As you probably already know I recently switched from my beloved Canon setup to the Sony A99.
Some people did not get the idea behind this, but let me put it this way… I’m very picky when it comes to dynamic range, color and image quality and when I compared the A99 to the Canon 5DMKIII I could not really think off any reason not to make the switch, now I have to be honest buying all my lenses again is an idea that I did not like and also an idea that scared the heck out of me for the simple reason that I did not know anything about the quality of Minolta glass etc. And this triggered a journey that I will try to show you on the blog and give you some tips and buying advise as we go along.

Old/vintage love
Maybe you already heard/read about it online but there are a lot of people loving old lenses, and according to many the quality is just as good (or better) than the modern lenses. Now this is something that always had me puzzled, of course I know that glass can be incredibly good, I have the experience first hand when I work with the Mamiya RZ67ProII, the lenses for that camera are awesome and beat everything that it on the market now in my opinion, however…. AF has had an incredible boost in recent years so do realize it will always be a tradeoff, on the other hand when we look at pricing this could be something you could life with every easily.

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During the workshops I get a lot of questions on the topic of hair and eyes.
Now let me make one thing clear, I strongly believe in rules…. but I also strongly believe in bending or breaking the rules when needed. And let’s be totally honest when we all follow the rules photography would be pretty boring. So although I will teach my students during the first workshops that it’s always important to see both eyes and have catchlights in the eyes, in the more advanced workshops I will always try to break those rules for some setups.

For me the expression and composition, color etc. is al much more important in a shot that just being able to see the eyes. The following shots were all taken this week during a workshop I taught for Fotoflits (the Dutch Elinchrom agent). Normally Marie (the model) will bring some nice dresses and extreme clothing but by accident she left one of her bags in the train (it’s back now) and then it’s time to start improvising.

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