Sony Alpha NEX Cameras and E Mount Lenses

Songstress. Here are some photos from a wedding we invited. All we were equipped with was our trusty Sony NEX-7, a Metabones Speed Booster, and the Contax 50mm Planar - a gem. The Speed booster gave us an effective 55mm lens at f/1.2, necessary for this low light event. Double trouble. The NEX was set to shoot jpeg only in black and white with contrast and sharpness at negative two. This made the post-processing much easier than usual with cropping as the only requirement. Tequila ice bar. Holding court.

We took the subway down to Red Hook - Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which is definitely a place for bikes since the nearest station is a mile a way. We had a nice compact setup with the Sony NEX-7 and the Contax 50mm Planar via the Metabones Speed Booster. The Speed Booster effectively gave us an f/1.0 lens with a 55mm focal length. We have some static shots but it takes away from the sensation of speed that the women were achieving on the track. Above is the lead pack during the race. We only had 2 minutes between each lap until we saw them again. It's always fun to watch the Red Hook Crit even though it was cooler than usual. We did pretty well with a manual focus lens during a sporting event. I wonder what the Sony A6300 with its advanced autofocus tracking can manage.

Manhattan from Brooklyn We are still learning which lenses play well with the Sony A7r and we found one that's not so friendly. The Contax G 28mm f/2.8 Biogon, shown in our previous post , is a non-retrofocus rangefinder lens which means that the rear of the lens is closer to the film plane or sensor. This causes the light at the edges to hit the Sony's A7r full frame sensor at oblique angles which results in color casts. This happens with the Leica M9 and M240 but is corrected with in-camera with software. The color cast can also be corrected with CornerFix or Light Room's Flat Field Plug-in, discussed by Tobinators here . We did not correct the images here for color cast. Apart from the color cast, the Contax G 28mm Biogon performed well. We love the sharpness, contrast, and color the lens and the Sony A7r sensor delivers. Most of the shots are at f/5.6 or f/8 as we tried for the sweet spot of the lens. The A7r was set to Aperture Priority as there was plenty ...

Here are our first snaps from the Sony A7r . The 90mm f/2.8 lens from the Contax G was perfect for our trip to the nursery. The camera was set to shoot raw. These images were sent to the smartphone via the Sony A7r's WiFi and NFC feature. SnapSpeed from Google was then used to tweak the files and here are the results. The wireless transfer of files are so easy that we are thinking of getting the EyeFi memory card for the NEX-7. More on the A7r in the days to come.

Sony A7r with a Voigtlander 12mm Lens and Viewfinder It was a very crowded Sony booth at PhotoPlus. The great thing was the Sony representatives were very accommodating to anyone who wanted to play with the new Sony A7 and A7r. We had our bag of lenses and was able to mount them all on the A7 and A7r - check out the 12mm viewfinder on the A7r above. The lenses include the following: Voigtlander 12mm f/5.6 Leica Thread Mount on a helicoid adapter. Voigtlander 35mm f/1.7 Ultron LTM. Minolta 24mm f/2.8 Rokkor MD. Contax G 28mm f/2.8 Biogon. Contax Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 Planar with the Metabones Speedbooster and the standard C/Y adapter. Zeiss 12mm f/2.8 Touit Distagon. The cameras were pre-production and the use of memory cards to record the images was prohibited. We wanted to see if I could see immediate problems on the rear tilting lcd but none were glaring.  The only noticeable issue was color shift with the Contax G 28mm Biogon.  We're hoping that this can be rem...

Here are some sample shots from the NEX-7 and the Contax Zeiss 28mm f/2.8 Distagon using the Metabones Speedbooster . It was great shooting the 28mm at close to its natural focal length. The lens was always set wide open at f/2.8 and the NEX-7 was at ISO 100. We are very pleased with the Speed Booster.

Here are a few shots from the Sony NEX-7 and a tilt lens adapter with a Contax Zeiss 28mm f/2.8 Distagon. The 28mm lens provides an effective focal length of 42mm, very close to the human eye's fov. The tilt adapter provides fun images, we posted about the tilt adapter in August 2010 . It's great on the NEX system with focus peaking as you can see focus band as you "tilt" the lens. We have not shot much using tilt and were wondering if it can make it in our travel bag where space and weight is a premium. Do you have any tips for new users of tilt lenses?

Space Shuttle Enterprise with Lady Liberty Here's a few photos from the New York City flyover of the space shuttle Enterprise piggybacked on a Boeing 747. We had longer lenses available but the widest end of the Contax 35-70mm MMJ worked out best. The 747 flew above 1500 feet and a 50mm fov, Contax 35-70 @35mm, was great for the shot above. The images below are at the long end,70mm, which gave a 105mm fov. The NEX-7 was initially set on the tripod but the pilot and NASA did not want to cooperate with my framing - hand held shots worked better.

Sony PS3 PlayMemories Image Viewer Here is a quick video of NEX panoramas viewed with PlayMemories on the PlayStation 3 . PlayMemories supports 3D photos from the NEX, unfortunately our TV is not 3D capable. What we can show you is a panorama taken with the NEX-5 at Monza during the 2010 Italian Grand Prix. We have not printed out a panorama and PlayMemories is a great alternative of sharing ultra-wide photos from the NEX. The exif information of the photo can be seen by press the X button on the controller. 12416 x 1856 pixels is difficult to print but easy to view on a large screen. The video was taken with the older NEX-5 with a Contax 28mm f/2.8 Distagon.

Sony NEX-7 ISO 800 with 18-55mm OSS @52mm f/5 We posted earlier about our trip to Unique Photo to see the new Sony NEX-7 . It was an open house with Sony representatives exhibiting the new Alpha and NEX cameras, Sony lenses, and flash guns. There was a lot of interest with the new cameras so our time with the NEX-7 was curtailed. The Sony representatives were all very helpful allowing lens changes and personal memory card usage to grab some images of the pre-production NEX-7. The brief time with the NEX-7 was great. Since the NEX-5 was our main camera, it's been a while since we used a viewfinder. The NEX-7's EVF was a new experience. It felt odd in the beginning putting a small electronic screen up to your eye but we adjusted by the end of the night. We didn't have time to adjust the diopter, which we should have. All the information from the rear LCD is translated to the 2.36 million dot, 0.5" XGA OLED EVF. The EVF and slightly larger body of the NEX-7 made ...