p.182 #8 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
I live about 15 minutes from the National Museum of the US Air Force, or, as we know it, the Air Force Museum. Over the years it's become my go-to place for equipment tests when the weather isn't good enough to go outside. Today's tests were of the Sony Rx1 camera and
the Sirui T005X tripod. I use an Arca style grip on the Sony and had added a larger Arca style receiver to the small ball head on the tripod. I forgot a cable release but do have a soft release on the camera. You can see that the exposures were very long.
The only frustrating thing to me is that the 35mm focal length wasn't quite wide enough. When I tested the Sigma DP1 Merrill camera with the 28mm lens it was near perfect.
There are many cool planes in this museum, unfortunately, they're nearly impossible to shoot.
The B52, the B1B, the Stealth fighter and the Blackbird are just too big to get any angle on. However, Betty Jo, the Twin Mustang and some of the nose art is pretty easy to shoot.
The last shot is a B36 bomber from SAC. It has six prop pushers and four jet engines. They refer to it as "6 turnin' and 4 burnin'".
p.182 #9 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
paulkris wrote:
I live about 15 minutes from the National Museum of the US Air Force, or, as we know it, the Air Force Museum. Over the years it's become my go-to place for equipment tests when the weather isn't good enough to go outside. Today's tests were of the Sony Rx1 camera and
the Sirui T005X tripod. I use an Arca style grip on the Sony and had added a larger Arca style receiver to the small ball head on the tripod. I forgot a cable release but do have a soft release on the camera. You can see that the exposures were very long.
The only frustrating thing to me is that the 35mm focal length wasn't quite wide enough. When I tested the Sigma DP1 Merrill camera with the 28mm lens it was near perfect.
There are many cool planes in this museum, unfortunately, they're nearly impossible to shoot.
The B52, the B1B, the Stealth fighter and the Blackbird are just too big to get any angle on. However, Betty Jo, the Twin Mustang and some of the nose art is pretty easy to shoot.
The last shot is a B36 bomber from SAC. It has six prop pushers and four jet engines. They refer to it as "6 turnin' and 4 burnin'". ...Show more →
Just curious why you chose to stop the lens down so far?
p.182 #10 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
No. I was using the exposure that I wanted. it may be unusual to shoot at such small apertures but I wanted to see what would happen at long shutter speeds and small apertures as I sometimes wind up like that in the real world. I saw very little diffraction which is what I was looking for. To be real honest about it, I think the diffraction theory is a little overblown in the real world. Optically, I understand the theory but practically the extra depth of focus more than makes up for what small amount of resolution that I lose. I only use manual metering and I also wanted to see just how accurate the Sony was in the preview exposure mode. It was almost perfect even in situations where I was shooting with a point light source in the frame.
p.182 #11 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
paulkris wrote:
No. I was using the exposure that I wanted. They may be unusual in your mind but I wanted to see what would happen at long shutter speeds and small apertures as I sometimes wind up like that in the real world. I saw very little diffraction which is what I was looking for.
Was there something else that didn't look right to you?
Obviously you're free to shoot however you want. The reason for my comment is that by stopping down so far (farther than necessary in my opinion), it forced you to push up the ISO, or slow down the shutter speed, or both, neither of which is generally desirable.
Your explanation is that you were experimenting. Fine.
p.182 #12 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
I didn't mean to sound argumentative. I could have gotten the same result by changing the settings. The RX1 does work pretty well at high ISO's, though.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
p.182 #13 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
I finally have a computer again...
Two portraits of my wife, one color, one b&w, both ISO 12800. I love the grain... I think I'll start shooting with artificially high shutter speeds on purpose
p.182 #15 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
bhollis wrote:
Obviously you're free to shoot however you want. The reason for my comment is that by stopping down so far (farther than necessary in my opinion), it forced you to push up the ISO, or slow down the shutter speed, or both, neither of which is generally desirable.
Your explanation is that you were experimenting. Fine.
Not really sure what your getting at here because 1) the planes are stationary and indoors and 2) he was using a tripod, so what exactly is the penalty for longer shutter speeds ?
p.182 #16 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
millsart wrote:
Not really sure what your getting at here because 1) the planes are stationary and indoors and 2) he was using a tripod, so what exactly is the penalty for longer shutter speeds ?
In this case probably not much of a penalty. But in general, I think it's best to avoid really slow shutter speeds unless they serve some purpose in the photo. In the case of these photos, I could see no such purpose being served. Nor could I see any purpose being served by the very small apertures, particularly f/22 in the last shot. So I was curious to know why he'd chosen shoot at such small apertures, and the answer was essentially that he was experimenting to see what the result would look like. Fine.
p.182 #17 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
The slow speeds were really to test out the tripod which I was very concerned about. It worked out pretty well though I wouldn't walk away from it if it was windy.
I could have lowered the ISO and got a slow speed, too, but I was too lazy to make changes.
As far as diffraction is concerned and lens performance at small apertures, I think it's a vastly overblown concept in the real world. I've shot literally hundreds of test targets and I can report with confidence that there's a huge difference between shooting a test target and shooting in the real world. I don't necessarily shoot all the way stopped down most of the time but I'll accept depth of field for a slight loss in resolution any time.
p.182 #18 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
paulkris wrote:
The slow speeds were really to test out the tripod which I was very concerned about. It worked out pretty well though I wouldn't walk away from it if it was windy.
I could have lowered the ISO and got a slow speed, too, but I was too lazy to make changes.
As far as diffraction is concerned and lens performance at small apertures, I think it's a vastly overblown concept in the real world. I've shot literally hundreds of test targets and I can report with confidence that there's a huge difference between shooting a test target and shooting in the real world. I don't necessarily shoot all the way stopped down most of the time but I'll accept depth of field for a slight loss in resolution any time. ...Show more →
I tend to agree that diffraction is somewhat overblown. Nevertheless, I generally avoid going to f/16 or f/22 unless I really need that much dof. And with a 35mm lens, I very rarely need to go with such small apertures to get the dof I need. FWIW, I don't think I've ever gone smaller than f/8 on my RX1R. But maybe that's just me.
p.182 #19 · Sony RX1, RX1R, RX1R II and RX1R III Image Thread
I shoot a lot of stuff in burial grounds where the DOF gets pretty critical. I rarely use F16 or F22 either. Yesterday I just got lazy and rather than change the settings I kept stopping down more than I usually would.
I shoot a lot with the 10-24 Fuji and the 14mm Fuji lenses which really don't need to be stopped down past F11 for most pictures.
