Sony A850 Sunset shots

Going wide on a rainy day A850 @ 19mm

Just had a tornado warning and one just cut a 200 yard wide swath through the natural bridges area. Stuck inside for a bit while it storms and since this week I seem to be stuck on wide shots out back decided to go traditional and get a full frame with a wide lens. This from an A850 w/ 19-35mm Quantaray (Sigma) lens at 19mm. Not a great lens but serviceable. I got the camera used with a couple of lenses and this was one of those. Bracketed three shots and processed through PS HDR Pro. Since the process brings the older Macbook Pro to its knees, I shot in medium rather than fine mode to reduce the file size so I could process it in the Mac. I tried to maintain something of a photorealistic look rather than go over the top with the hdr. I had it shooting jpegs in landscape color which provides a little more saturation (not much but some) so the shots were contrasty to begin with, prior to the hdr processing.

 We sure needed the rain.

Sony recently introduced the RX1, which is a full frame compact camera with a Zeiss 35mm f2. The examples of its photos I've seen are just outstanding. 

Sony sensors are just top notch. The Kodak in the M8 is also a great rendering sensor. The A850, along with the M8 will be mainstays of my personal cameras for a "long" time. If I really need a guaranteed usable shot, I grab one or the other. I know there's some vignetting and I've got a corner of the roof on the upper right but it's just an example of the full frame and 19mm showing nice color on a really dull day to compare with some of the other wides I've shot this past week with a fisheye and some paste ups. It's also a decent example of high dynamic range that isn't overdone. It just punches it up a notch or two.

Here's an earlier shot around sunrise using a 15mm CV Heliar on a XP1 using an M lens adapter. f5.6. Two shots side by side photomerged. I did bracket the shots hand held and at f5.6 but they weren't usable as it took too long for each shot for the handheld to be close enough to blend without stereo edges everywhere. So the middle of the brackets were used for the merge. The 15mm on the XP1 translates to around 22mm with the crop factor.

Reenactors

Sony A850

Yesterday I posted an ode to the M8 because it's a camera that deserves positive recognition. I didn't talk about it's faults or short comings because like any relationship you must overlook some things if you're going to stay together. Today I want to spot some shots I took with a Sony camera (a850). All my cameras and lenses are/were obtained used. Not exactly the opposite of the M8 but it's a tool that allows for good shots that an M8 will struggle (or indeed are impossible) to make. Most of these were taken from long range (up to 300mm) and some quite quickly (of necessity) using auto focus. The Sony has built in image stabilization. Not the M8's forte (putting it mildly). These were taken at the sesquicentinneal reenactment of the Battle of Prairie Grove, near Fayetteville, Arkansas in December, 2012. I used an old and quite inexpensive Sigma 28-300mm designed for the Minolta AF film camera(s). Downside of the cheap lens: if the barrel isn't locked it will gravity extend. Using this lens for this shoot is the Sony's strength. Built in stabilizaton means you can use older, cheaper lenses even for long distance shots and get decent results. None of these photographs were post processed. I did not use raw in this situation. While the boken isn't wonderful, it isn't glaringly bad (imo).

Most took it seriously. Some not so much.

All the photos I took that day are here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/109188283905572340434/albums/5817527278300968321?hl=en
  My one comment would be that these guys and gals (there were some gals and young people interspersed with the traditional guys) seemed to be having a lot of fun which is incongruous with the horror of the actual battle. Such is equivocation, which is often represented this way:

 Peace