenko 2x. 1/60s.

Minolta 28-80mm F3.5-5.6 with Tamron 1.4x and Kenko 2x. 1/100s.

Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm F2.8-3.8 with Kenko 2x. 1/125s.

Sigma 70-210mm F4-5.6. 1/125s. Note that this is a battered lens found in a box of junk, with misaligned elements that give all sorts of aberrations.

Minolta 70-210mm F4 “beercan”. 1/125s.

Cosina 70-210mm F2.8-4 Macro. 1/125s.

Tamron 200-400mm F5.6. 1/125s. The minimum focus distance is 2.5 meters, far longer than my room, thus the objects are out of focus.

Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 at F32 1/125s. Still not quite in focus.

Why do the lenses vary so much in color and actual focal length?

1. Focal length changes with focus distance. The closer the focus, the shorter the focal length, especially on zoom lenses.
2. Slower shutter speeds let in more ambient light; in the Sony 18-70mm it looks more blue because more flourescent light has come in.

Also, the Tamron 1.4x teleconverter is a wee bit soft. Gotta get a newer one… but this is a nice softener for portraits.

I particularly like the Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm’s color. The Tamron 200-400mm seems rather blue while the F32 shot kills off the flourescent light’s blue.

To be fair, I should shoot with the lenses focused at infinity, plus most lenses (except portrait lenses and macros) are optimized for sharpness at infinity. I conducted this test past midnight, like about every other photographic test that I do, or I could’ve headed out to the hills near by house.

I got my Sony A700 focus screen changed to the Type M Focusing Screen at a Sony Service Center. They charged RM70 for it. (Yes that’s the same price as the Nikon and Canon counterparts.)

The screen has to be changed there itself because they need to update the camera firmware as the focusing screen darkens considerably with darker lenses, compared to the standard focusing screen. The metering unit is above the viewfinder and if you ordered it online and did it yourself, your camera would overexpose, depending on aperture.

I got my original focusing screen as well, with the box which it came in.

The Type M is a plain screen and looks no different from the standard A700 screen. It does not have a split-prism rangefinder in the middle like manual focus SLRs. I’d have loved that, though!

Its texture is finer, and you can see smaller ‘diamonds’ compared to the standard focusing screen when you point at distant lights and go out of focus.

Manual focusing with the Minolta 50mm F1.4 is a joy – you can literally see the creaminess of the F1.4 as you go in and out of focus. It allows much greater precision. If you press down the DOF Preview button while changing the aperture, you can see that it starts to darken and the DOF increases at F2.0 onwards. On a standard screen it darkens and the DOF increases about F3.2 * onwards. I’m not sure of the exact aperture as different people get different results at different times.

Thus, the Type M screen would in theory feel 1.33 stops darker when a F5.6 lens is fitted.

Does a Type M screen feel brighter with a F1.4 lens? Unfortunately, no… but the only way to test it is to stick a digital camera on the viewfinder and measure how much light gets transmitted to the viewfinder.

You can see the 50mm F1.4’s superb, punchy color better. For once it feels that what you see is what you get. Sometimes, you can misfocus in manual focus when you think the viewfinder is sharp but it isn’t, and is only kinda close.

When I first put on my F4 beercan, I was like “whoa, that’s dark, did I put a polarizer on it or something?”

I compared it with KJ‘s standard A700 with a Minolta 50mm F1.4, and XJ and I found that my screen seemed less contrasty and sharp. This is probably because mine is showing a F2.0-like view (the Minolta is less contrasty and slightly gauzy wide open) while his shows the lens at F3.2, pretty contrasty already.

Would I recommend it? If you shoot a lot at F2.8 or brighter, this is for you (I suppose you’ll leave a F5.6 lens to AF). If your lenses are mostly darker than F2.8 then I do not recommend it.

Pros:
– Greater focusing accuracy, you’ll be sure that whatever you focused on is spot on
– Shows focus to F2.0 or so
– Really shows the creaminess and color of your bright lenses

Cons:
– Lenses darker than F2.8 get noticeably darker
– Macro with dark apertures gets even darker than a normal screen when you press the DOF Preview button
– Does not affect your image quality, it only helps with focusing

Note that the Sony A700 is the only Sony Alpha body that offers serviceable focusing screens; for the A100, A200, A300 and A350 a third-party option is required. There is also a Type L SI which comes with grid lines for architecture, which replaces a different screen (and so, the Type M and Type L SI can coexist. Thanks Pete Ganzel for the info!)

* David Kilpatrick claims that a normal viewfinder is only accurate to around F4.5. Your results may vary.

My latest lens acquisition – the Zenit Industar 61 L/Z 50mm F2.8 Macro for M42 screw mount! It is one of the most highly regarded Ukranian Leica copies, and the L in its name means that it contains Lanthanum.

Its M42 mount means I can use it on my Sony Alpha 700 and Minolta Dynax 7, using the M42 to Minolta AF-adapter.

Unfortunately, it is not truly macro; it does not achieve life-size magnification. Instead it has a 1:3 magnification, which is still amazing for a short-focal-length prime lens.

A most interesting function of this lens is that its six aperture blades are shaped such that the aperture changes shape as you stop it down – from a full circle, to a jagged star, to a star (at F5.6-8), to a hexagon (F11) and then to a circle. This is the one main reason I bought it off a second-hand shop. Plus it was amazingly sharp!

…not that I’d use the lens to make many sharp in-focus pictures. I’d rather use the impressionistic qualities of the bokeh. Surprisingly free of chromatic aberration, and gives liquid colors. Not overly contrasty out-of-focus areas, but still contrasty and colorful. This goes well with the Leica/Minolta look… which I happen to like, considering my love for Minolta lenses.

Here, the double-line bokeh can be used to draw shapes out of out-of-focus areas.

Or, make starry highlights!

I think KJ might’ve took this.

…or this. I’m not sure.

There are two variables in making star bokeh – focusing distance and aperture. Turn the focusing ring to change the size of out-of-focus elements, and turn the aperture to change the size and shape of out-of-focus elements.

A third variable, much more challenging, is to put a subject in the frame, with it being in focus!

Ah Wai and the Industar bokeh.

KJ and the Industar bokeh.

1/5th of a second, ISO1600, F2.8. I love how, despite the cat being slightly out-of-focus, it seems to float in the shadow.

Ampang-mari cat. 1/40s ISO6400.

1/20s ISO6400. Punch up the sharpening for some gritty grain.

More night scene testing. 1/10s ISO1600. Whoa shit is that Lydia? It was a random chick-stalking to show a friend I bumped into, the lens. Taken the night I got the lens – 5th January 2008. Go figure out if you were there that night!

Okay I might’ve not been very honest with the size of the lens in the first few pictures. Here it is next to a lens that shares a striking resemblance – the Sony Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 (which I lust for.) Note the similiar grooved focus ring.

Doubled my Russians. The Industar next to my Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye, also a M42 lens.

And surprise, next to my Minolta 50mm F1.4 lens! It’s just a wee longer, but much slimmer and lighter.

So slim, in fact, that it is dwarfed by the A700’s lens mount.

Another angle might show just how cute it looks on the A700. Kinda like a pancake lens, but tall and skinny instead.