Reviews on gear and software

Sony 70-400 G SSM II

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I’m in love with the image quality that the A99 gives me in the studio, on the street and…. well about always.
But how does it perform with sports?
During my first test with sports I was less then impressed with the A99, but found out that this was a know problem and 100% the fault of an error on my side, I left the E-shutter active which results in bad images with high shutter speeds, so when I got the chance to go out this weekend for a little less than an hour to shoot some Motocross I was determined to not make that mistake again. Sony send the their newest 70-400 G SSM II lens to test so I was also curious how this lens would perform.

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Let me start by saying that I don’t really like these kind of lenses, now don’t get me wrong they can be great but I always want something faster, on the Canon I used the Sigma 120-300 f2.8 for which I would kill on the Sony mount (please Sigma), the main disadvantage from the 70-400 (kind of lenses) is the maximum apertures which, also with this lens, is F4 – F5.6 which for sports is not ideal if you want ultimate speed, but hey we have to work with it, so let’s go.

 

The first thing you will notice from the lens is it’s weight, this is a very well build lens, it’s heavy, but not too heavy, it’s white (even the sun hood) and it just feels all very solid and smooth. The lens looks great on the A99 but that’s another story.

 

So how does it perform….

Rutten MotoCross 20130616--520

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Mini review Topaz Clarity

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A little while ago Topaz contacted me if I wanted to play with their soon to be released Clarity plugin. I have to be totally honest that I always had a weak spot for Topaz, they really have some cool filters and I know a lot of my friends also use Topaz.

 

Now one of the things I love about NIK/Google is tonal contrast and when I was told that if I loved that one I would LOVE Clarity I could not wait. By the way you also don’t have to wait anymore because Topaz has just released the plugin, if you follow this link you can get it (and you support the blog)

 

Well Topaz didn’t exaggerated, Clarity is like Tonal contrast on steroids, wow.
The layout of the plugin is very functional and when you start the plugin it won’t take you long to start playing with it and getting some awesome results, when diving more deeply in the possibilities I’m sure that you will be just as enthusiastic as me.

 

The first controls you will start to play with are the contrast sliders, with these sliders you can target certain areas and manipulate their appearance, but this is just the start, when you go further into the plugin you will very quickly see the HSL sliders, for people not familiar with this term it’s actually the Hue, Saturation and Luminance settings panel, meaning you can control colors not only by saturation but also by their hue and brightness (luminance), this is a very cool thing to have in a plugin like this because in fact it can prevent certain problems you could get on more extreme settings (which I did not encounter yet).
Topaz Clarity V1.0.0 (beta) 2 Read more

More Petri 50mm 1.7

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After the review of the Petri 50mm 1.7 a lot of people emailed me about how much they loved me doing these small reviews on very cheap lenses, so I promise there will be more but for today some more images with that super cheap 50mm 1.7 Petri lens.

 

These images were shot during a workshop with Marie, all natural light wide open.
As mentioned in the review it’s a mixed feeling I have with this lens, the images can be very sharp (even wide open) but the contrast is “weird” and the colors are “funky” but to be honest this is also why I love the lens so much. Do remember that I buy these lenses for their imperfections, if I want a perfect image I will mount the Zeiss 24-70 f2.8 or one of the modern Sony/Minolta lenses, these lenses however give you image “character”. Well at least I think so 😀

 

Marie Petri 1.7 Mei 15 (21 of 74)-Edit

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Sony A99 with sports

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PLEASE DO READ THE FIRST LINES OF THE REVIEW….
In short.
This was the FIRST outing with the Sony, I figured out the problem in the last 15 minutes of the game. They were just posted to show that the camera can keep up with the fast moving action, I mention clearly that the images are soft due to the e-front curtain, but posted them because a lot of people kept asking for them and I knew I did not have time for the next 6-7 weeks to do more sports. So please don’t blame the camera for not being a good sports cam, I was more than happy with it’s performance but the e-front curtain literely destroyed the image sharpness, as soon as I figured that out the images were great. I will do some more sports in the next 1-2 weeks.

 

 

Let me start out by saying that the images in this review should actually NOT be considered as “this is what the A99 can do” and in fact the only reason I post this on my blog is because a lot of people have been asking me about it and the next time I will be shooting sports will be at least 2-3 weeks away so I decided to post this small review anyway to let you know what I think of the A99 for sports.

SCE April 7 2013 -_-312

Now let me first clarify why I start the review like this.
I’ve been using the A99 for some time now and I have to say that I really fell in love with the camera and the system, the older Minolta lenses are great and the dynamic range and sharpness of the Sony A99 is just stunning, and as mentioned many times before, when you get used to the EVF it’s very hard to go back to the OVF, every time when I use a Canon/Nikon or my Medium format camera it’s a bit of a “Oh yeah, it’s an OVF story” instead of “Pffff, finally an OVF again” yeah you get used to the EVF very quickly and you will love it (well at least I do).

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