In Camera stabiliser systems

One thing I admire about Pentax  cameras is the excellent in camera stabiliser system.  This allows all those ancient, but excellent Takumar lenses to know be stabilised!  Very cool!  My Dad bought a classic 55mm f1.8 and a 35mm f3.5 new in 1960 with his Pentax S3, and they are now stabilised on his K7 DSLR!  Sure Sony D-SRLs do this too, but the oldest lens you can put on it dates from the late 1980’s.

I really wish Nikon followed this system, as it would have allowed stabilisation on this shot that I took with a 1960’s Nikkor 200mm f4.

Voigtlander Bessamatic

Earlier in the year I helped out and elderly lady on our street sell her car as she could no longer drive.  As she knew I liked classic cameras, she gave me her Voigtlander Bessamatic as a gift.  The camera works fine, but could probably do with a CLA.  It is an interesting camera, being an SLR with a leaf shutter and interchangable lenses, mine coming with the 50mm f2.8 Skopar-X.  Interestingly, when new, this camera was available with the world’s first zoom lens, the Zoomar 35-70mm f2.8 constant aperture.  Impressive spec today, but truly amazing 55 years ago, and these lenses have become quite collectable today.

I haven’t shot with this camera yet, though I will admit to considering getting an adapter to try out the lens on a NEX.

This wooden giraffe was on a stand at the Antiques Markets in the St Lawrence Market area.  It must have stood 6ft high, but when it was perched on the sellers table, it literally toward over everyone.

Forgotten Gerbera

Sometimes you back through old photos you have shot and find one you just love.  This was the case with this one.  I’d shot it in the middle of last year and found it recently on my files.  I added a little saturation, and the photo just popped!  This was shot on the Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro, and this lens, in terms of sharpness per dollar spent, would have to be at the top of that list.

Sigma 20mm f1.8 on DX

Recently I had a business trip to Kingston, ON; so I decided to take the Nikon D90 with the Sigma 20mm f1.8 and the Nikon 50mm f1.4D to do some night street shooting in the downtown area.  Interestingly I didn’t even take the 50mm out of my pocket, and shot the whole time with the Sigma.  

The Sigma is a bit of a funny lens on the D90.  Sometimes the camera underexposes the shot significantly, and at f1.8 it isn’t particularly sharp. Beyond about a metre, the wide angle nature of the lens makes it hard to render objects out of focus, even at the fast wide open aperture.  Obviously if you use the very close focus nature of the lens, it is quite easy to render backgrounds out of focus, but rarely are you shooting and object 10cm away in street shots.

Still, its not a bad combination for street shooting, the right amount of wide angle combined with the right amount of speed.

NEX-7 Colour Banding

One thing that really worries me about the Sony NEX-7 is the colour banding that has been experienced with wide Leica mount lenses.  Steve Huff’s site shows this result quite clearly.  The edges and corners have a strong magenta colour cast which totally ruins any colour shots, and the wider the lens, the worse this phenomenon becomes.  His test with the Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 (which I have) was absolutely awful, and the Leica 21mm f2.8 Elmarit wasn’t great either.  This leads me to believe that the Voigtlander 21mm f4 Color Skopar that I have likely won’t be any better.

This really puts a dampener on buying a NEX-7 as two key lenses that I was hoping to use now have a very limited scope.  If I was to buy one it means that I would have to keep the NEX-3, which wasn’t really my intention. 

Interestingly the NEX-5n has no issues with this.

Sony Nex-3 with Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Super Wide Heliar

Nikon D800 / D800E

Well that I didn’t expect!  Nikon’s D700 replacement has been announced with an amazing 36MP!  I had read some rumours along these lines, but I firmly believed that the D800 would have the D4 16MP sensor.  It seems like Nikon has changed the focus of this camera, becoming more of a studio and video camera than a pro-‘junior’ camera, as the D700 was really just a scaled down D3.

The other interesting feature is the introduction of the D800E model – its the same as the D800, but without an anti-aliasing filter to increase sharpness.  AA filters greatly reduce moiré effects, but at the expense of a slight loss of sharpness.  I really am not sure which one I’d get, but probably the standard model as it would be more of an all round camera.

Another interesting point is the usable ISO.  It is very similar to the D700, despite the significantly increased pixel density.  I expect that noise will be slightly higher than a D700 at an given ISO, but this is still an amazing result given the megapixel count.

I must say the price tag isn’t at all unreasonable either.  I was certainly expecting it to be higher.  For me though it is right at the limit in terms of what I am prepared to pay for a replacement to my D700 that I sold 6 months ago, so I will have to make a call as to whether I will buy this or buy a used D700.  If I buy a D800, updating the NEX will be pretty much unaffordable, but if I buy a used D700, then I could more easily afford a NEX7 or Fuji XPro1.

Edward Gardens - Nikon D700 with Tamron 180mm f3.5 macro