My new Minolta AF/Sony family picture! (Click for bigger picture.)

From left to right, back row: Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye (with M42 to A-mount adapter), Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX full-frame ultrawide lens (NEW!), Sony HVL-F56AM flash behind, Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm F2.8-3.8 push-pull lens, Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 push-pull lens, Cosina 70-210mm F2.8-4 push-pull lens, Minolta 70-210mm F4 ‘beercan‘ lens, Sigma 70-210mm F4-5.6 push-pull ‘softie‘ lens.

From left to right, front row: Sony Alpha 700 with Tamron 1.4x teleconverter, Minolta 50mm F1.4 (pre-RS), Minolta Dynax 7 with Kenko Teleplus 2x teleconverter.

The Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT kit lens and Minolta 28-80mm F3.5-5.6 silver kit lens (for the Dynax 7) have since been sold. Yay!

(I’d also like to thank KJ for scouting and finding the secondhand Tamron 200-400mm F5.6 for me; and thanks also to Yik Sen who bought it bundled with a film body and sold me the lens.)

All the A-mount bodies I’ve ever owned! Left to right: Sony Alpha 700, Sony Alpha 100, Minolta Dynax 7. The A100 has since been sold to Lex, with the Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT kit lens.

I wouldn’t have sold the kit lens if I had a choice, but Lex didn’t have a lens to use on it otherwise.

While I don’t particularly fancy the focal lengths that the kit lens covers, I realize that I do need it, and that it is amazingly good for its price. It’s not a softie like the horrid Canon 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 USM (and maybe its updated IS counterpart).

How do I know the Sony kit lens is sharp?

Even after I put it through teleconverters, it does not become soft! That is usually the ultimate test for lenses. Chromatic aberration is very rare, and so is flare.

One of the most astounding shots I ever shot with the Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT kit lens on the Sony A100. I’m amazed how, with the proper lighting, it can look astoundingly sharp. I always felt its resolution wasn’t so great even stopped down for focusing on far-away landscapes, but for closeups, this is amazing.

100% crop of the same picture.

Of course, selling off the Sony kit lens meant that I had no more APS-C cropped factor lenses, no more Sony lenses, no more ADI (Automatic Distance Integration) D-lenses, no more plastic mount lenses, and no more lenses with apertures from F3.5-5.6.

And so, I needed to get a replacement, and what better than the Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX full-frame ultrawide lens?

Of course, on the A700, it becomes a standard wide, cropped down to a meager 26.5-52.5mm equivalent. However, it’s oodles brighter than the kit lens, which is already F5.6 at 35mm! Also, 17mm F2.8 on a full-frame is brighter than a Sony 11-18mm F4.5-5.6 DT at 11mm F4.5 on an A100/A700 (both giving about the same field of view.)

This is the older EX version, not the EX DG version, which I would’ve preferred because it has a 77mm filter thread. This oldie is not optimized for digital SLRs and thus has noticeable light falloff. Fortunately, I can stack a 82mm UV, 82-77mm step down ring, 77mm infrared filter, on the A100/A700 and have no vignetting due to the crop factor!

It is, however, a D lens and supports ADI, so it can tell the camera what is the focused distance so that the flash can work more accurately.

I also like how its rings turn the same way as my Minolta and Sony lenses; anti-clockwise from back to infinity; anti-clockwise from back to wide. This makes sense because turning a screw clockwise would make a screw enter deeper; thus, the front element would enter deeper and focus on infinity; likewise for zoom lenses, which extend when you turn it anti-clockwise from the front. Thus they work exactly like screws do; anti-clockwise to loosen/extend, clockwise to tighten/shorten.

(This picture is not meant to demonstrate Sigma yellow, a condition associated with Sigma lenses; I shot it with this white balance, intended.)

I got this for a great bargain secondhand; a 17-35mm full-frame constant F2.8 would cost in the prohibitive 4 digits; a Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 DT wouldn’t work on full-frame; a 16mm F2.8 or anything wider would balloon in price substantially.

Thus, a 17-35mm F2.8-4 is the cheapest rectilinear ultrawide you can get for full-frame. Minolta made one in conjunction with Tamron, but I couldn’t find that one.

I don’t know why, but it felt wider than the Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 DT, with more obvious perspective distortion on the sides. Or I could just be imagining things. I didn’t feel the 17-50mm gave enough distortion.

I also considered the cheap Tamron 19-35mm F3.5-4.5 full-frame lens, but I figured my A700 would love me more for putting a F2.8 lens on it. After all, the A700 has an extra F2.8 sensor for better AF with F2.8 lenses.

Shots from the Sigma on my full-frame Dynax 7 will come when I’m done with a roll. 🙂

The Sigma introduces a lot of light falloff when shot at F2.8, which can add dramatic effect.

17mm F2.8 0.8s ISO6400 with infrared filter. Handheld baby! Note the light falloff.

The A700 is very capable of infrared, what with its ISO6400 capabilities! 50mm F2.2 2 seconds ISO6400 propped on a balcony in Masjid Jamek STAR LRT. The blurry thing on the bottom-left of the frame is the balcony, out of focus. 😀

I used a 950-nanometer-cutoff pure infrared filter, because my Hoya R72 would let in too much red and it would not have the true infrared look anymore.

50mm F1.4 1/6s ISO6400 handheld in black-and-white mode with infrared filter. Amazingly, the A700 can autofocus with it!

50mm F1.4 1/8000s ISO100 in black-and-white mode, without infrared filter. That’s how scorching the sun was.

The histograms of both pictures are very different; thus, I cannot accurately measure how many stops you’d have to add to shoot infrared. Already it’s hard to match histograms while shooting infrared because different things reflect infrared differently.

I then did a comparison with the A100, to see which was more sensitive. The A100 was 2 stops more sensitive!

To shoot the same scene with the A100, I’d use 50mm F1.4 1/6s ISO1600. They would be just as noisy anyway in black-and-white, which is fine because infrared film was grainy. Therefore, I get the same shutter speeds if I go to ISO6400 on the A700 and ISO1600 on the A100, both about equally as noisy in black-and-white.

However, I would say the A700 is more suited for infrared photography because it can autofocus better in infrared.

What else can infrared do? Well, our eyes do not reflect infrared, and the only way to get one’s eyes lit up in infrared is if you stare at the sun. DO NOT STARE AT THE SUN!

The Sony A100 and A700 do black-and-white exceptionally well; turn down the contrast and you get a silver halide print; turn it up and you get this.

I’m not familiar with black-and-white film though, so I can’t tell you what film that looks like. I do know that I like it, though. 🙂

Heck, I shot the same scene in color and tried to convert it to black-and-white, but it lost a lot of range and contrast which Photoshopping could not fix.

Up next: Feeling lucky, punk?

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.)