DSLR Pics: Squirrels with the Sony a77

A sensible person would sell the a77 when she was done writing up the blog piece, but I really like a couple of the a-mount lenses and I am not very sensible.

DSLR Pics: Neighborhood people with the Sony a77

The Sony a77 isn't technically a DSLR. Unlike a single lens reflex camera, in which the mirror flips up out of the way to clear the light path to the shutter and sensor or film, the mirror in the a77 is a pellicle style mirror and fixed in place.

The pellicle mirror lets most of the light pass through to the sensor while reflecting some of it upward. Where the prism or mirror box would be on a normal SLR was a phase detection autofocus sensor. The viewfinder was electronic, like on a mirrorless camera. Mirrorless cameras of the time could only use contrast detection autofocus, which was much slower and more prone to focus hunting. 

Sony called these Single-Lens Translucent, or "SLT" cameras. Further developments in sensor tech rendered this obsolete in fairly short order. The SLT era at Sony was brief, with the first being launched in 2010 and the final model appearing in 2016.

Mirrorless Pics: Squirrels with the Sony a7 II

The Sony ecosystem was my first whack at using full-frame mirrorless for work stuff. I'd used an NEX-5T and an NEX-7 (in Hasselblad Lunar drag) for most of a year and decided to take the full-frame plunge. I dabbled with an a7 for a month and then went all-in on an a7 II.

That experiment lasted about a year before frustration with the tiny NP-FW50 batteries drove me back to Canon DSLRs for work. Even with a battery grip on both the a7 II and the backup a7, I'd have to walk around TacCon or SHOT Show with a pocketful of spare batteries if I wanted to do a whole day's worth of shooting.

Soulless?

I’m not really a huge fan of any one camera brand, nor am I really a hater of any. I’ve used and enjoyed all kinds of cameras, made by numerous manufacturers.

I will say that the only one that I’ve felt any antipathy toward is Sony. Don’t get me wrong, they make fine photographic appliances, but so many of them feel like just that: an electronic appliance for making photos. The only Sonys I’ve really bonded with in any way so far are the a700 DSLR, which hardly counts since Minolta did most of the heavy lifting on that one and Sony basically showed up in time to slap their name on it, and the wonderful little RX100 pocket camera.

Other than that, I’ve used Mavicas and CyberShots, NEX mirrorless bodies, as well as using an a7 and an a7 II as my work cameras for most of a year, and just never really warmed to any of them. Their menus and interfaces always feel like they were designed by someone who transferred over from the clock radio or stereo division last week.

I mean, Canons and Panasonics are pretty soulless, too, but not in that way.

You know who knows how to really nail that camera vibe? Fujifilm. They’re probably the best at it these days. Olympus and Pentax, too. They’ve got the whole camera vibe thing figured out. When you’re using one of their camera, you know that there were serious camera nerds involved in the design of the thing.

Of the big two classic Japanese camera makers, Nikon does it way better than Canon, but their attempts at retro ring hollow when compared to Fuji’s.

DSLR Pics: Fair Folk with the Sony a700

My seventh day at the Indiana State Fair I brought the Sony a700. Of the three lenses I have available I decided to take the Sony 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T*, which is a nice high-quality general purpose zoom. 

It's not an ideal choice for me at the fair, as the 120mm equivalent maximum focal length is a little shorter than I prefer for those environs, but the 18-200 superzoom I have is too slow to focus and has too slow a maximum aperture at longer focal lengths for me to be entirely happy with it on the old Sony sensor. I was too afraid that I'd have to crank the ISO up past 1000 to get any good shots from the blacksmithing shed or in the Pioneer Village mercantile building.

I was pretty happy with the results. This lens focuses reasonably quickly and quietly and delivers pleasing images.

Maxxum Overdrive: The Sony a700

When Sony acquired Konica Minolta's camera business in 2006, the successor for the Maxxum 7D was already on the drawing board. It wound up being the second Sony-branded DSLR, since the Maxxum 5D successor had already been ready to launch and was simply re-badged as a Sony.

Whereas Konica Minolta had marketed their high-tech autofocus SLRs as "Maxxum" in the USA, "Dynax" in Europe, and "𝛼" (Alpha) in the home market, Sony went with the 𝛼 nomenclature everywhere. The Maxxum 5D replacement became the 𝛼100, while the new high-end camera was marketed as the 𝛼700. (Because I am too lazy to set up a macro, I'm just going to use a lower-case Latin "a" rather than the Greek "𝛼" from here on out.)

Unlike the earlier a100, which used an APS-C sized 10MP CCD sensor, the a700 sported an all-new 12MP Sony Exmor CMOS sensor backed by the latest version of Sony's Bionz image processor. 

Sony had a lot of experience in cameras already, both via their own popular Mavica and Cyber-shot lines of digital point-and-shoots, as well as being a major supplier of sensor chips to other makers. Additionally, they acquired a raft of tech from Konica Minolta.

The sensor featured Minolta's Anti-Shake in-body image stabilization, renamed "Super Steady-Shot" by Sony. It also inherited Minolta's Eye Start, which put a couple sensors under the eyepiece that would wake the camera and start focusing (depending on the setting) when raised to the photographer's eye. The a700 added a sensor in the front of the grip to ensure that the Eye Start sensors wouldn't mistake a tee shirt for a face when the camera was hanging on a strap.

The mode dial had the usual full-auto green rectangle, typical PASM settings, the user-configurable MR (for "Memory Recall"), and then the easy-mode Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, etc. for novices.

Said novices would need to be fairly well-heeled, as the a700 sported an MSRP of $1400 (almost $2200 in current dollars), but gave you a bright pentaprism viewfinder and magnesium front and top body panels for your money.

Oddly, for such a gizmo-laden camera in this price range, there was no LCD status display up top. Instead, when powering up, the 3.0" rear LCD screen would display all the camera's current settings.

The rear panel was high-impact plastic and featured a 3" TFT display, as well as a joystick for moving sensor points and navigating menus and a sliding switch for enabling or defeating the Super Steady Shot picture.

Currently used bodies are running as low as under a c-note and the lenses can be had for a song, as the Alpha mount is essentially orphaned with Sony having discontinued their DSLR offerings.

It gives splendid results for a digital body nearing two decades old.

DSLR Pics: Porsches with the Sony a700

Both photos are straight-out-of-camera monochrome JPEGs, shot on different days using the Sony a700. The upper one, the 911 Targa 4 GTS, was snapped with the Sony 16-50mm f/2.8, while the lower 911 Turbo Cabrio used the Sony 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* zoom lens.

Turn of the Screw

When Canon launched the EOS system with its new EF lens mount in 1987, it was a clean break with past tech. The "Electro Optical System" severed the mechanical linkages between the camera body and lens. The aperture was electro-mechanically actuated, and the focusing was handled by a motor in the lens body itself.

Similarly, when Olympus put out its first DSLR, the E-1, the Four Thirds system represented a clean break from its prior film SLR legacy. All the lenses were from a clean sheet of paper.

The other DSLR makers in the first decade of this millennium were attempting to bridge a gap to prior technology. Nikon, Pentax, and Minolta/Sony all offered cameras with focus motors in the camera body which operated the lens focus via a screw drive.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I had the Sony a700 out for a walk with the 18-200mm zoom lens on it.

I'd been hoping for birds or squirrels, but when I went to shoot some flowers close-up, the whirring as the focus motor spun the lens all the way to the other extreme seemed interminable...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Great Deals Await!

So, for doing a comparison test for the blog... and also because I love playing with different cameras ...I got the Sony a700 and a Sony 16-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens from KEH for $290, combined.

That's a rugged, weather resistant, pro-grade camera and lens for under three bills. Roberts/Used Photo Pro, locally, had a 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* for a hundred bucks. It was in "Good" condition, basically the equivalent to BGN (bargain) at KEH because the rubber focusing and zoom rings were somewhat faded and there was visible wear on the lens barrel, but it's functionally just fine, and it's premium glass that sold for nearly a grand back when it came out.

Then the other day I saw that Roberts had an 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom with caps and hood for $89.

That's a pro-grade APS-C DSLR body, and three zoom lenses, two of them rather high-end, all for less than the cost of the cheapest kit DSLR at Walmart.

DSLR Pics: Straight-out-of-camera JPEGs from the Sony a700

The Sony 16-50mm f/2.8 lens is downright petite when compared to the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS or the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 G lenses, but it still gives really excellent results. (It's an inch shorter and nearly a half pound lighter than the monster DX Nikon pro glass.)

The a700's sensor is modern enough that ISOs as high as 800 or 1000 still give pretty acceptable results.

Dual slot? Maybe not!

The second on my list of "pro features" after dual control wheels was dual card slots, although in the year 2008, that was still generally found only on the top models of most lineups.

The 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III each had one Compact Flash and one SD card slot, but the contemporary 5D Mark II only had the CF slot. Similarly, Nikon's pro D3 had a brace of CF slots, but the D700 only had the one.

Stepping down from full frame to crop sensor, the Canon EOS 40D and Nikon D300 only had one CF slot. Likewise, the Pentax K20D, which was the top digital Pentax of the time, had a lone SD card slot for storage.

Only the Sony a700 and Olympus E-3 had a pair of card slots among the cameras in this tier, but that's for a specific reason. See, both Sony and Olympus had their own in-house memory card formats, so their DSLRs had one slot for Compact Flash and one for Sony Memory Stick (on the a700) or xD (on the E-3).

The card slots on an Olympus E-3

Unlike the dual slots on the pro Nikon and Canon cameras, you couldn't record to both of these cards at the same time, it was strictly one or the other.

It wouldn't be until later, in cameras like the Nikon D300S and D7000 that Nikon let dual card slots trickle down, and Canon users had to wait for the 5D Mark III and 7D Mark II.

Dead Format Bonus

Sony discontinued their A-mount DSLRs (all basically evolved Minoltas) back in 2012, and the A-mount pellicle mirror SLT cameras not too many years after, so that leaves the A-mount an essentially dead letter.

Used prices on fairly high-spec glass are dirt cheap. That 16-50mm f/2.8 in the picture? Less than two hundo. I found a Sony DT 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T*, which listed for nearly thousand bucks new, for barely over a Benjamin used.

Of the cameras in its class at the time (Canon EOS 40D, Nikon D300, Pentax K20D, and Olympus E-3), the Sony a700 was the only one without an LCD panel on the top plate. Interestingly, like the Pentax and Nikons, it also has a focus motor in the body, allowing it to use older autofocus lenses.

The 12MP sensor has enough resolution that you can get away with a bit of cropping, too.

MGA snapped with the 16-80mm lens. Cropped somewhat.

Mirrorless Pics: Broad Ripple, Indianapolis with the Hasselblad Lunar

I know it's just a Sony NEX-7 re-skinned in a funky titanium and carbon fiber shell, but I like it. I mostly shoot it with the Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* 16-70mm f/4, although I also have one of the E-mount 16mm f/2.8 pancake wide angles with the Hassy branding on it.

The Lunar was the first camera I ever had with in-camera HDR and I played with that a bit. The menus on Sony mirrorless cameras back then were clunky and awkward and the light re-skinning they got for Hasselblad duty just made them prettier but no less counterintuitive. The controls and menus on the Sony NEX cameras always felt like they were done by someone who got transferred to Sony Camera Division from Clock Radios or Stereo Remotes two weeks ago.

Blast from the past...

An ad from a 1999 issue of FamilyPC magazine for the new Sony Mavica digital camera!

Re-Shoots

I used the Amazon gift card Bobbi gave me for my birthday to order a used Kodak Easyshare V1073.

Now I have a copy of each digicam I used before getting my first DSLR:

• Sony Mavica FD88
• Nikon Coolpix 990
• Kodak Easyshare V1073
• Canon PowerShot SX500

Now to go back and see if I can reshoot some things I shot back in the day, using the same gear, but do it better! The arrows are the same, but the Indian's gotten a bit better over the years, or at least I'd like to think so.

Alas, I won't be able to re-do the Lucky Gunner Blogger Shoot, or Knob Creek, or classes with Louis Awerbuck and Todd Green, or...

Kodak Easyshare at Knob Creek in 2011

Disc Pics: The Sony Mavica MVC-CD300

At the dawn of the digital era there was still uncertainty as to which storage media would dominate. Compact Flash took an early head start, but the storage wars raged for a few years there.

Sony actually had a successful line of early digital cameras that recorded photos and video on 1.44MB 3.5" floppy discs. Thing is, those floppy discs that could hold a reasonable number of 640x480 shots started looking pretty insufficient as sensor resolutions raced past the megapixel mark around the turn of the millennium.

Sony briefly experimented with cameras that used 8cm CD-R discs, beginning with the Mavica MVC-CD1000 which they announced in the summer of 2000. The CD1000 sported a two megapixel sensor which meant you could get better than seventy JPEG images on a 156MB CD-R, as opposed to the three 1.3MP images my Mavica FD88 can squeeze onto a floppy.

At the time, the big advantage that Sony's floppy disc and CD-R Mavicas offered was the ability to transfer photos to nearly any computer via sneakernet. With other digital cameras of the era, you either had to have a card reader, which were far from ubiquitous, or you had to laboriously cable the camera to the computer via USB. On the other hand, almost every desktop and laptop of the time had a floppy drive, a CD-ROM, or both.

Above is the Mavica CD300, a 3MP camera from early 2001, representing the second generation of Sony's CD-R cameras. As you can see, within a single year, the resolution of cameras had jumped by 50%, from the 2MP CD1000 to the 3MP CD300.

The handwriting was on the wall for disc cams almost from their launch. The last generation of CD-R Mavicas came out in February of 2003, by which time the 5MP CD500 was down to fifty JPEGs per disc and, unlike the constantly growing capacities of Compact Flash and SD cards, CD-R capacity was fixed. The disc era only lasted six years, from 1997 to 2003.

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Mirrorless Pics: Huck the Cat with the Sony a7 & vintage Nikon lens

It's hard to believe that it's been a whole decade since Sony's a7 rocked the camera market by introducing full-frame mirrorless to the world of serious photography.

They were the first mirrorless cameras to really dent the pro market, which had previously shunned them due to viewfinder lag, focus speed issues, and battery life. The a7 and its successor, the a7 II, solved the first two issues, but it wasn't until the a7 III that you could go through the day without a pocketful of spare batteries. (The problem was the original a7 used Sony's NP-FW50, which was originally intended for crop-sensor cameras with lower power requirements.)

I used the a7 & a7 II for a while before going back to Canon DSLRs for work because I was too poor to afford a new a7 III and the pandemic delayed the launch of the a7 IV for over a year, which kept used III's uncommon and spendy.

What I miss most about the a7 and a7 II was something fairly unique to full-frame mirrorless: The ability to use almost any old 35mm film lens at their native focal length with a simple dumb adaptor. Sure, you can put them on an APS-C camera like my Fuji X-T2, but then they get that 1.5X focal length multiplier.

These shots of my roommate's cat, Huck, were taken with the original a7 and a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5, one of the all-time classic portrait lenses.

While Responsible Tam would save her pennies until she can afford a nice used EOS R or even something newer, Impulsive Tam is always in danger of jumping on the first reasonably-priced used EOS RP that I can find just so I can play around with old lenses like this again.

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Hidden Advantage

Marko writes about the retirement of my old Sony Mavica FD. It really is an obsolete system, with its non-standard battery pack and a resolution bettered by most cell phones these days.

The Mavica FD had one thing going for it however, the reason I bought it back in late 2001: With its photos being stored on its built-in 3.5" floppy drive, its storage may have been limited, but spare disks could be acquire anywhere. Also, what other digicam could interface, dongle-free, with any desktop computer built since the late '80s?