It’s that time again! This is your opportunity to make your voice heard by voting for your favorite photography products of the year. Polls are currently open in six categories but don’t deliberate too long – they close December 17th.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Landscape photography is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult disciplines of outdoor photography, and perhaps one of the most challenging genres of photography in general. At first glance, the art seems straightforward. You find yourself a pretty piece of scenery, wait for some good light, and click the shutter. Easy, right?
And yet that’s not the end of the story. I have screwed up endless opportunities by making errors in composition, focus mistakes, unwanted motion blur, over and underexposures, and of course, by messing up the settings of my camera. I suspect anyone who has dedicated much time to the art of landscape photography can say the same.
While entire articles, even books, have been written about each of those errors and frequent mistakes, there is only one I’m going to discuss here – aperture.
What aperture should you use in landscape photography, f/16 right? That’s what I’ve always heard. It’s the perfect combination of sharpness and depth of field. So set your aperture to f/16 and shoot away.
That’s it, article finished. I hope you enjoyed it. No, of course, that isn’t all. But I am surprised how many photographers assume that is the end of the story.
The real answer to the question of which aperture to us is – all of them – depending on the situation.
First, landscape photography is much more than just the classic composition that includes a foreground element in front of lovely background scenery. Rather there are detail shots, aerials, night photography, telephoto landscapes, and god knows how many other sub-genres within the category. For each of these, and for each situation within, a different aperture may be appropriate.
Before we get into that – first a warning.
There are costs to different apertures. Wide open, most lenses will be soft because every part of each glass element in the lens is being put to work. Imperfection in the lenses, dirt, scratches, and the physics of light all combine to mess with your image sharpness. This is part of the reason that sharp, fast lenses cost so much. The glass has to be excellent to retain sharpness wide open.
Diffraction happens at the opposite end of the f-stop range. When the aperture is closed way down, images also show a reduction in sharpness, but not for the same reason. Rather, something called diffraction occurs. Diffraction is actually a term derived from physics of waves.
Take a look at the terrible hand-drawn illustrations I made below and you can see why I’m a photographer, not a painter. Hopefully, however, you’ll also learn something about diffraction. The lines on the left show waves moving across space. Think of them as light waves or ocean waves, it makes no difference.
As they approach a wall with a large opening, the gap allows the waves though largely intact causing only a slight dispersion and curving of the incoming wave.
But apply a smaller opening (below), and suddenly those waves are quickly curved and dispersed.
In photography, a large aperture will cause relatively little change in the light waves entering your camera, but a small aperture will force a small amount of light to spread, disperse, and curve before hitting the sensor unequally, and with less intensity. This results in a loss of sharpness.
While the physics of it all is interesting, when it comes to photography, what you really need to know is that very small apertures will be less sharp than mid-range apertures.
It’s probably clear to you by now that if you wish to achieve maximum sharpness then neither fully wide open nor closed down apertures are the best. Rather, sharpness can be found somewhere in between. For most lenses, 2-stops down from wide open is the sharpness sweet-spot.
Perhaps that is why f/16 is so popular in landscape photography, it’s a good compromise between sharpness and depth of field.
We are back where we started, right? Just shoot at f/16.
Well if tack-sharpness were the end all and be all of landscape photography, that would probably be the case.
However, sometimes you may wish to sacrifice some lens sharpness for shallow depth of field or suffer some diffraction blur for the sake of attaining a long shutter speed.
Landscape details are those small parts of a landscape that catch your photographic interest. This may be a cluster of autumn leaves, a stone in a tundra meadow, or light upon snow-covered trees, among many other possibilities.
In such situations, you may want to isolate that interesting subject from a cluttered background. You can do that by embracing the shallow depth of field, through the use of a fast (large) aperture.
I was photographing a couple of years back on a crisp autumn day. Frost covered the meadow I was walking around, and each stem of grass glittered in the early morning sun. Spotting one particular stem, rising from the rest, I paused. I wanted to isolate that single piece of grass.
So, using a 70-200mm f2.8 lens, I opened the aperture wide to create a shallow depth of field, composed, and shot.
I’ve used this strategy, again and again, with my landscape photography. Shooting autumn colors, I frequently wish to isolate a single leaf, or patch of foliage from a distracting backdrop. Fast apertures and shallow depth of field are the only way to do this.
In such cases, I’m happy to sacrifice a bit of sharpness.
In aerial photography, you are always well separated from the landscape you are photographing (if you aren’t, you’d have much greater concerns than making photos). Thus, depth of field is not your top concern.
Meanwhile, the vibration of the airplane or helicopter’s engine is a much greater risk for lack of sharpness than setting your aperture too open.
When I’m shooting aerials, I open my aperture wide open to maximize shutter speed. When you need a shutter speed of around 1/1000th of a second, minimum, a wide open aperture is the only practical way to go.
Purposefully dragging your shutter for multi-second (or even multi-minute) exposures requires you to greatly reduce the light hitting your sensor. Even with a low ISO and a neutral density filter, trying to get a long exposure on a bright day is impossible without stopping down your aperture.
I was shooting along a river in Alaska a couple of years back, on assignment for a conservation organization. It was a bright afternoon, but some clouds were breaking up the sky making for decent photography conditions.
I knew I would be unable to return there in the evening, so I needed to make the most of the situation. Despite the bright afternoon light, I still wanted a long exposure of the flowing water.
I lowered my ISO to its minimum setting (50), put on a 4-stop neutral density filter, and sacrificing a bit of sharpness, stopped my aperture down to f/22.
With that combination, I was able to get an 8-second exposure of the flowing river. The rippled water blurred pleasingly to a ghostly reflective surface, and I got the image I wanted.
Here in Alaska, I spend a lot of time shooting the Northern Lights and taking out visiting photographers to do the same. There is a myth about Aurora photography that you need a long exposure – you don’t. In fact, you really don’t want one.
One of the things that make the Aurora Borealis so spectacular is the details in the curtains, the shifting colors, and the near-constant motion. A long exposure, anything more than a few seconds, will cause all those details to blur away. Fast shutter speeds (or as fast as you can manage) are far, far better.
To get a fast shutter speed at night, you have to be willing to open your aperture all the way up, sharpness loss, be damned. High ISOs and fast lenses set wide open will allow shutter speeds fast enough to capture the details of a fast-moving aurora display.
So sure, in classic landscape photography, with a foreground element, and background scenery, you’ll want a deep depth of field and maximum sharpness. In those conditions, by all means, set your aperture to f/16 and forget about it. But such situations are not all there is to landscape photography.
Your cameras and lenses are equipped with many tools. To say there is only one that is “right” is like saying that the only tool a carpenter needs is a hammer. Sure a hammer is the perfect tool for a carpenter when he needs to bang in a nail, but it’s really lousy at cutting boards.
What is the lesson here? Set your aperture for what is needed for the scene, not how you’ve been told it should be by someone else. “They” say a lot of things. You don’t always have to listen to them.
The post Understanding Aperture and Landscape Photography – Why F16 Isn’t the Only Choice appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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For the past few weeks we’ve been running six polls, to find out what you, our readers think was the best gear of 2017. Several of the polls are pretty close, but one is still too close to call, with literally only a handful of votes between the two front-runners and the two runners-up.
With only six hours left to vote, we need your help to break the tie! Or we could just give everyone a prize, like school sports day. Your choice.
Click here to view all six polls
(voting ends at midnight PT)
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
I try to make it to the Hawaiian Islands every year and I have a pretty good success rate. When I go, usually to Maui, I make it a point to spend most of my mornings snorkeling. In the afternoons I’ll hop in an air conditioned car and explore the island which, even after many (many) trips, is still exciting.
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| Hungry hungry honu, Kaanapali, Maui. Cropped out-of-camera JPEG. ISO 100 | F3.5 | 1/250 sec | 33mm equiv | Photo by Jeff Keller |
Since I want to memorialize any encounters with sea turtles or dolphins that may occur while I’m snorkeling, that really narrows down my camera choices. I’m not hardcore enough to bring a large camera in a big housing; rather, I want something I can slip into the pocket of my swimsuit while I’m struggling to put on my fins. I also need a camera that can capture the beautiful rainbows and sunsets that are almost a daily occurrence. The camera that covers both bases for me is the Olympus Tough TG-5.
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| The TG-5 has a great macro mode, with a 1cm minimum focusing distance. It captures plenty of detail, as you can see from this photo of my lunch. ISO 100 | F2.8 | 1/160 sec | 24mm equiv | Photo by Jeff Keller |
To be honest, 2015’s TG-4 didn’t need a lot of improvements. It had solid image quality for a compact, a lens that’s fast at its wide end, Raw support, a GPS, manometer, thermometer, and compass, along with respectable battery life. It could take a beating and, unlike some underwater compacts I’ve tested, didn’t leak at all when it went diving. The main things that irked me about the TG-4 were its awkward zoom controller, limited aperture choices and too much noise reduction in JPEGs.
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| I love having Raw on the TG-5, as it lets me get rid of the overly blue color cast that sometimes appears in underwater photos, even when using the u/w white balance setting. You can also customize the noise reduction, though don’t expect miracles from this 1/2.3″ sensor. The in-camera converter is clunky so I just used ACR in Photoshop. ISO 200 | F5 | 1/250 sec | 67mm equiv | Photo by Jeff Keller |
The TG-5 was exciting because of the drop in resolution (from 16MP to 12MP), which I hoped would improve pixel-level image quality, plus the addition of more tracking functions, 4K video and (yes!) an improved zoom controller. Olympus also finally switched to an actual micro-USB port instead of using the same proprietary connector that’s been used for 15 years. The burst rate has jumped to 20 fps, so you can just mash the button down and hope to get a decent shot of a fast-moving sea turtle or surfer. Unfortunately there are still just three apertures to choose from at any time (the camera uses an ND filter to “stop down” the lens,) but that rarely held me back.
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| A select from a 20 fps burst taken while floating next to Black Rock. Unfortunately, some water droplets didn’t roll off the lens like they’re supposed to. Cropped out-of-camera JPEG. ISO 100 | F2.8 | 1/800 sec | 24mm equiv | Photo by Jeff Keller |
As mentioned above, the main reason I brought the TG-5 to Maui was for underwater photos, and it rarely disappointed, as long as you remember that it’s a compact camera. It literally takes no effort to transition from ‘regular’ to underwater shooting, as there’s a dedicated spot on the mode dial for that purpose. Generally I left it at the default setting: Underwater Snapshot, since it uses natural light and the flash is fired only when necessary. There’s an a multi-shot underwater HDR mode, though given the motion of myself, the camera and the fish, the chance of getting a sharp photo is near zero.
The TG-5 isn’t just waterproof to 50 feet / 15 meters (and more if you buy the optional housing). It’s also shockproof from 7ft/2.1m, freezeproof to -10°C/+14°F and crushproof to 220lbs/100kg. On this trip I dropped and nearly crushed my glasses on the slopes of Haleakal?, heavily scratching the lenses on rough lava sand. I’m pretty sure the TG-5 would’ve fared better.
The addition of 4K (UHD) support is a welcome one, though for some reason you have to enter the dedicated movie mode to use it, rather than just selecting it like any other resolution. If you’re underwater that means that you have to re-select underwater white balance if you want things to look good. While not mind-blowing, video quality is good for the sensor size. Something worth pointing out is that if you zoom the lens, the microphone will pick up the sound, especially underwater.
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| I’m a big fan of the colors in Olympus’ JPEGs. Black Rock, Kaanapali, Maui. ISO 100 | F8 | 1/250 sec | 24mm equiv | Photo by Jeff Keller. |
Pictures I took ‘on land’ were very nice, though keep your expectations in check on this compact camera: there is a lot of noise reduction and the lens is somewhat soft. Maui is a colorful place and the TG-5 does a great job of capturing it.
Something that Olympus brought over from its TG-Tracker is the ability to compile all of the data the GPS, manometer and compass are capturing and display it in a graph in the OI.Track app. (This is a separate app that OI.Share, which is used to download photos and remotely control the camera.)
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| My route from the summit of Haleakala (around 10,000 feet) back to sea level in Kaanapali. | Here’s the change in elevation during my drive, with the dots illustrating where I took photos, which you can view in the app. |
Even if it’s sort of a novelty, I still think it’s cool being able to see where in your journey you took photos, and what the conditions were. One more thing that I appreciate is the ability to check all of that sensor data at any time, even when the camera is off, by pressing the Info button. You also turn on the camera’s very bright LED illuminator by holding the same button down for several seconds.
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| Yet another sunset photo. ISO 100 | F5.6 | 1/200 sec | 72mm equiv | Photo by Jeff Keller. |
While I wouldn’t bring it on a once-in-a-lifetime trip where I want top-notch photo quality, for cruises, tropical vacations, hiking or climbing, the TG-5 would be the camera I pack in my bag due to its compactness, feature set and ruggedness.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
It’s time: make your voice heard and vote for your favorite photography products of the year. Polls are currently open in all seven categories but don’t deliberate too long – they close December 18th.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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I wrote, two years ago, that I thought the distinction between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras would disappear. Not that mirrorless would eclipse DSLRs, more that the differences would reduce to the point that the presence or absence of a mirror becomes the least relevant part of a discussion of two cameras.
As I was writing a comparison of the Sony a7R III and Nikon D850 today, I was suddenly struck by the realization that it might have already happened. I think there are a lot of interesting differences between the two cameras but very few of them have anything to do with the way we’d tend to categorize them.
With this in mind, my gear of the year is the Sony NP-FZ100. Or, to those of you not obsessed with product codes, the a9 and a7R III’s battery. The simple reason for this is the role it plays in rendering the difference between mirror-less and mirror-full cameras moot.
It all comes down to the idea of ‘good enough.’ And please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking about accepting the mediocre or tolerating the barely sufficient. Instead I’m referring to the threshold beyond which any further excess is, if not excessive, then at least superfluous: it offers no practical benefit.
Once I have enough battery life to get me through a demanding day of shooting, then any extra left in the tank is all very nice, but not exactly necessary. I recently spent a morning shooting both stills and video of a cyclocross race with the a7R III. Shooting a mixture of JPEGs, uncompressed Raws and 4K video, I comfortably churned out more than the 64GB capacity of my memory card and had to switch to a second. What I didn’t come close to doing was running the battery out. At the end of the racing, I still had more than 27% charge left, despite the sub-10°C temperatures.
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| The move to the ‘Z-Type’ battery on the right is the difference between me having to worry about charging and carrying spare batteries and me never having to think about it. |
This suddenly eliminates the constant battery anxiety I’ve always felt with previous Sony mirrorless cameras (and that’s without including the RX1R II, an otherwise fabulous camera whose butterfly-like lifespan prompts even its proponents joke “it’s like shooting film: you need to think about what you’re going to do with your 36 exposures”). Because when I’m shooting, I don’t ever want to be worrying about whether I’ve brought enough batteries, and which ones are charged. I don’t even want to have to think about it.
In fairness Panasonic got here first, having put a big battery in its GH models as far back as the GH3, but I didn’t notice it to the same extent because I was primarily shooting video with those models.
More demanding shooters, be they photojournalists or longer-form filmmakers, can always attach a battery grip for longer duration, but for me, the FZ100 means the a7R III is able to surpass my ‘good enough’ threshold. So, while the D850 can boast a very impressive 1840 shots per charge, for me and my photography, that’s well into the territory of overkill.
So, as a technology that allows mirrorless cameras (hopefully of all brands) to offer the same practical benefits as their DSLR rivals, my gear of the year is a battery. Because it makes the a9 and a7R III into significantly better cameras, not just because it pulls another leg out from under all those tired ‘mirrorless vs DSLR’ arguments.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Sigma’s 14mm F1.8 Art lens makes it easier to get shots like this. ISO 5000 | 2 seconds | F1.8 | 14mm |
Over the past couple years I’ve developed a strong interest in wide-field astrophotography. Specifically, I’ve become passionate about photographing the aurora borealis, commonly known as the northern lights.
The aurora is Mother Nature’s own special effects show, and it’s one of those things that makes you stop to just appreciate the magic of the universe. No photo, IMAX screen, or VR headset will ever replicate the experience of standing under the sky when she flips on the light switch, but maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to aurora photography in the first place: it requires me to go to where I can experience the magic in person.
There are a lot of good lenses out there for this purpose, and I’ve used quite a few of them including the legendary Nikon 14-24mm F2.8, the Rokinon 14mm F2.8, the Venus Optics Laowa 15mm F2, various 16-35mm F2.8 variants, and even Sigma’s own 20mm F1.4 Art, but once I tried the Sigma 14mm F1.8 it was game over. I knew I had found the one.
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| ISO 1600 | 3.2 seconds | F1.8 | 14mm |
One thing you learn quickly when shooting aurora is that you need fast, wide lenses. Fast because you’re shooting at night (duh). Wide because the aurora typically covers a large portion of the sky. It also makes it easier to include some landscape to provide a sense of place. This is where the Sigma 14mm F1.8 Art lens comes in.
What makes this lens so special is the fast F1.8 aperture. That’s 1.3 EV faster than an F2.8 lens. Put another way, wide open the Sigma 14mm has a 2.5x light gathering advantage over F2.8 lenses. That’s huge.
One challenge when photographing the aurora is that it can dance around surprisingly fast at times. Even at high ISO values an exposure may be on the order of several seconds, making it difficult to capture the intricate structure you often see in person. That’s part of the reason time-lapse sequences never look as good as the real thing.
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| ISO 3200 | 5 seconds | F12.8 | 14mm |
Using the Sigma 14mm, however, I can cut my exposure time significantly. Where the Nikon 14-24mm F2.8 might require a 6 second exposure, the Sigma lets me get away with 2.5 seconds. Still not enough to freeze the action, but enough to reduce the degree to which patterns and structure in the aurora get averaged out.
Conversely, there are times when the aurora moves slowly and I’m not too concerned about shutter speed. In that case, I can lower my ISO significantly, say from 6400 to 2500, in order to get higher quality images.
But wait, there’s more! This lens even makes it easier to focus in the dark. I typically use live view to focus on a bright star. Sounds easy, but sometimes it’s not. The extra light at F1.8 makes this easier, making shooting more fun.
Blah, blah, blah… That all means squat if the photos don’t look good. Thankfully, this lens has great image quality.
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| ISO 6400 | 1.3 seconds | F1.8 | 14mm |
Wide open there’s some comatic aberration, which causes point sources of light near the edge of the frame to look distorted, but unless your viewer is pixel-peeping they probably won’t see it. I suppose if I were an astro purist, and the stars were the main subject of my photos, I might get a bit persnickety about this, but I’m not, so I don’t.
There’s also noticeable vignetting wide open, but it’s a smooth transition to the edges, and I’ve generally been able to correct for it effectively in Lightroom. Again, astro purists will probably cringe at this, but for aurora photos it works great.
If there’s any significant downside to this lens, it’s that it’s both big and heavy. This is one place where Sigma’s ‘Make the best optic possible and size be damned’ design approach is visible. Put a couple of these in your pack and you’re going to feel it. (Then again, some of those other lenses I mentioned above are pretty big as well.)
I’m looking forward to doing a lot more aurora photography in the future, and I’ll be doing much of it with this lens. It’s going to take a lot to displace it from my camera, which is why it’s my 2017 gear of the year.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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It’s been fascinating to watch the rise of mirrorless cameras over the course of my 7+ years writing about digital photography. And Sony in particular has been fun to watch as they’ve lead the mirrorless charge in terms of sensor size and resolution.
I’ll never forget the moment the Sony NEX-7 was unveiled in a pre-launch briefing in 2011 – it was the first time I truly craved a mirrorless body – the publication I worked for at the time even named it ‘Camera of the Year’. Up until that point mirrorless still felt like something of a novelty: a nice option for amateurs craving a small, light ILC alternative to a DSLR, but certainly not a replacement for one, especially for those ‘serious’ about their photography.
As the mirrorless market continued to take off and cameras like the original Sony a7 were unveiled, my interest in what originally seemed like a niche continued to grow. And while a lot of brands have contributed serious innovation to the mirrorless market, it’s been Sony in particular making the mirrorless cameras I’m most eager to get my hands on – an opinion not shared by all my colleagues, mind you.
But time and time again I found my expectations of shooting a Sony mirrorless camera never quite matched the reality of using the product. For instance, when it came to the Sony a7, sure it packed a full-frame sensor in a super compact mirrorless body – something that’d never been done, but the user interface of the camera, to put it simply, felt unfinished. This led to an overly frustrating shooting experience.
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| The Sony a9 is the brand’s first truly refined mirrorless camera, in this writer’s opinion. ISO 1000 | 1/1000 sec | F5.6 |
To make matters worse, many of Sony’s early mirrorless UI stumbling points were uniquely their own: slow startup times, vague error messages, and batteries draining while the camera’s shut off were problems other manufacturers had long since addressed (not to mention poor battery life). And while no one has the perfect menus, Sony’s have historically been the most cluttered and confusing.
For years, early Sony mirrorless adopters defended their decision to go all-in citing that, eventually, you do get used to the annoying UI and find workarounds. And indeed I’m sure they did. But a good camera shouldn’t force you to work around it: it should work with you. And as the Sony a7 II-series came to market, it seemed clear the brand was intent on fixing a lot of these issues and shaking its image as the camera brand with bad UI.
But it wasn’t until the release of the Alpha 9 this year, that a Sony camera has felt as refined in use as it DSLR counterparts. A year early, the Sony a6500 came pretty close to hitting this mark, but it’s the Sony a9 that’s finally won me over as a whole-hearted mirrorless believer.
Make no mistake, the a9 is meant to compete against the likes of the flagship Nikon D5 and Canon EOS 1D X Mark II. What it lacks in built-in vertical grip, it makes up for in a faster burst (20 fps on the Sony, 14 fps on the Canon and 12 fps on the Nikon). But it has more appeal to me than as just a sports camera.
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| The a9 is a sports camera, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also well-suited for shooting candids. In fact it’s flip-out touchscreen is perfect for discreetly focusing on a subject. ISO 100 | 1/640 sec | F5.6 |
For me, the mark of a truly good camera is one you find yourself reaching for regardless of the assignment or subject matter. Since the a9 landed in our office, it’s been a camera that I’ve found myself grabbing for both static and moving subjects. Because as well-suited as it might be for sports photography, it’s also a great street photography camera with lenses like the FE 28mm F2 attached. I find that using the flip-out touchscreen to select a point of focus is a great way to shoot candids.
I recently took a trip to Jackson, Wyoming where I expected to shoot a mix of wildlife, landscapes and video, and found myself bringing the a9 because it offered a fast burst rate with good AF, 4K video without any heavy crop factor and excellent dynamic range. But moreover, I packed it because it is a camera I enjoy shooting with and can, with some time spent, customize to complement my shooting style perfectly.
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| I picked the Sony a9 for a once in a lifetime trip to Jackson, Wyoming because of its small size, dynamic range, 4K video and burst speed. ISO 50 | 1/640 sec | F8 |
That’s a big step forward for Sony. They’ve long made cameras that out-spec’ed the competition but for me personally, were not enjoyable to use. But the a9’s menus have been overhauled and are less confusing, its also responsive (starts up fast) and rarely throws confusing errors messages. These may sound like little things, but they add up to vastly more pleasant shooting experience compared to Sonys of years past.
Improvements like a new, larger capacity battery that doesn’t self-drain, gave me more confidence in grabbing the Sony for what was likely a once in a lifetime shooting excursion. Plus, compared to a D5 or 1D X II, the a9 is a much smaller lighter camera to pack. And its in-body + lens stabilization allows me the flexibility to shoot handheld at slower shutter speeds and avoid lugging a tripod around. This was something that mattered to me as I was to do a lot of hiking in Jackson.
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| These bison may be nursing, and therefore stationary, but they can run at speeds up to 40 MPH. Good thing the Sony a9 can shoot at 20 fps. ISO 100 | 1/500 sec | F5.6 |
The Sony a9, and its recently-released cousin, the Sony a7R III are both exceptional cameras. I used to hesitate to pick up a Sony camera; with this recent generation, no longer. That said, there are still some areas these cameras could improve to truly leave their DSLR pals in the dust, specifically: weather-sealing and subject tracking.
The Sony a9 is dust and moisture resistant to certain degree, but the lack of robust rubber gaskets on the ports, SD card and battery doors does not lead me to trust its ability to survive shooting in conditions such as a lacrosse game in torrential downpours – I’d be much more comfortable grabbing a Nikon D5 of Canon 1D X II.
The same goes for any assignment/circumstance were nailing focus on the shot is mission critical: Nikon’s 3D Tracking is still superior to Sony’s Lock-on AF for subject tracking.
There are some other minor grievances I have with the a9, like the inability to enter menus while the buffer clears. Another: the omission of video gamma and color modes found in most other Sony cameras. But these are all things that can easily be added/improved in the next generation. And if there is one thing I’ve learned covering Sony’s camera technology, it’s that the brand listens to customers and industry feedback.
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| Note: This was shot through a seaplane window. ISO 800 | 1/2000 sec | F5.6 |
It’s no secret that Sony is hungry for a piece of the professional sports photography market, eager to get mirrorless cameras on the sidelines of the Olympics and Super Bowl. And with the Sony a9, there’s compelling reason to at least acknowledge Sony as a legit player. I think it will take a few more generations of cameras for Sony to blow past the competition, giving pros a concrete reason to consider switching. But if they keep moving in the direction they have been, I see no reason why more and more pros wouldn’t give them a chance.
So for winning me over and being the first Sony mirrorless camera I truly love shooting with, the a9 is my pick for 2017 gear of the year.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Maybe it’s not everyone’s choice for a ‘landscape’ lens, but I like using the 85mm focal length for just about anything. Sony a7R II | ISO 100 | 1/320 sec | F8 |
There are times when I find myself dreaming of a make-believe world where I don’t worry much about camera gear. A world where I’ve simplified, and simplified, until I’m down to the bare minimum of what I think I need to accomplish the sort of photographic work that I like to do.
Obviously, that is not the world that I live in.
Nonetheless, in that carefree fantasy land of plentiful-yet-lucrative corporate jobs, wedding ceremonies and endless travel assignments, I skip like a child with a balloon from gig to gig with two interchangeable lens cameras, and a single lens for each; a fast wide-angle for one camera, and a fast 85mm for the other.
The FE 85mm F1.8 is exactly the sort of 85mm lens I’ve been looking for in Sony’s system since I started at DPReview.
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| I find the compression and reach of the 85mm focal length – neither of which are too extreme – make it a great contrast for 28mm and 35mm lenses, even just for walking around the city. Also, notice the roundness of those out-of-focus highlights, even at F4. Sony a7R II | ISO 100 | 1/3200 sec | F4 |
The Sony FE 85mm F1.8 is an affordable, sharp and lightweight lens for Sony’s full frame E-mount cameras. No, you don’t have to just pick two of those.
On an a7-series camera, the 85mm F1.8 balances beautifully, focuses quickly and is more than sharp enough for the 42MP of the a7R II (or a7R III, for that matter). In Sony’s lens lineup, it sits below the FE 85mm F1.4 GM which is a great lens in its own right, but focuses slower and is far bigger and heavier.
And that’s really the kicker for me with this lens. Sony’s a7-series bodies are usefully more compact than full-frame DSLRs, but often, the lenses can be large and unwieldy. With the 85mm F1.8, you’ve got yourself a truly compact kit.
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| Though this verbiage is always to be taken with a grain of salt (a flake of snow?) the Sony FE 85mm F1.8 has some degree of weather-sealing. Sony a7R II | ISO 800 | 1/60 sec | F2.8 |
So, why 85? In general, I find the 85mm focal length a great complement to 28mm and 35mm lenses. Historically, my most-used gear for shooting events were two Nikon D700s, a 35mm F2D and 85mm F1.8D. I first fell in love with this lens combination on a six-week trip to Nepal during college, photographing endless portraits, landscapes and urban life, and was never left wanting.
With longer lenses, like a 105mm or 135mm, I always feel like I’m backing myself into a corner. And yet, I consistently found that a fast 50 was way too close to 28/35mm to be truly useful as far as getting some variety.
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| Focusing close to your subject with a wide aperture gives you a nice, dreamy look on the FE 85mm F1.8, while maintaining sharpness at your point of focus. Sony a7R II | ISO 100 | 1/400 sec | F1.8 |
But with 85mm, you can move in for a tight head-and-shoulders shot or a decor detail, back up to get a candid of a group interacting, and even with some distance, you can still get background separation if you shoot at a wide enough aperture. Speaking of wide apertures, I rarely use 70-200mm F2.8 zooms because of both their weight, and because I often am shooting at F2 or wider as the lights go down and the reception warms up.
I’ve said this before, but I’m a big fan of gear that ‘gets out of your way.’ For me, the FE 85mm F1.8 does just that. It’s straightforward and has a solid feel. I’ve never felt it’s too heavy, or focuses too slowly, and I can just concentrate on what I’m seeing through the viewfinder. If I were considering a new kit to start out with, a couple of Sony a7-series cameras with the FE 28mm F2 and FE 85mm F1.8 would be on my short list to check out.
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| Out-of-camera JPEG. Sony a7R III | ISO 800 | 30 sec | F2 |
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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In the first part of this article, I wrote about the camera I’ve used most in 2017 – the Leica M10. In Part 2, I want to write about a camera that I’ve used very little. In fact, aside from bringing it to my eye and playing around with the reviewable sample that came into our office earlier this year, I’ve barely even managed to get my hands on it.
That camera is the Nikon D850. Undeniably one of the most important products of 2017 (and in terms of traffic, definitely among the most popular on DPReview) the D850 is an impressive DSLR by any measure.
It used to be the case that if you wanted high-resolution stills, you had to make do with a relatively slow camera. And conversely, if you wanted high-speed capture and ultra-long battery life, you had to drop $ 5000-6000 on a pro-grade camera that didn’t have the pixel-count required for really demanding applications. The Nikon D810 is one of our favorite DSLRs of the past several years, but its excellent resolution and unrivaled dynamic range at ISO 64 came at the expense of relatively slow continuous shooting, and (somewhat mysteriously) poor low-light autofocus performance compared to the flagship D5.
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The D850’s wide dynamic range at its low ISO sensitivity settings enables shots like these (taken at ISO 125) which contain detail and true color everywhere from the deepest shadows to the highlight areas. Shot from a moving vehicle (hence the slightly softness at very close examination), this image is a great illustration of the D850’s versatility. Photo by Carey Rose |
On paper, the D850 offers the best of both worlds, and in practice, it generally lives up to its potential. A pixel count of 47MP almost matches the Canon EOS 5DS/R for resolution, while a maximum frame-rate of 9fps with an accessory grip and D5 battery means that in terms of speed, it’s not far off Canon and Nikon’s flagship pro-grade DSLRs (albeit for an additional premium of $ 1000). The D850’s 153-point AF system is lifted from the D5, and while the D5 has the edge when it comes to tracking (possibly thanks to its greater on-board data processing power) the D850 generally performs well, and definitely outperforms its nearest competition. In low light, the contrast between the D850’s autofocus performance and that of its predecessor is pretty stark.
I’ve been shooting with a Nikon D810 for several years as my primary camera, and there isn’t a single area of its feature set which Nikon has not upgraded in the D850. Even the viewfinder experience has been improved; the D850’s large, bright finder is a beautiful thing. So why haven’t I spent more time with it?
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| Can you see this too? OK, good.
Photo by Carey Rose |
The short, boring answer is that I’ve been kept busy with other projects (and other cameras) and unsurprisingly given its performance, the D850 is also in pretty high demand among our writers when it comes to weekend photography trips and events. But there’s another reason.
I’ve called the D810 and 24-120mm F4 combination ‘boringly capable’ in articles on DPReview in the past and I really meant it. While obviously there are things that a constant-aperture F4 zoom can’t do, that lens, attached to the D810, lets me do pretty much everything I need to – from quick grab shots on the street to architectural and landscape studies. When the 24-120mm can’t cut it (distortion can be an issue in some situations, for example, and it’s a bit limiting in poor light) I switch for my 35mm and 50mm primes.
While the D850 is clearly greatly improved over the D810, I’ve never had a reason to curse its predecessor, or wish for much in the way of improvement. If I still shot live music regularly I might feel compelled to spend the extra money just for backlit controls and improved low-light AF, but I don’t, so I won’t.
At least for now, my D810 is as ‘boringly capable’ as it always was. In all honestly, I know that if I grab the D850 for a weekend and shoot a few hundred frames with it I will probably end up really wanting one – and not having $ 3000 burning a hole in my pocket, or a third kidney, I can’t afford to do that right now.
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I don’t know who these people are, but they’ve spent more time in close proximity to the D850 than me. Photo by Carey Rose |
So I don’t own one (even though I’d like to), and I’ve barely used it. I didn’t take any of the pictures in this article, or in the gallery linked below. Then why on earth is the D850 one of my two picks for the best gear of 2017? Well, just look at it, for heaven’s sake. It’s such a good camera. I mean seriously, it’s hard to imagine how much more advanced a DSLR could be. For all of the improvements that have been made in mirrorless cameras over the past few years, the D850 still offers a combination of power, image quality, and luxurious handling (including that gorgeous viewfinder) which is hard to argue with.
I say ‘hard to argue with’ rather than impossible, because I’m sure that some people will still argue about it (feel free to jump to the comments), but this is my article and I can write what I want. In my opinion, for all of the doom and gloom spoken about the company in the past couple of years, the D850 proves one essential fact: Nikon knows how to make great cameras.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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