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!