Hi all, apologies for taking so long to post these here but had to pay for the holiday time with some intensive work time..
Have posted a selection of shots - these are the ones where I have applied a slight aftertouch (only minor cropping of the color curves and in some cases cropping of the image - I think only two images, the leopard cubs and the hovering bird, however were cropped). I think a combination of a very bright viewfinder and shades resulted in picking WB to a slightly tight histogram, cropping 5% eitherside made the image truer to the real colors. I will try to post straight out-of –camera examples soon aswell – these were just easier to pick as they were in a folder of their own!
Because a manual lens was used EXIF data will lack aperture and focal length, however all of these were shot with the lens combination as labelled.
Equipment:
Sony NEX-7 with Contax Zeiss 80-200 f4 + Contax Zeiss 35-70 f3.4 & Contax Zeiss Mutar I (2x) tele
Notes:
Quick rundown of pros and cons on the equipment and experiences to share, will add as it comes back to mind:
+ Beanbag - the most useful tool of all, still quite hard to get a proper focus with it (remember, 100%manual! So setting it down at times caused the slightest ever movements of the focus ring) but unmatchable for stabilising the lens
+ IR Remote - heard lots of people complain theirs didnt work with the NEX7, my cheap ebay remote worked perfectly fine and in addition to preventing my clumsiness from adding shake, also allowed me to frame, actually watch and enjoy what was going on, and fire when needed
+/- Gorilla Pod, strong and sturdy but long heavy lens compared to camera meant it would oscillate with the wind, much more than it would if handheld.. prob ok to use as support to shoot video but not used much for that purpose (except a great video of a charging cheetah which did unfortunately come out slightly off axis)
- Filters. Not sure what happened here but a moment of panic set about on the very first day: Pick the camera up, jam a UV or a polarizing filter on it, press the Focus assist button (I use the AF/EV toggle that sits on your thumb to get the 5.9x zoom to check proper focus when taking any pic on a manual lens – simply relying on peeking is NOT enough) and everything is blurry. I could not get a focused clear image..I thought it might have been the adapter, stripped the camera..lens only was a bit better..then took the filters off and everything was fine. Not sure what the exact reason was..filters of poor quality (polaroid filter for the 55mm as I couldn’t get a hoya pro in time) was the blame, haven’t tried since.
More to come.. in the meantime feel free to comment and/or ask anything and Ill add more stuff as I remember it
May 17, 2013 at 05:47 AM
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