My father in law and the Sony NEX 3n

A few days ago my father in law wanted my help buying a camera.  He wanted something smallish that would take great photos.  Henry's Outlet Centre had the very nice (and very stylish) Fuji XF-1 for just $225, which seemed like a great deal, given MSRP is $499, and I thought this would suit him perfectly.  So in we went, expecting to buy it, but we were in for a surprise....

We found that the Sony NEX 3n with the extra compact 16-50mm power zoom lens was on sale for $299.  This seemed like a screaming deal, given that they are normally an already cheap $499 and have only just been launched a couple months ago.  Alone the lens retails for $330.

Sony NEX 5n with Sigma 19mm f2.8

While the Fuji XF-1 is a good camera, the Sony NEX 3n is a big step up in terms of image quality and especially low light performance.  The 16mp APS-C sensor is truly excellent in low light, and can capture tons of detail, if the lens you're using can resolve that far. So I talked him into spending the extra $75, and he's come away with an amazing camera for not a lot of money.

Compared to my NEX 5n, it is slightly bigger and has a built in flash, but misses out on the high resolution touch screen and a few other features.

Sony NEX 5n with Minolta 135mm f4 LTM

 While I don't think my father in law will stray far from auto mode, the NEX 3n allows him to take his photography a long way if he so chooses.  All in all, a great purchase.

Post 500!!

Wow!  After just over 2 years I've managed to write 500 blog posts on Snapshot Voyager.  Although this isn't a hugely popular blog, its been fun to write articles about what I am thinking and doing with my photography.  Self expression is a wonderful thing, and I've loved this both as a graphic artist through photography, and also as a wordsmith through the articles I write.

With two little children, posting regularly is much harder, but I hope to keep it going for a while yet.

Nikon D600 with Tamron 180mm f3.5 macro

High Contrast shooting

Street Shooting in bright, sunny conditions is a difficult job.  It's hard to get something that even remotely looks like a good photo, but sometimes with a little basic manipulation on photoshop, you can bring up something interesting.  With this shot I simply turned down the brightness and added extra contrast, which made for a consistently contrasty, slightly surreal scene.  Especially so with the subjects in the posters.

Fuji X100

Tamron 180mm f3.5 Macro on a Nikon D600

The Tamron 180mm f3.5 Macro was one of my favorite lenses to use on the D700 when I had that camera, and it doesn't disappoint on the D600 either.  It is super sharp, like most macro lenses, and great fun to use.  About the only disappointment is the auto focusing is quite slow, but often you need to manually focus anyway for macro, so not really a big issue.  Here's some recent results.

Nikon V1 thoughts

Without doubt the Nikon V1 has had its detractors, including yours truly.  The small sensor is the primary problem, with poorer high ISO performance and an inability to get shallow depth of field compared to a Sony NEX or even a Micro Four Thirds camera.  However the camera does have its advantages such as fast AF, solid build, long battery life and an inbuilt EVF.  Reviews have shown an ability to take lovely black and white shots and lenses that are very good quality.  In other words, actual performance was better than expectations.

At its release price of $899, it showed incredibly poor value against its competition, and now 18 months later, Nikon is still trying to blow them out, even though the updated V2 has been out for a while.  Henrys Outlet Centre has them, with the nice 10mm (28mm equiv) f2.8 pancake lens for a very tempting $260.   At that price, the camera looks like excellent value, and interestingly the going rate on Henry's eBay store is about $330, so values are actually rising.

The other good thing about the V1 is that it has an identical battery to my D600.  This means for only double and a bit for the cost of the battery I can buy a whole camera and lens!  Wild!  Even with this though, I am king of loath to invest in another system.  I already have Sony NEX, Leica M and LTM and Nikon.  That's really enough I think.