The Amazing Sony A1/A7/A9/APS-C & Anything else welcome Mega Thread!

So, my TTArtisan 50mm f2 arrived (£79) and here are my initial thoughts.

It seems well made and it is small, as small as one of the smaller film era 50mm f1.8.f2 lenses. The only real nit picks I can make about the build are that the lens markings seem to be painted on rather than engraved and paint filled, the filter thread is a strange to me 43mm and the lens cap screws on. Still, 43mm pinch lens caps are available as is a 43-67mm step up ring so that I can use my close focus filters on it.

The aperture and focus ring feel good.

Optical stuff.

All shots seemed slightly under exposed. I'll have to look at this a bit more.

Infinity focus is back a bit from the end stop so that will need to be taken into consideration if focusing hyperfocally.

It not razor sharp but it is sharp enough in the central area even wide open. The extreme corners are mushy and never IMO great so it's a bit like my Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 in Sony mount in this.

There's quite noticeable focus breathing, but that wont be an issue for me.

The bokeh seems nice and is IMO smoother than many a film era 50mm at f2. The aperture blades are rounded and the lens gives rounded bokeh balls when stopped down which is a shame if you like sunstars.

The lens is susceptible to flare and can give a circular flare. It seems a bit like the Leica fit Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 but maybe not so bad. Contrast seems better than I feared when there's flare, so that's good.

The minimum focus distance is rather long so this is not a flower shot lens, unless the flower is rather big :D This reminds me of the Canon FD's I have which have a longer MFD than the Rokkor / Oly / Nikon alternatives.

And now the shocker.... Vignetting. It's worse than I expected with some shocks in there. It gets worse as you increase the focus distance and is at its worst at f2 and infinity. Also the vignetting doesn't seem even with maybe more at the bottom than the top. I'll have to look at this more closely.

Stopping down things improve and somewhere around f4 it's much less oh er...

So, IMO vignetting at wider apertures and as the distance increases is the shocker with this lens and it is IMO poor in this regard. I don't know if I've seen worse.

I'm a bit disappointed with the vignetting and I'll have to have a think as it just might go straight back but I'll have to do some more testing and more real world picture taking as in some shots even at f2 vignetting isn't too much of an issue. It all depends on the composition and the lighting and the distances involved.

I hope you all found that fascinating :D

f2 in not good artificial lighting at ISO 3200 so lots of WB issues and noise. Quite close. No vignetting correction but with +0.6 exp comp dialled in.

7yOSW0P.jpg
 
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snerkler said:
I wonder if Canon are struggling to shift the R3 as I've just had an email saying there's a £600 trade in bonus at Wex
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I can't imagine R3 or Z9 selling particularly well. I like to think that majority of people who will buy expensive cameras are enthusiasts with money to spare on cameras. Yes sports photographers and other such professionals will buy them too but they are in the minority. I think canon and Nikon tried to cater for these but once you have sold to all 1000 of them your average enthusiast with spare cash in his pockets probably doesn't want a huge bloated body.
For this reason I suspect A1 probably sells a lot more.

But I could be wrong too.....
Just my 2p
 
Musicman said:
I do it all the time. I'm pretty casual about my stitched panos TBH and I think get away with it most of the time...

TL4 by Rob Telford, on Flickr
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I took three pictures over two days at different times of the day and realised 18 years later that they might stitch and got this which wont win any prizes but it's ok for me :D I had to try and blend the sky quite a bit. Taken with a Canon 300D and Sigma 28-300mm in 2004.

ExKgoTH.jpg
 
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I don't do a lot of panos as I end up with a lot of distortion (like a barrel distortion), is there a way to prevent this or is that just the nature of panos?

Here you can see the weird arc of the clouds

A9_08248-Pano-2 by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr

Here it's just all clearly distorted

09A7R00813 copy-Pano by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr

But even with the inbuilt pano feature of the iPhone I still get it, although I think it works with this image

Anfield Panoramic by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr
 
A ps to the above about the TT lens. Dialling in 2/3 / 1 stop of + exp comp seems to cure a lot of ills so I'll keep it :D

RiO5on3.jpg


Oh and yet another PS. The vignetting has a purple colour tint. In the above shot I painted on desaturation. This is not a lens to go for if you're after an accurate modern look.
 
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snerkler said:
I don't do a lot of panos as I end up with a lot of distortion (like a barrel distortion), is there a way to prevent this or is that just the nature of panos?
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I don't know if it's barrel distortion as such. I always took it to be more of a perspective issue created as you pivot to take the sequence. I could be wrong.
 
woof woof said:
I don't know if it's barrel distortion as such. I always took it to be more of a perspective issue created as you pivot to take the sequence. I could be wrong.
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Yeah I know it's not barrel distortion but it gives a similar (more extreme) effect. I thought it's probably just a perspective thing but wondered if there's a way to minimise it? Of late I've tended to shoot at 16mm and then crop to a pano frame ;)
 
snerkler said:
Yeah I know it's not barrel distortion but it gives a similar (more extreme) effect. I thought it's probably just a perspective thing but wondered if there's a way to minimise it? Of late I've tended to shoot at 16mm and then crop to a pano frame ;)
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I did read an article on line about stitching pictures taken from different positions. I think that would be the only way of minimising the effects created as you pivot.

There's a pdf here...

 
snerkler said:
Yeah I know it's not barrel distortion but it gives a similar (more extreme) effect. I thought it's probably just a perspective thing but wondered if there's a way to minimise it? Of late I've tended to shoot at 16mm and then crop to a pano frame ;)
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it's more like perspective distortion caused due the extreme wide angle nature of the shot. You avoid/minimise this if you use a shift lens for example. It is caused because when you move the camera to take multiple shots your image plans is tilting slightly. with a shift lens you can keep the image plane the same.

Here's Gloucester cathedral #1 & #2 - stitching from 4 to 5 shots at 16mm, you can see the distortion and for reference #3 is a single shot

best way to "deal" with it is to work the distortion into your composition like you have done with the stadium or like you'd do with a fisheye lens for example. I have tried to work these into my composition too. you be the judge of how well it worked (or didn't)

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#2
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#3
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This is taxing my brain...

Why should this TT lens cause under exposed shots? I suppose it's the quite large difference between the dark corners and relatively bright centre?
 
nandbytes said:
it's more like perspective distortion caused due the extreme wide angle nature of the shot. You avoid/minimise this if you use a shift lens for example. It is caused because when you move the camera to take multiple shots your image plans is tilting slightly. with a shift lens you can keep the image plane the same.

Here's Gloucester cathedral #1 & #2 - stitching from 4 to 5 shots at 16mm, you can see the distortion and for reference #3 is a single shot

best way to "deal" with it is to work the distortion into your composition like you have done with the stadium or like you'd do with a fisheye lens for example. I have tried to work these into my composition too. you be the judge of how well it worked (or didn't)

#1
52371809217_997838f315_b.jpg


#2
52372978388_2a34057d02_b.jpg


#3
52372763491_1f1cda98ac_b.jpg
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Thanks, would using a longer focal length help?
 
snerkler said:
Thanks, would using a longer focal length help?
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Not quite.
While it's less apparent immediately with the longer focal lengths but you also cover less of the scene.
For example to recreate the same picture as above at 32mm (i.e. 2x zoom) I'd need 8-10 shots i.e. 4-5 for the top half and 4-5 shots for the bottom. I'd then still end up with the same amount of distortion after stitching but with a picture with a lot more pixels.

woof woof said:
It's surely still going to happen as the issue is created by pivoting and therefore changing the perspectives.
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basically this.
 
woof woof said:
Yup. Me too.

I'm going to try doing some :D
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Here’s a short piece about Hockney’s approach to his 'joiner' photos,

www.dailyartmagazine.com

David Hockney and the Camera: A Composite Polaroid Reality

David Hockney is not only a painter, but he also created artworks from photographs, mainly collages from polaroids.
www.dailyartmagazine.com www.dailyartmagazine.com

He was trying to bring the elements of time and space into the picture, and to mimic the way the human eye looks at a scene

I think it may have been him talking about them in this documentary from 1983 that I saw at the time, which has fascinated me ever since

View: https://youtu.be/AZFm_GIzewo
 
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Oh, in other news which may shock those who know me, I just bought an autofocus zoom lens for my A7III!

A Sony 24-105 F4 G OSS, taking advantage of £200 discount code at Park Cameras meant a new one was practically as cheap as a good second hand copy.

It doesn't do quite the same magic as my Contax 35-70mm f/3.4 or my C/Y primes, but it's close enough and the extra range and image stabilisation at all focal lengths will be pretty damn useful.

Autofocus with it on the A7III is almost good enough to not worry about the camera doing something daft; I've usually found I'm better with manual focus for most of what I do.

From some casual testing, the 24-105 is very well mannered and will certainly be up to spec for wandering about with the family on holiday at the end of the month.
 
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trevjm said:
Without works best for me
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woof woof said:
If I knew the area and expected the shrubs to be there I'd leave them in but I can see how some would prefer to clone them out.
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Thanks guys. I do like to leave things as naturally as possible but in this instance I did think it looked better without too.
 
Not sure if it's been mentioned already but there's cashback on certain Sigma E-mount lenses at the mo.
 
snerkler said:
Ended on the 2nd I believe?
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Park had a double cashback deal this weekend on Samyang, 135 at £699 after cashback had me interested so I spoke to the rep, asked him outright if their quality control had improved, he seemed mildly insulted LOL

Anyway I took up his challenge to try the 135, felt cheap and nasty, wasn't impressed at all with the test shots taken using my own camera, bird AF only activated on 1 out of 8 attempts on a static bird.

In complete contrast the Tamron and Sony gear nailed it every time.
 
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"And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights."

TBH. It feels longer than that.
 
Well my first casualty of my massive switch over was my Canon 16-35mm f/4. Not sure to replace it with in my new Sony line up. Any recommendations for Wedding Photography? I would like to stay relatively light, but fast at the same time. Perhaps a prime is my best bet, but I'm not sure 20mm is wide enough when I often used 16mm on my zoom. I'm still torn between the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 ART, and the Tampon 28-70mm f/2.8. If the ART was only a bit lighter it would be a clear cut choice. Getting the Tamron would mean more of a need for a zoom reaching from 16mm to 24mm. The other option I have would be to hang onto the Canon 24-70mm MKII and the Canon R6, and just invest in the Sony A7IV and wait until I'm completely used to it with my 85mm f/1.8 and perhaps on occasion using the Canon 24-70mm MKII with the MC-11 to start with - whether that's a reliable Wedding combo, I'll at least be able to fall back onto the R6 until I get more Sony glass
 
gilbouk said:
Well my first casualty of my massive switch over was my Canon 16-35mm f/4. Not sure to replace it with in my new Sony line up. Any recommendations for Wedding Photography? I would like to stay relatively light, but fast at the same time. Perhaps a prime is my best bet, but I'm not sure 20mm is wide enough when I often used 16mm on my zoom. I'm still torn between the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 ART, and the Tampon 28-70mm f/2.8. If the ART was only a bit lighter it would be a clear cut choice. Getting the Tamron would mean more of a need for a zoom reaching from 16mm to 24mm. The other option I have would be to hang onto the Canon 24-70mm MKII and the Canon R6, and just invest in the Sony A7IV and wait until I'm completely used to it with my 85mm f/1.8 and perhaps on occasion using the Canon 24-70mm MKII with the MC-11 to start with - whether that's a reliable Wedding combo, I'll at least be able to fall back onto the R6 until I get more Sony glass
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Tamron 17-28 f2.8? Obviously you'd still need a mid range zoom if that's your bag.
 
T_J_G said:
Tamron 17-28 f2.8? Obviously you'd still need a mid range zoom if that's your bag.
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Nice shout - didn't think of that one. I'm thinking Tamron 17-28mm, Tamron 28-70mm / Sigma 24-70mm and Sony 70-200mm f/4 G
 
gilbouk said:
Well my first casualty of my massive switch over was my Canon 16-35mm f/4. Not sure to replace it with in my new Sony line up. Any recommendations for Wedding Photography? I would like to stay relatively light, but fast at the same time. Perhaps a prime is my best bet, but I'm not sure 20mm is wide enough when I often used 16mm on my zoom. I'm still torn between the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 ART, and the Tampon 28-70mm f/2.8. If the ART was only a bit lighter it would be a clear cut choice. Getting the Tamron would mean more of a need for a zoom reaching from 16mm to 24mm. The other option I have would be to hang onto the Canon 24-70mm MKII and the Canon R6, and just invest in the Sony A7IV and wait until I'm completely used to it with my 85mm f/1.8 and perhaps on occasion using the Canon 24-70mm MKII with the MC-11 to start with - whether that's a reliable Wedding combo, I'll at least be able to fall back onto the R6 until I get more Sony glass
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If the 16-35mm fit in to your previous workflow then why not just replace it with the Sony equivalent, or even better the 16-35mm f2.8 GM (if you can cope with the weight)?
 
I'm struggling to make my mind up about this TT 50mm. It is very small and light and well made and it handles well but the corners are terrible and the vignetting is strange and awkward to deal with and has a blue tint and is worse at a distance and at wider apertures, even f4 at infinity is awful and needs care to correct.

I do have film era 50's but by the time they're on an adapter there's really no bulk saving over the excellent Voigtlander 50mm f2 but that is 2 -3x the size of the TT and heavier.

If only they'd made it slightly bigger to fend off this awful vignetting and terrible corners.
 
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