A-mount To Something

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. 😀

6 thoughts on “A-mount To Something

  1. Albert Ng Post author

    grace_t: Finally! *jumps*

    Canon Freak: Oh no, it’s the rebirth of a 300D. I think. Albert Cheah is the man; at his repair shop I saw this. He will fix it.

    Reply
  2. Albert Ng Post author

    Faith: IMO? It’s a good lens, brighter and smaller than the Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan. The macro is also very handy.

    Yes, it is autofocus.

    Reply

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