Interesting how the EVF is either love or hate. Personally the EVF would be a major reason to get the A99. Think about the ease of manual focusing. No more sore eyes trying to nail focus.
carstenw wrote:
No more looking at the real world either...
using your eyes without a bunch of glass in front of them is better for that anyway. i think seeing what the sensor sees with one eye and what the actual scene looks like with the other is a great compromise.
Doesn't work for me, my right eye is -1 and my left eye -3, so I tend to use my camera with the diopter set to my right eye's -1, and my left eye is just a blur...
carstenw wrote:
Doesn't work for me, my right eye is -1 and my left eye -3, so I tend to use my camera with the diopter set to my right eye's -1, and my left eye is just a blur...
ah, that's a shame. i realize that i have no conception of how needing eye correction effects photography or most other aspects of life. so do you just lift up your glasses when you bring the viewfinder to your eye?
I typically wear glasses only at work (I program), for driving and for watching movies. Everywhere else I just accept the blurriness of the world. I really should do the laser correction thing.
Of course looking at the real world in an average OVF works 'not optimal' to quote a phrase, if light is too bright or too dim, or in the frame coming into the VF, or low on the horizon sneaking under a hat, or or.
The balance is shifting. It might not be this one for you, carsten, but the day may come! There is a diopter also on the a99 (most photographers with higher end cams are older guys with imperfect vision) and the EVF rubber surround is generous, but here is the rub - you don't stare at the subject when using peaking, you simply maximise the 'fire' effect. So you are not maximising perceived resolution but perceived edge contrast. Eye centreing seems less critical too on the EVF. Image magification exceeds handholding ability at the highest level but gives plenty of clean detail. You can put image magn on several easy to reach buttons.
I handed the a99 to my eye glass wearing partner who is manual focus phobic, and asked her to take one of me with a Summ R 50/2 using peaking and histo - in the shot you could see individual whiskers from several metres away, very sharp. She was impressed.
philip_pj wrote:
The balance is shifting. It might not be this one for you, carsten, but the day may come! There is a diopter also on the a99 (most photographers with higher end cams are older guys with imperfect vision) and the EVF rubber surround is generous, but here is the rub - you don't stare at the subject when using peaking, you simply maximise the 'fire' effect.
I have to admit that I am watching the EVF trend very closely. I own the VF2 viewfinder for my E-PL3, and this is my favourite EVF of any I have seen so far, which includes the NEX-7 and A77, but not the A99. Once the A99 is readily available in the shops, I will check it out, although I doubt I will buy it. I love love love love love OVFs, and can not yet imagine wanting to replace my D3 or D800 with a camera with an EVF, but perhaps one day they will be good enough. To me, that means retina and at least 60fps solid, with a very fast reaction to light intensity changes, and high dynamic range with sRGB calibrationability. I imagine that this will take around 5 years (unless Apple gets into cameras).
carstenw wrote:
I typically wear glasses only at work (I program), for driving and for watching movies. Everywhere else I just accept the blurriness of the world. I really should do the laser correction thing.
ha, i had a nearsighted girlfriend who never wore her glasses because she enjoyed the blurry artistic rendering it gave the world. i watched her spend nearly half an hour walking in circles looking for a bathroom that she walked past over and over again.
Philip, maybe you can answer this. If shooting a portrait with say the 105/2.5 WO. Will peaking be accurate enough to nail focus on the eye(s)? Or do you need 3x mag?
mortyb, I'll try this soon in a well lit room (night here) with a Contax 100mm f3/5 Sonnar. I am a big user of slow lenses (old medium format 'habit') so the toughest one got tested first - the 35-70/3.4. I just tried this zoom @ 70m in the kitchen (mid brightness fluoro bulb) and the best way to focus critically on a person fast is with the 1st mag level (around 6x, two button presses) - the enlargement ratio seems designed for it. No peaking showed on hair or eyes, but that is on low - I upped it to high and some (enough) hairs light up nicely at that 6x magnification. The 100mm should be better - more image object magnification from the FL. Same speed too.
I want to say some more about the EVF but first the horizon level thingy works a treat. I expected a horizontal setup which would be great for nature work (I often lose 5-10% of a900 images, painful both to admit and carry out) but on the a99 the fore/aft plane is also there for shots you want to perfectly level in both lateral and longitudinal. I like this level of consideration for photographers, the camera has quite a lot of nice touches.
OK, the Contax 100mm on the a900 'looks' very nice, an elegant facsimile of reality, like a soft low key photo. Focusing in soft light (loungeroom) was enjoyable but 'inexact' and slow; actual target focus took a few back and forth turns and the one I settled on was maybe 40% a guesstimate, the focal plane might easily have been 4-5 cms in either direction.
The a99 EVF image was both less appealing marginally yet very 'work ready', with maybe a 2 stop brighter image (EVF is set to low brightness, I prefer a softer look) at correct exposure. It showed good peaking highlights (glasses, hair and eyes) - to give you some idea of the light levels, this composition gave me 1/30 sec and f3.5 at iso 8000, or 1/13 sec and f5.6 at the same iso - and focus peaking showed effectively at f5.6.
Focusing took perhaps 25% the time taken on the a900 and I knew I had it right first time. The histo and SS told me I had exposure right. This type of shot is a bit of a stretch for a 100mm lens but I shoot a lot of these exact light conditions with a Summicron 50/2 or 21/2.8, so you see why I say its a big improvement on the a900 - for this kind of situation.
So two big wins: (i) easier, faster, more accurate focusing; (ii) ability to focus at f5.6-f8 in poor light if ever needed, as that is simply beyond the a900. This also gives an estimate of DOF via the peaking and the image appearance, made more effective by the consistent EVF lighting.
The review of shot images is very good in the EVF, very like seeing a jpeg on a good small screen. Very reassuring to see your shot and check how it went.
It's the same EVF as that of the a77 and maybe the nex7, don't know about that last one. But it gets a feed from the much larger physical area of the full frame sensor, over twice the size. That and a few improvements in say the components and pipelines prob mean that most users see an improvement, esp in poor light.
Some say choosing low contrast settings can improve shadow detail, but the sensor has excellent DR and I use the histo to gauge shadow tones. Overall, not much different to using Photoshop in some ways, but for 'pre-shot editing'. Apparently LR needs very little work to get images looking good.
Battery usage is greater than a900 if you do a lot of long reviews or LCD menuing or review or LV, but if you get on with it, users are reporting it gets better if you are sensible with it. Early on, it takes time for new batteries to get up to strength and the in-cam battery charges up also. I have a few, so no sweat.
Had to post this from an interview with Sony's Yosuke Aoki:
“Canon and Nikon are traditional camera brands. Sony stands for uniqueness and electronics. Those we’d like to optimize. We plan to use electronics and technology to change camera development.”
The EVF is the same between A99/NEX-6/XE-1
The EVF is the same between A77/NEX-7/FDA-EV1S
So are there any major differences? Last one I used and did not like for anything but still life was the 5N's. I saw no difference compared to NEX 7. Apart from the fact that the 5N one was tiltable which is neat.
i think seeing what the sensor sees with one eye and what the actual scene looks like with the other is a great compromise.
But I can't read street signs and so on without going quite close.