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There's not any adapters that catch the aperture arms in the older MF lenses as far as I know. The NEX and A7 have an exposure guide in full Manual mode though. On the lower right, above the ISO in NEX mode is a box with M.M on it, and when the number next to it is -0.3 or 0.0 your picture is most likely exposed correctly. As a fellow glasses wearer, with the EVF on the mirrorless cameras I can just take my glasses off to use it since the screen inside it is close enough that it's clear.
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Jun 26, 2014 13:45
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 16:46 |
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It came, it's sooooo much nicer than the lovely old a330   There's some motorcycle racing coming up in ~2 weeks so it'll get put through its paces then, can't wait 
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Jun 26, 2014 22:24
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Elliotw2 posted:There's not any adapters that catch the aperture arms in the older MF lenses as far as I know. The NEX and A7 have an exposure guide in full Manual mode though. On the lower right, above the ISO in NEX mode is a box with M.M on it, and when the number next to it is -0.3 or 0.0 your picture is most likely exposed correctly. As a fellow glasses wearer, with the EVF on the mirrorless cameras I can just take my glasses off to use it since the screen inside it is close enough that it's clear. I'm still not understanding. EVF has live view that shows exposure in real time. I basically only shoot old Minolta MC/MD lenses on my A7 and it still adjusts for the incoming light when you change the aperture. What are you guys looking at? Are you not using the live view setting? I turn it off when I'm in super low light or using a flash but in any kind of decent light I can't imagine why you wouldn't.
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Jun 26, 2014 22:52
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Yeah, it also does the obvious changing of how the preview looks too. He might have that setting off, or bright sun can keep the viewfinder/screen from being accurate. I was just pointing out the other alternative.
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Jun 26, 2014 23:43
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In sunlight the EVF gets super washed out i just assume its being exposed properly when in reality its way underexposed. I guess i should just meter it to 0.0 for MC/MD lenses. For some reason i bought an LA-EA4, so yeah now i need a bunch of lenses for that. Going to buy a 50mm f1.4 auto focus minolta and see how i like it, maybe a 35mm f2.2 mc/md? 30mm f1.4 sigma? 85 f1.7 and f2 appear to be very similar price range wise too
coolskillrex remix fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 07:14
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The Minolta 35/2 AF was one of my favorite lenses for the system. Small, well-made, sharp wide open, classic Minolta colors. The 50/1.4 is nice, but has the same problem as a lot of 50mm lenses from that era; it is soft wide open. It's definitely good enough at f/2. The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 is a crop-sensor lens, so it may not be your best option. I've never used the 35/2.2 or either of those 85mm lenses, so I can't comment on them. Other fun lenses to consider (since you've already got the adapter) are the Minolta 100mm f/2.8 macro and the Beercan.
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Jun 27, 2014 07:46
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coolskillrex remix posted:In sunlight the EVF gets super washed out i just assume its being exposed properly when in reality its way underexposed. I guess i should just meter it to 0.0 for MC/MD lenses. For some reason i bought an LA-EA4, so yeah now i need a bunch of lenses for that. Going to buy a 50mm f1.4 auto focus minolta and see how i like it, maybe a 35mm f2.2 mc/md? 30mm f1.4 sigma? 85 f1.7 and f2 appear to be very similar price range wise too There's no reason it should be washed out though. I'll look on my A7 and see where the live preview setting is.
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Jun 27, 2014 12:16
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Pretty sure he's talking about how the rear screen has crazy glare making it nearly unusable in sunlight. If you can't get your eye just right on the viewfinder with glasses you can get too much light in there and get equally bad glare. e: You can also just shoot in Aperture priority mode and let the camera do all the work and adjust the aperture with the lens ring. Karasu Tengu fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 15:24
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Another thing to try out is the histogram. If its visible in the sunlight.
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Jun 28, 2014 01:29
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I have what are probably a dumb couple questions but I'm new to this whole DSLR thing and trying to learn on my own. I have an a58 which I enjoy, and I was recently in Zimbabwe in a small village with no light pollution and wanted to take a picture of the stars. It took me a while to get things set up right but I eventually took a decent picture. My questions: 1) When the shutter speed is set to like 20 seconds, the camera kind of vibrates during the exposure. I'm traveling pretty light so I have the world's smallest, shittiest tripod, and this slight vibration is annoying because it introduces a slight blur to the photos. Why does it do this and can I stop it? When I set it to BULB, there's no vibration, but then I have to keep my hand perfectly still as I hold the shutter which is harder than I thought it would be. 2) The live view viewfinder thing is awesome, except at night when there's no light and I want to check the focus for a shot that includes the stars as well as foreground elements. The viewfinder pretty much shows me nothing, so I can't tell when things are in focus. Are there any tips/tricks for how to overcome this? Thanks!
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Jul 2, 2014 12:22
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For the first question, just get a cheap remote trigger. They're like  for a basic one, and more if you want something like a timer, wireless etc.For the second question I dunno, maybe try using a flashlight and setup your focus manually? Obviously not your exposure, just the focus.
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Jul 2, 2014 13:07
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Thanks. I was using the flashlight and it worked out alright, so I guess I'll just stick with that method. I had no idea the remote things were so cheap. I'll pick one up.
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Jul 2, 2014 15:41
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You need to disable steadyshot when on a tripod. The sound is the steadyshot trying to overcompensate for being held by the tripod. As far as part two, you need to set Live View Display Setting Effect to "Off" and it will disable exposure simulation. This is on Custom (gear) menu 2. Doing this will cause the viewfinder to brighten in very dark situations, but it will not reflect an accurate exposure anymore. kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 2, 2014 16:24
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Sub Par posted:2) The live view viewfinder thing is awesome, except at night when there's no light and I want to check the focus for a shot that includes the stars as well as foreground elements. The viewfinder pretty much shows me nothing, so I can't tell when things are in focus. Are there any tips/tricks for how to overcome this? I'd manually focus and use the hyperfocal distance markers on the lens to ballpark it in that sort of situation.
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Jul 3, 2014 05:22
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I'd like to know if only lens with "D" designation can be used with on-camera TTL flash? Or can I use any lens and still have TTL flash capability? I'd like to buy used Minolta glass but there is the odd time I'd like to be able to use on-camera TTL flash.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:03
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They should still work with normal TTL mode, just the fancier ADI mode will be automatically disabled.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:10
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They will generally work in ADI mode as well, since the camera screw-drive has a distance encoder in it. It's not as accurate as an in-lens one but it actually works pretty well.
kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 21:55
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My wife is really into bird photography, and she's not happy with our a33. Her retardedly giant lens (Tamron 200-500mm) needs a really fast shutter, but the ISO performance of the a33 is pretty dismal above 400. Her photos tend to come out a little sad when cropped (http://imgur.com/SdOjbZ0). I suggested she look into upgrading to a full frame, as I've heard they tend to be less noisy at higher ISOs. I did a little research and apparently the a850 is supposed to have way better ISO performance. However, when I compare sample images on imaging-resource.com, the a850 looks really lovely and splotchy compared to the a33 (http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA850/FULLRES/AA850hSLII1600_NR_NORM.HTM vs http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA33/FULLRES/AA33hSLI01600NRA.HTM). So I ask you Sony people: what the hell? Would she not see an improvement by upgrading to the a850? What would you recommend for her?
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Jul 9, 2014 15:45
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The a850 is one hell of a camera, but it's pretty old by today's standards and really isn't the best tool to shoot wildlife. For bird photography you want good high ISO performance, good burst and all the latest focusing gizmos, which means something like the a77 II. Also: that sample you posted has noise reduction on. If you want the best possible quality out of your shots and you've got time to do some post-processing, RAW with NR completely off is the way to go.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:47
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You really wouldn't want an older full frame camera for birding, I'd look into an A77 or one of the other newer crop SLT cameras. They've made big improvements to autofocus and ISO performance recently, and you won't have to deal with cropping out 60%+ of the frame to get the image you want.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:54
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Buy an a77mk2 and a 70-300G to start with. Honestly a 70-400G is the lens you should get. Birding is not something you can do for cheap. Also you're seeing either JPEGs or old RAW conversions in that IR compo. 850/900 files clean up better in modern RAW converters with good NR but the a99 is quite better. kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 18:48
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I bought an a77mk2 with a Tamron 70-300 USD to upgrade from an a330 and Tamron 70-300 LD Di macro. The Tamron was a bargain for me compared to the Sony 70-300G, £289 vs £735. I finally got to use it over the past 2 days for some motorcycle road racing. Here's some low light, shaded shots from the end of last night if they help give an idea of how noisy it is. RAW's straight from the camera, no processing just exported to jpeg. ISO 1600  1600 by d4damson, on FlickrISO 1250  1250 by d4damson, on Flickr
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Jul 9, 2014 19:19
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Good call y'all. The a77ii looks way better than the a850 at 1600 ISO. We'll have to wait a couple months for one to pop up on KEH though 'cause $1k is a bit too steep.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:29
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I have a quick question for you guys, regarding my A77. I went to a National Camera Exchange to ask if they could clean out my A77, I think the sensor needs to be cleaned because some of my recent shots have some recurring dark circles that are visible on a light background. So I give it to the guy and he takes a picture of the wall and looks at it on the LCD(without zooming in at all) and concludes there is no issue. I show him a shot on the SD card where there's clearly dirt or something and he says 'well it's $50 to send it in and clean it up, but I can try something here'. He goes and grabs a little rocket blower thing, takes off the lens, flips up the mirror and blows some air down there. All is fine, then he clicks the mirror back in place and starts to look at something. He's behind the counter and about 5 feet away from me, so I can' really see what he's doing, but he pulls out his pocket knife( a little swiss army knife), pulls out the plastic toothpick and starts prodding at something. Before I can object or ask what he's doing, he puts it away, puts the lens back on and hands it back to me. He tells me to try a few shots in the next couple days, see if there's still an issue and bring it back if so. I take the lens off and look at the mirror and there's a little gouge in it! I'm 99% sure it wasn't there before, I'm thinking he tried to scrape something off the mirror with the plastic toothpick and ended up making an indentation in it. I asked him about it and he said 'Yeah I noticed that too, I don't know what that is, won't affect anything though'. I'm pretty F'n sure he made that mark, I've never touched the mirror on my camera, and I've never seen that before, so I don't know how it would randomly happen when there's a lens or a cover on the camera 100% of the time. Should I go back and talk to a manager? I questioned the guy a bit but he swore up and down that it was there before. My other question is, is it as innocuous as he made it sound? I know on a normal DSLR it shouldn't be much of a problem, the mirror is bouncing all the light into the viewfinder, but with the A77, doesn't the light actually pass right through the mirror and onto the image sensor? So if there's an abnormality on the mirror, could it affect the images? I've taken a couple test shots and it doesn't seem to be a problem but I leave for Alaska on my honeymoon in like 7 weeks and I don't want some awesome alaska pics ruined because of something like this.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:32
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I'm not an expert but it sounds like it would be really difficult to gouge a mirror with a plastic toothpick. What are the translucent mirrors made of?
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Jul 9, 2014 20:42
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LargeHadron posted:I'm not an expert but it sounds like it would be really difficult to gouge a mirror with a plastic toothpick. What are the translucent mirrors made of? It's an SLT mirror though, right? Might be more delicate.
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Jul 10, 2014 00:55
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SLT mirrors are made of a polymer material. You can definitely damage it if you do not handle it carefully, though they are more robust than you'd expect. Sharp objects are definitely a no-no, though. They're very easy to replace if damaged, though. You can get a replacement mirror from Sony Parts for about 50-60 bucks and you can replace it yourself. Just pop out the old one and pop in the new one.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:02
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kefkafloyd posted:SLT mirrors are made of a polymer material. You can definitely damage it if you do not handle it carefully, though they are more robust than you'd expect. Sharp objects are definitely a no-no, though. This. Good to know they are not too expensive to replace, I just would rather not have to replace it if it was a camera store dude who damaged it  .
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Jul 10, 2014 17:56
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Is $2375 a good deal for a used A99 body, HVLF60 Flash and the grip?
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Jul 19, 2014 16:44
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Is there some way to know where the white balance settings fall on the color temperature scale? Is there some standard values for them? The only value my camera displays is the custom white setting. If it matters I have an A290 with 1.0 software.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:30
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 Here's a graph of about what the camera decides in the auto modes.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:05
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Elliotw2 posted:
I'm guessing K means you can specify the value. My camera didn't come with that. Oh well. Thanks.
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Jul 29, 2014 22:15
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The a290 is one of (I think) two Alpha mount cameras that can't set a custom white balance in-camera. Which was a shame because Sony's custom WB (which is basically the same as how we did it on the 5D, 7D, and other Minolta cameras) is one of the easiest to use implementations ever.
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Jul 30, 2014 14:28
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What was the other one? The a230?
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Aug 1, 2014 07:57
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Bob Socko posted:What was the other one? The a230? Yep. The A290 was basically a more traditionally styled a230.
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Aug 2, 2014 04:06
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So I've upgraded to from my A200 to an NEX-5T. Looking to sell the old Alpha gear (Body, 6 lenses, accessories) to KEH or B&H (or maybe even Amazon). I don't know that I have the patience to deal with SA Mart or CL or the like, or even Dyxum (I'm just a lurker over there, so not sure anyone is going to jump to buy from a 1st-poster). Anyone have experience going through KEH or B&H? And how'd it work out for you?
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Aug 2, 2014 23:29
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KEH gives a good price most of the time, and it's a quick and easy process to do. I did sell one of my lenses to Amazon through their trade in program, since they gave $100 of Amazon credit, while KEH would offer me $40 cash. Amazon's trade in also worked pretty easily.
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Aug 3, 2014 01:56
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Out of curiosity, what lenses?
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Aug 3, 2014 07:34
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Thanks for the info Elliotw2Bob Socko posted:Out of curiosity, what lenses? - Minolta 35-70mm f/4 Macro (my favorite all-around lens) - Minolta 70-210mm f/4 (Beercan) - Minolta 100-200mm f/4.5 - Minolta 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5 Macro - Sony DT 50mm f/1.8 - Sony 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 Kit lens
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Aug 3, 2014 15:30
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 16:46 |
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Has anybody here switched over from canon to sony entirely? If so, what would you say are the pros and cons? Do you think it is worth investing in a sony system in the long run (as in, is the general consensus that they will stick around for a while and keep innovating like they are?) I might consider going a99 + a7s low light backup
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Aug 25, 2014 08:11
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