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Jack’s Kingdom | |||||
| photography 1/4/2024 | ||||||
My 2005 B+W 77mm Slim Circular Polarizer has a severe film delamination/deformation problem in several places or rather it looks like tunnels made by burrowing animals. Note that edges of the glass and foil are still intact. Pictures taken with a Laowa 100mm 2:1 macro. The 2-8 stop Tiffen Variable ND filter is uncoated and has a problem with an X or hourglass near the maximum. It also adds a slight yellow cast to resulting pictures. Sample shots at each of the 8 marks. Cameras Canon The second generation Canon full frame mirrorless cameras include IBIS. Like the Canon M series, most everything can be accomplished by the touchscreen. As sales of Canon’s increase, all 4 models of the Canon EF-EOS R mount adapters to allow my many EF lenses to used have been backordered. In late December 2020, upon seeing a basic used adapter at B&H, I ordered it and a Canon R6 body. A Canon R7 and 18-150 f3.5-6.3 STM RF-S kit lens was purchased in September 2023. This is an APS sized 32Mpx sensor. A bit overkill, but it has a 0.5 second prebuffer to catch birds in flight and other moving objects. Using the RF 100-500 with the 1.6 crop factor, this is the equivalent of 160 to 800mm focal length. Canon lenses After a start with the fastest, most expensive glass, Canon has started to produce everyday lenses. I took a chance with a used Laowa 15mm f2 lens at 30% off. Star testing shows it has a bit more coma toward the corners than the Laowa FE lens. Also the price was slashed 17% on a barely used Canon 24-105mm f4L IS RF lens. From Adorama, a demo Meike 85mm f2.8 manual focus macro lens was purchased. Currently Canon has an extensive suite of lens at various price points For 2 weeks, Canon dropped the price of the 1:2 35mm f1.8 macro IS lens by $100 so it a must have lens that includes stabilization. The barrel extends, unlike the $748 Sony and $847 Nikon which are internal focusing and lacks stabilization. The optical design has the biggest glass elements in the rear, counter to traditional design. Ordered TTArtisan 11mm f2.8 fisheye and extension tubes. A Canon EF 100-400 f4.5-5.6L IS II was purchased specifically for the Alaska trip. I now have a Canon RF 100-500 f4.5-7.1L IS lens after a 10 week backorder which arrived in December 2021. After a $400 instant rebate, I bought a Canon RF 14-35 f4L IS lens in October 2022. Normally wide angle lenses do not have image stabilization. All of the Sony full frame gear is going to be sold.Sony A7 III Since the camera has been around for several years, there are more native lenses for it than any other mirrorless camera. The menu to change and view camera customization is designed poorly. Items that ought to be grouped are separated. The User Manual defers a lot of the explanations to an interactive web version, and in most cases even that does not offer solutions. However, once set up, it works extremely well with great dynamic range, provided you get accustomed to the short throw mushy shutter unlike every other camera. Another plus is the live view is very sensitive to low light so it is much easier to setup for shooting through telescopes. The camera has IBIS but does not work as well as lenses that embed their own optical stabilization units. I take pictures in RAW mode, which makes adjustments like exposure, white balance, lens corrections much easier. Then these are converted to jpeg or tiff files. Sony has bad press as they cook the image in RAW mode. Other manufacturers do alter RAW images in other manners. To save space as sensors get larger, Sony has lossy compressed RAW capture (25MB+ filesize). Uncompressed RAW capture (45MB+ filesize) take up storage space. Canon does this as well, though file sizes do not approach this ratio. But the most basic item of numbering files has not been solved by the ignorant or incompetent Sony engineers. Canon - sequential numbering of stills and videos in same folder -SD 1: ..0999.CR2, ..1000.MOV, ..1001.MOV, ..1002.CR2 -> full< r /> swap SD 2: ..1003.CR2, ..1004.CR2, ..1005.MOV - looks great! Sony - what were they thinking of??!! SD 1: ..0999.ARW, ..0001.MP4, ..0002.MP4, ..1000.ARW, ..1001.ARW -> full (and videos are in another folder) swap SD 2: ..1002.ARW, ..0001.MP4, ..1003.ARW ..0002.MP4, ..1004.ARW -> full WTF! swap SD 3: ..1005.ARW, ..1006.ARW, ..0001.MP4, ..1007.ARW, ..0002.MP4, ..0003.MP4, ..1008.ARW - WTF! Videos reset to ..0001.MP4 with each changed SD card! They even point this out in the user manual - it is a huge problem to rename and avoid overwriting filenames. Lenses: Sony FE 24-105 f4 G OSS, Sony FE 28 f2 (no IS), Tokina 20 f2 FE MF FiRIN (manual focus), Laowa 15 f2 FE Zero-D (MF) no EXIF info, Laowa 100 f2.8 2:1 macro (MF) no EXIF info, Canon EF 200 f2.8L (no IS) - there are no Sony prime telephotos lenses! 7Artisans 7.5 f2.8 fisheye for the A6000 (no IS or EXIF) was $140. All Sony lenses have serial number stickers that lift and dog-ear. Clear Gorilla glue fixed that. All Canon lenses have etched or embossed serial numbers - even my $70 18-55 M lens. Accessories: Metabones Mk V Canon EF to E mount adapter - using the Canon 200, Tamron 28-75 f2.8 and other Canon EF, EF-S lenses. Sony does not have a prime telephoto lens. Canon 1.4x II extender turns the 200mm into a 280mm f4. This adapter has contacts to enable full functionality of Image Stabilization and Autofocus and retains EXIF information. K&F Concept MD-NEX adapter allows Minolta SR (MD, MC) lenses to be used with no EXIF info. Godox TT685S flash has the same specs as my Canon 580ex flash - big and powerful. Web price is $110, but an eBay vendor had a 3 day sale for $77. A wireless X1TS trigger will fire the flash off camera. I regret not getting the smaller, more portable unit. Sony a6000 - This is a mirrorless camera which has a 24mp APS sensor. It has a 16-50 E PZ OSS lens with a zoom lever. When using the power zoom, this will transmit noise when recording video, so an external microphone is required. However the fly by wire manual zoom is very smooth. This usually goes into my inner jacket pocket for short trips. Canon EOS M - This is a mirrorless camera which has essentially the same 18mp APS sensor that is in the Rebel T4i. I have the standard EF-M 18-55 f3.5-5.6 IS STM lens which is quieter for video with stepper motor fly-by-wire full time focusing. Both were being liquidated at $249 as it did not sell at $800. It has a touchscreen, live view that is slow to focus, but no viewfinder. It does video (stereo rather than mono audio) better than the 7d and can focus continuously like a camcorder. I had used the 70-300L with an adapter for Fremont High School concerts. It has been superceded by several other models with and without viewfinders. Purchased an Canon M50 with Electronic ViewFinder and touchscreen. The toy 15-45 retractable lens has been replaced with the existing 18-55. The dual pixel auto focus is quite fast and accurate. Tokina 11-20 f2.8 which is going to replace the older Tokina 12-24 f4 which every now and then has a problem taking a shot. It can only be used on cropped sensor cameras. The 11-20 was purchased through an authorized dealer on eBay that dropped the price $120 for Black Friday 2015. After a couple of years, the zoom ring moved left and right of the focal length marking. I took the rubber ring off and the 3 screws in the slotted holes were loose. They were retightened with thread locker. The 12-24 has round holes, so it would not have this problem. The 11-20 is usable from about 17mm and up on the R6 with adapter. It is a third party lens, so the output is not automatically cropped, like the EF-S 18-135 lens.Canon 18-135 f3.5-5.6 STM IS has the same attributes as the 18-55 M lens. It has a quiet stepper motor for focusing with a smooth zoom ring. Manual focus is fly-by-wire. It’s light and a good walkaround lens. Canon 70-300 f4-5.6L IS is a sharp lens with smoother focus and zoom movements than any other lens. At this price, Canon should include the tripod collar for this 2.3 pound lens. It can be purchased for $170, but Chinese knockoffs are under $20. Tamron 60 f2 macro lens is the fastest of its kind but only for use with APS cameras. It is a little slow to focus in dim light compared with Canon lenses, but it is very sharp and gets to just bigger than 1:1 lifesize. With about 6 months left on its 6 year warranty, the lens would not focus manually or autofocus. It worked several days later, but I sent it back to New York for repair. T3i DSLR was purchased in February 2012. It allows more control in shooting video. Light falloff in corners makes this unusable on the R6.EOS 7D 18Mp digital single lens reflex with 1080p video obtained November 2010. Canon has improved the user interface quite a bit. Finally, the onboard flash can trigger my 580ex flash off the camera. Lenses include a Canon 24-105 f4L Image Stabilization USM (38 - 168 mm equivalent.) After 3 years, the 24-105mm did not work except for wide open. It cost 1/4 of the lens price to fix. At least it was only an 8 day turnaround. Canon 70-300 f4.5-5.6 DO IS USM (70 is f4.5, 90 f5, 180 f5.6) It has a sandwich of a fresnel lens with glass to reduce chromatic aberration. It's very lightweight, and almost as sharp as a normal lens. Tamron 28-75 f2.8 After purchase, returned to Tamron New York to recalibrate for front-focus problem with the 20d camera. The 7d has a setting to compensate for this variance. This is a very sharp, fast lens. Tokina 12-24 f4 which was returned for exchange twice since it had scratches on the inside of the rear element. Excellent lens. Near the end of the 3 year warranty, got an Error 99. It only worked at f4 wide open. Fixed under warranty. I’m getting communications errors 01, but the majority of times, it does capture the image. Canon 580ex flash with head that tilts, swivels, etc. Very powerful and very expensive. Must have for portraiture. Canon 430exII - two of them bought refurbished for about $200 each. Metal foot with latch, but no thumbwheel. Tripods - Bogen (Manfrotto) 3001, Manfrotto 290, Manfrotto BeFree w/ball head, two 494RC2 ball heads, 128RC and 3130 fluid video heads. I got the 290 and BeFree at Fry’s for about 2/3 the street price. Image Stabilization and Nikon’s Vibration Reduction offer a 3 to 4 f-stop advantage. These assemblies are in the lenses, which offer better results than Sony’s in the camera body type. With longer focal length lenses, it is essential unless one uses a tripod. It’s useful for handheld shots of static objects in dim light or to eliminate motion along a single axis, as in panning on a race car. It does not work on objects moving randomly. There is a difference with in-camera processing between a point and shoot and the large sensors of digital SLRs and mirrorless cameras. Nikon After the Minolta 7D digital SLR was available in late 2004, I was disappointed with only a 6Mp CCD, but it had built-in image stabilization in the body, so any lens would benefit, though it doesn't work as well as ones built into lenses. As Minolta has exited the photography business, Sony has acquired their intellectual property and now manufactures cameras. The operational ergonomics has always been better than Nikon and Canon. Canon HV20 high definition widescreen camcorder with a 3mp camera. Had a Nikon VN750 camcorder, spittin' image of Sony TR101. It died in August 2001. Its replacement is a Sony TRV730 D8/Hi8 with 1152x864 pixel still capability. The old VN750 optical image stabilization worked like a charm in damping most vibrations versus the new electronic which does not work as well. It uses a Sony Memory Stick - came with small 4MB stick. It has an i.Link (Firewire) connection to a PC. Minolta SRT101 camera body - Got this in college. Minolta MD prime lenses from 24mm to 200mm. My favorite is the 85 f/2 for portraits. I have an adapter to use these lenses on the EOS M camera in manual focus with through the lens metering. I had generally use Kodachrome KR64 slide film, however had also been using KL200 slide film now and then. Due to hazardous chemicals used for processing, this has been discontinued. Ektachrome and Fujichrome was used in the long forgotten past but never more. In the darkroom a Beseler 23XL 6x7 enlarger with dichroic color head looms over everyone. This is the one with massive single column that gave way to the flimsy two column model. I started developing black & white negatives and printing them. You’re as old as I am if you remember ferrotype plates, where you use a brayer and all your weight to press the print face down to the glossy chrome plate and then heat them to dry. Seldom would you get something uniformly glossy. I progressed to processing Ektachrome slides and then Cibachrome (prints from slides, now discontinued) and have gone to doing prints from Kodacolor negatives too. The last major project in December 1993 was creation and printing of birth announcements from a negative when Jocelyn was born. |
More stuff DSLR & Mirrorless Sensor Cleaning With changing lens, dust and gunk will settle on the low pass filter in front of the CMOS or CCD sensor. Current cameras vibrate to clean their sensors. That only works with dust, but most are embedded gunk. Sony mirrorless has problems with dust even when lenses stay put on the camera. The A7/A9 cameras are the worst. Cleaning Digital Cameras is a great place to start learning about the wet cleaning process. Prints I also scan negative and slides in a Nikon LS2000 2700dpi scanner. Regardless of the source, the output goes to Photoshop CS6 for editing and cropping, uploaded to Costco and printed.. I had used Shutterfly for 4x6’s as the work required is less than with Costco. Shutterfly prints have more contrast, color, and brightness. Snapfish is even less expensive but I have not used them yet. Sony Camera Gear For Sale to be listed on craigslistSony A7 III camera body 24mp 7Artisans 7.5 f2.8 fisheye - MF, E Laowa 15 f2 lens - MF, FE Tokina 20 f2 lens - MF, FE Sony 24-105 f4 lens - AF, IS, FE Sony 28 f2 lens - AF, FE Laowa 100 f2.8 lens - MF, 2:1 macro Godox TT685S flash - TTL wireless Godox X1TS flash trigger - TTL wireless Metabones Mk V Canon EF-Sony E adapter K&F USKF06.308 Minolta MD-Sony E adapter - copper Sony E (NEX) T mount Sony NP-FZ100 battery - 2 genuine OEM for A7 Sony NP-FZ100 battery - 1 fake OEM for A7 Sony BC-QZ1 charger - for A7 L bracket for A7 - ARCA-Swiss RMT-DSLR2 remote - IR websites General Review sites etailers Click to see my collection. Gone ... Canon A620 - 7.1Mp digital 35-140mm equivalent zoom (12/05). Fairly low noise at ISO 400. Nice point and shoot that uses 4 AA cells with full manual control. Not in use anymore. After 5 years, the 17-85mm hunts for focus and does not achieve accurate focus. I found many people with this lens having this problem after only two to three years. The $95 flat fee is for replacing defective parts and labor. While traveling in China in June 2013, the lens failed again. Not wanting to repair again, it was replaced with an $80 18-55 f3.5-5.6 IS kit lens. It is sharp but lacks full-time focusing. Minolta XD11 camera body, dual mode (aperture/shutter/programmed modes). Had the Nikon FM on order, but demand outstripped supply, purchased the Minolta since I had lenses from the SRT101 days. So the only regret is not having purchased a Nikon manual camera and then accumulating lenses that would have been used in a Nikon autofocus camera - the only brand that allows manual and auto focus interchangeability. Unfortunately, I broke it by winding the advance lever thinking a 36 exposure slide film was loaded - it turned out to be a 24 exposure cartridge. Minolta X700 camera body - shutter release broke in 1999. Vivitar 283 non-dedicated flash. 4 f/stop settings from f/4 to f/16. Powerful and versatile bounce unit. It did not survive a 3 foot drop on a concrete sidewalk in San Francisco. I replaced it with the more powerful and versatile Vivitar 285HV. Pentax 928 point and shoot. One of only two cameras (the other is Rollei) with a zoom lens that can go as wide as 28mm. This one only sees print film and it needs ISO 400 just to preclude the flash from firing. Unfortunately in March 2004, the zoom lens mechanism failed and it’s in the scrap heap. Minolta DiMAGE 7i - 5Mp digital camera with non-removeable lens 28-200m (35mm equivalent) was purchased in February 2003 for taking school yearbook pictures. The lens is almost free of all aberrations except the images have too much noise at ISO 400 and 800 and even noise at ISO 100 in the blue (sky). In backlit shots, the subject generally exhibits flare and loss of contrast. |
