Tag Archives: sony

Commentary, Equipment, Photographic Myths and Platitudes

Photographic Myths and Platitudes: The Best Camera! (part 1)

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Three manufacturers companies now produce widely available full-frame digital cameras with features that are attractive to folks who photograph landscape subjects, among other things. Two of them recently released new models that are getting a lot of attention, and plenty of photographers are interested in their relative merits and perhaps in choosing among them.

The three I’m thinking of are:

Three Full Frame Digital Cameras
Nikon D810, Sony A7rII, Canon 5Ds R

Here is a statement that a thoughtful, experienced, knowledgable photographer who has looked at the options carefully and selected one of them might make:

I chose this camera because it exemplifies the continuing evolution and improvement of digital cameras. It introduces useful and powerful improvements that offer the potential of a range of image quality improvements. The camera has the ability to produce photographs with outstanding image quality in a wide range of conditions and circumstances, and photographers who use it are going to be very pleased with what it can do. It has its pluses and minuses, and other cameras may be a bit stronger or weaker in various areas, but on balance it is a first-class and powerful tool that works extremely well for the most demanding photographers. I recommend that other photographers take a look at it!

The question: To which of the three (and a half?) above-listed cameras does this statement apply?

If you have paid a lot of attention to the passionate and hyperbole-filled discussions and “tests” that inevitably accompany the release of new cameras, you have read proclamations that any one of those is “the best” or even that it will transform your photography.  And it is possible that “the answer” is already obvious to you, and you are certain that one surpasses the others in obvious ways. You might even have come to the conclusion that a photographer choosing one of the other options is making a mistake, is probably unaware of the significance of the error,  and that his/her photographs are likely to suffer as a consequence of this flawed decision.

With all of that in mind, the answer is… Continue reading Photographic Myths and Platitudes: The Best Camera! (part 1) →

Commentary, Equipment, Ideas

DSLR & Mirrorless: Flexibility and Adaptability

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(Note: This is one of those occasional posts adapted from something I originally wrote elsewhere. This one came from an online discussion of the relative merits of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras and their abilities to work with various lenses and photographic subjects. I have edited the original slightly for its re-use here.)

With all of the recent (justifiable!) interest in new mirrorless camera developments from Sony, there are factors that may persuade some photographers to go slow on giving up DSLRs for mirrorless. (It may also convince them to do what I did — I augmented my DSLR system with a second mirrorless system.) As good as mirrorless cameras are becoming, in particular the full frame Sony A7r and newer A7rII, they have their pluses and minuses when it comes to real-world photography. They can do some things quite well – there are advantages in some cases to the electronic viewfinders, Sony sensors provide state-of-the-art dynamic range, the bodies are compact, and more. They do some things less well — native lenses are few, other lenses require adapters, the autofocus systems are slower than DSLRs, there are still latency issues with the viewfinders, and so on.)

In this context, I recently realized that one of the nice things about the new Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II Lens and the newer Canon bodies (like my 5Ds R, which is very similar to the 5Ds)  is that they now autofocus (AF) quite well at f/8. The 100-400 len’s maximum f/5.6 aperture at the long end is no longer a barrier to getting 560mm out of the lens by adding the TC.

I’ve only tried the combination on one occasion so far, when the opportunity to photograph wildlife came up on a recent photography venture along the California coast. I put the 100-400 version II and the Canon 1.4x TC on my 5DsR and photographed two wildlife subjects, elephant seals lounging on a beach and pelicans doing everything from flying past to landing to sitting still. (For those who want more information than I can provide here, I wrote about the initial results in a another article.)

While I do not recommend that people whose primary photographic focus is birds in flight rush out and get a 5Ds or 5Ds R, a 100-400 v2, and a 1.4x TC as their primary setup, it does work decently and in some cases extremely well.  Most importantly, it means that my primary landscape photography setup and can also work very effectively with non-landscape subjects, including wildlife — a task that will severely challenge the best current mirrorless options.

The Landing
A brown pelican joins the flock on a rock along the Pacific coast of California

The combination focuses well and provides good resolution, even with moving subjects — though, obviously, not as well as using something like a 1Dx with a 300mm f/2.8 prime. It is good enough that I can track birds in flight and catch sharp photographs of them in motion. Continue reading DSLR & Mirrorless: Flexibility and Adaptability →

Morning Musings

Camera Gear… and Baseball (Morning Musings 10/3/14)

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The Bleacher Seats, AT&T Park
The Bleacher Seats, AT&T Park

Recently someone posed — for the 11,535th time — a question about camera brands: Who is truly winning when it comes to the sensor game?

The context of the question had to do with recent advances in digital camera sensors from Sony, found in certain Sony cameras and in Nikon DSLR bodies. (These recent sensors have pushed a few boundaries forward, as always happens when new components are developed and released. In this case, they increase the photo site density and dynamic range.)

As a sometime Bay Area baseball fan, I understand that the concept of “who is winning?” is a nebulous and ephemeral one. Take the Oakland A’s, one of my SF Bay Area teams. A few months ago no one could touch them — they were on a record-breaking winning streak and were the hard-scrabble, underdog heroes of baseball. By the end of the season they couldn’t win and they slipped inexorably from a sure bet to “ain’t gonna happen,” barely scraping out a chance to get one wild-card playoff game… which they lost.

The other Bay Area team, the SF Giants (my emotional favorite, since I grew up following them) was up, was down, and never, even at their best, looked like a sure bet for anything. They had been in the lead, but not by that much, and in the end they came out just a bit behind the (evil, nefarious) Dodgers… but also qualified for a wildcard spot. And they won that wildcard game in fine fashion and go on to a division playoff today. (Giants fans have a word for this, though the full context perhaps only makes sense to those who have watched the team for a while: Torture.)

So, the answer to “who is winning?” is either a very much “in the moment” answer that means virtually nothing over the long run OR there could be some final competitive event at which a final winner is determined… for this year. And then the process starts all over again, and someone else “is winning.”

Extrapolated to photography equipment, right now I would say that Nikon is something like one of the two teams in our California Giants/Dodgers rivalry. Depending on which week you check, one of them is doing better than the other in some ways, but neither will ever be proven (says the Giants fan… ;-) to win in a a final, ultimate, never-to-be-challenged way. Ahead? Yes. How long? Probably not very? The winner? No.

Right now Nikon has an edge by some measure. On the basis of other factors, it doesn’t. A few months or a year from now… who knows? And, really, when it comes to photography — as differentiated from fawning over gear specifications — who cares?

But, yes, the Dodgers won the division title. This year. I’m not bitter. Yet.

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment. Connections to photography may be tenuous at times!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Equipment, Ideas, Morning Musings

Concerning Megapixels

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(This is another in a series of articles based on posts I shared elsewhere. This one is based on a reply to a post concerning how important it is to move to a newer, improved sensor with higher photo site density. The immediate question had to do with how often the improvements would be significant enough to be seen, and the writer had correctly pointed out that there can be advantages to higher “MP count” when making very large, high quality prints.)

It is useful to try for a realistic understanding of how and when a higher MP sensor may show its advantages. This post tries to not take a position on brands and models, but rather to lay out a comparison of some relevant technical stuff — from which we can all draw our own individual conclusions.

There is a point below which you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between prints made from 22MP and 36MP cameras and above which you might be able to.(1) For example, virtually everyone would agree that the difference is typically completely invisible in small web images, and virtually everyone would agree that it could be visible if you closely inspect a print that is six feet wide. Since we could debate just where the boundary is — and, frankly, it is somewhat subjective — you could pick any point on the print size scale that you want and the principles will be the same.

Some Comparisons

Just for fun, let me use completely arbitrarily use two print sizes and base the comparisons on the 22MP Canon 5D Mark III and the Sony/Canon 36MP sensor cameras. Continue reading Concerning Megapixels →