For the last couple of years my landscape photography hikes have typically included both daytime and nighttime objectives and a heavy kit of prime lenses to support the night work. I typically carry an ultrawide f2.8 and the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art specifically for nightscapes. There’s never been a zoom option that I thought I’d
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TR: Lassen Backcountry Skiing
Juneuary turned to Januburied and nobody is complaining about a drought in northern California anymore. My friend Andrew and I have been talking about getting out and skiing together for years, and we finally made it happen a few weeks back. The question “is there any snow in Tahoe?” now having a definitive answer in the
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Death by 100% Crops V: Far Focus, 200mm and Conclusions
In part V of my series examining Sony APS-C standard “walk-around” zooms we wrap things up with a quick look at performance at far focus distances as well as at long focal lengths for the 18-200 lenses, and a summary of the findings. Far Focus I wanted to make at least a cursory examination of far focus
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Death by 100% Crops IV: Sony APS-C Zooms at 70mm
In part IV of my series examining Sony APS-C standard “walk-around” zooms we look at the performance at 70mm, the longest length available on the Zeiss badged 16-70. Center Sharpness One of my primary objectives in this exercise was to see if the Zeiss 16-70 is really as bad at the long end as photozone
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Death by 100% Crops III: Sony APS-C Zooms at 50mm
In part III of my series examining Sony APS-C standard “walk-around” zooms we look at the performance at 50mm. Center Sharpness At 50mm the Zeiss 16-70 looks pretty good at f5.6 and stopping down to f8 doesn’t add anything significant. Both the 18-105G and original 18-200 are slightly sharper at f8 and pretty comparable here.
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Death by 100% Crops II: Sony APS-C Zooms at the Wide End
In part II of my series examining Sony APS-C standard “walk-around” zooms we look at the performance at the 16-18mm widest focal lengths. The bulk of this series of posts consists of a huge dump of 100% crops from test shots that I took in my backyard and up the hill from my house during
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Death by 100% Crops I: The Sony APS-C Zoom Contenders
The Achilles Heel of higher end Sony camera systems right now is without doubt the lens lineup. I’m still awaiting the rumored 24-70 f2.8 zoom for the full frame system and I’ve also never had a proper standard zoom walk-around lens for my a6000. I’ve decided to finally resolve the latter issue, and I coincidentally ended
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Sony a7RII Mini Review: Thoughts from the Field
Turns out that it didn’t take long for my mirrorless curiosity to turn into lust for the Sony a7RII — to turn into a box from B&H sitting on my doorstep. While the bulk of my digital gear is Canon/EF, I had been enjoying playing around with my Sony a6000. The prospect of a feature-rich
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TR: Monterey
Real life hasn’t left much opening for photographic work lately. I’ve been playing with gear and taking plenty of family snapshots and shooting kids’ soccer games, but that’s been about it. We did get (not too far) away to Monterey for a little family vacation before school started up, and I was hoping to make
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My Mirrorless Manifesto (Sony, Canon, a6000 and SL1/100D content)
Like all good manifestos, I’m going to ramble a bit here mixing discussion of specific gear with some general observations on mirrorless cameras. I’m going to focus on my personal experiences with Canon and Sony gear. I know there are lots of other stuff out there, but I believe my generalizations hold up. I’m also
