Sony a77ii. Getting serious about Sony A mount.

I'm not going to beat-around-the-bush with a long teaser introduction to this post. I'm too excited.

I've done it. I've purchased a Sony a77ii. And in doing so, I've placed my stick in the ground, so to speak.

From the beginning of this year when I started getting into macro photography (fungi in particular), using the Sony a99, I already had a foot in the Sony camp.

Then in February I jumped in, boots and all, and traded in my Olympus E-M1 for a Sony a57. And while the a57 was certainly no a99, I did enjoy using it, and took some of my favourite landscapes from this year with the camera.

As it transpires, the a57 had a problem with the sensor being out of alignment. Not noticeable when the camera was focused at infinity (for landscapes), but very obvious if you tried to focus on a subject closer.

So unfortunately the a57 went back, and my E-M1 was returned to me. I started using the micro four thirds system again, and that would have probably been that. Had it not been for a recent phone call.

I had been 'borrowing' the Sony a99 from a friend, together with a 50mm macro lens, and this is the kit I'd been enjoying using for macro fungi photography. Although I had also used the E-M1 with standard lenses as well. Stewart is a professional photographer who has been transitioning from Sony a-mount to Sony e-mount for a while. He rang to ask me if I was still interested in using a-mount gear, and would I like any of his? Of course I said 'yes', and in doing so, my fate was sealed.

Stewart has a load (and I mean a load) of a-mount lenses that he can 'give' me - basically on permanent loan. That's good enough for me - Stewart is definitely a man of his word. But lenses are no good without a camera body to go with it. And the a99 is really in no fit state to guarantee continued performance, or build an entire system on. So I needed a camera body. In my price range. Enter the Sony a77ii.

The Sony a77ii is, to all intents and purposes, a 'baby' a99. It has a 24 megapixel CMOS sensor (rather than full frame), a superior 79 point autofocus system, and the same design and layout. Including the same excellent flip up, down and around articulating lcd screen that I love on the a99. It has a solid magnesium alloy body, is weather resistant, only has one SD card slot (nevermind), and shares the same excellent OLED viewfinder. It is Sony's last, top-of-the-line cropped sensor camera, with fast 12fps shooting and a superb autofocus system. As such, it became very popular with sports action and wildlife photographers looking for the extra reach that an APSC cropped sensor can give. All I had to do now was find one for the right price!

The Sony a99's and a77's don't seem to come up on the used market as regularly as other cameras. And when they do, the seller is often asking a ridiculously high price for them. And I do mean ridiculous. There are a couple on TradeMe (an NZ online auction site) for almost NZ$2k for an a77 and almost NZ$3k for an a99 - both mark 1 versions! No thank you.

Fortunately, if you are patient (I've been watching the market for over 10 months), a bargain will eventually appear. One such bargain showed up recently in my watchlist. But even then I didn't pull the trigger straight away, since I don't really have the money to purchase the camera.

A couple of questions emailed to the seller indicated that he was happy to wait for a little while for me to get the $$ together should I win the auction. And then, a timely query for a paid photography job sealed the deal and I bid on the camera in the dying seconds of the auction. And I won. For the starting price (which was actually less than I put in an early offering bid for but which was rejected by the seller). Score!

The images in this blog are of the actual camera I have won, taken from the auction site photos. So yes, it looks in pretty good shape. It also comes with two standard Sony lenses - the 18-55 and the 55-200mm kit lenses. Probably won't use them that much (if at all), but hey, they come with the camera. So that's a bonus. It also comes with a charger (obviously), two Sony batteries (yay), two remote controls, and a Peak Design Capture camera clip for placing on a backpack strap. Never used one of those before, so will be keen to try it out.

All for a lot less than any of the other a77 mark 1 cameras on TradeMe presently. Bargain! At least I hope it is!? We'll see when I have it in my hot little hand. Which should be no more than a couple of weeks away?

I'm already eyeing up an after-market grip for it so I can extend the shooting time and have a vertical shutter release. I would prefer an original Sony one, but these are even rarer than the cameras on the secondhand market, so a third-party offering will have to do.

Super-excited to be getting the Sony a77ii, and using it next fungi season for some serious macro photography! Oh and yeah, I also have a wedding to shoot early next year. Could be a good season of photography coming up! I'll keep you posted.

OM Systems OM-5. Ho hum.....

Despite my recent (and not so recent) plethora of posts on the Sony a-mount, I am still an Olympus micro four thirds shooter. My camera is the venerable Olympus E-M1, with a couple of Panasonic kit lenses. So I am, to a certain extent, invested in the Olympus micro four thirds eco-system (although for how much longer I'm not too sure).

Earlier this year, OM System - Olympus' new owners - introduced their flagship model, the OM-1. There was, of course, much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the internet trolls who hated on the camera. But honestly, I thought it was a pretty solid release and a worthy successor to the E-M1 line. I wrote about it in a blogpost here.

Now, towards the end of 2022, OM System have introduced their second camera to the fold - the OM-5 (surprise, surprise).

Unlike the OM-1, which still bares the Olympus name on the front, the OM-5 is the first to be branded with OM System. And fair enough too.

But apart from this visual clue as to change of ownership, what else have OM System done to the existing E-M5 Mk3 that it replaces in the lineup?

Well, not much - at all - if we are being brutally honest.

Other than the name-change, the OM-5 and E-M5 Mk3 bodies are exactly the same. Nothing has changed. Same design and button layout, same sensor, same AF system. Same battery. Same accessories. Same-old same-old. It even has the old menu system and doesn't benefit from the upgraded menu that appeared in the OM-1. Bugger!

Ok, perhaps I'm being a little disingenuous (maybe)? It does have a new image processor - the same one as in the E-M1 Mk3, which allows for some extra computational power not before seen in the E-M5s. This includes Starry Sky AF, hand-held hi-res shooting and built-in 4 stop Live ND (the E-M1 Mk3 with the same processor can do 5 stops).

The OM-5 also has better weather resistance than the E-M5 Mk3 - with the same IP53 rating as the OM-1, as well as slightly better (as in 15% better) image stabilisation. But really, for the OM-5's target market, the weather sealing and image stabilisation was perfectly adequate as it was. Still, a little better is preferable I guess?

In a nutshell, the new OM-5 is an E-M5 Mk3 with Starry Sky AF, hand-held hi-res mode and a 4-stop Live ND. Yawn...

Unfortunately it could have been (and I would argue should have been) so much more! Where's the upgraded menu system already incorporated into the OM-1? It would have been such a simple thing to implement. Why not dual card slots (finally) in a 5 series camera? Or a joystick controller on the rear of the camera? Do something to make it look like you tried to give us a different camera!

But no. It really does feel (and look) like OM System really couldn't be bothered. Which is sad. And a little worrying.

Look, I appreciate that this has felt like a bit of a dump on OM System. And maybe it is? But I don't do it simply to be mean. I'm rooting for them. Really, I am. And I thought that their OM-1 was an excellent introduction - I really did. The OM-5 though.... not so much.

If this is your first ever OM System (Olympus) micro four thirds camera, then you'll absolutely love it! And please don't get me wrong, it will be a great camera. But if you were looking to upgrade from the E-M5 Mk3, then the OM-5 isn't the camera for you. A lightly used OM-1 would be a far better upgrade path. Or even a new E-M1 Mk3. That would be where I would put my money.

Pre-focusing for action photography

Every year in the town where I live, they put on a motorcycle street race event. It's always over a long weekend (Labour Day here in NZ), and it's always a great day out. Especially if we get a warm spring day.

Fortunately, the weather Gods were smiling on the event this year, and the weather couldn't have been better. So I decided that I was going to attend this year and use the chance to get in a full day of photography - a very rare occasion nowadays. 

Catch me if you can. Sony A7iii with Sony G Master 100-400mm.  f/5.6 @ 1/2500, ISO 400

In my previous post I talked about scoring a bunch of Minolta lenses from a friend (thanks again Stew) to use for the event. Specifically the Minolta 100-400mm f/4.5-6.7 Apo and a Sigma 180mm f/3.5 macro. I was looking forward to using these on my also borrowed Sony a99.

I have shot this event several times over the years, with a lot of different gear, so I knew that lenses in the vicinity of 200mm would be about right if I wanted to get close to the action. In fact there are places around the track where you can get so close as to almost reach out and touch the riders as they hurtle past at 100mph. I kid you not! I, however, like to keep a slightly safer distance from the action as it unfolds. So the 100-400mm and even the 180mm macro were going to be about perfect for the whole day.

The observant among you (I'm sure that's everyone who reads this blog) will have noticed by now that the opening image in this post was not taken with the a99 in combination with the two lenses I've just discussed. It was taken with much newer gear that I also had a chance to 'play' with. More on that later.

Knee-scraping action. Sony a99 with Sigma 180mm macro. f/4 @ 1/1000th, ISO 200

It may, at first glance, seem unusual to take a macro lens to a motorsport event. Macro lenses are for close up photos of bugs and flowers - aren't they? Well yes, they are. But they can also be used as a 'normal' lens. And they also tend to be reasonably fast, and reasonably sharp. For a 180mm focal length, that's a pretty slick combination.

The one thing they maybe aren't, however, is extremely fast focusing. And neither is the 10 year old Sony a99. 6 FPS (frames per second) isn't what you would call blazingly fast. And its continuous autofocus isn't anything spectacular either. It's a fantastic landscape camera. But for fast sports action shooting - not so much.

But then again, I knew this wasn't going to be a problem. Because my favourite technique for shooting these extremely fast action sports is rather old-school. It's known as pre-focusing, and was used by all the sports photographers before this snazzy thing called autofocus tracking was invented. And it's pretty easy to do.

Bascially, just put your camera into manual focus (yes, I know, manual focusing is scary - but bear with me), 'pre-focus' on an area that you know your subject is going to move through, and then fire a burst of images as they move through the pre-focused zone. All in manual focus. Simple. And very effective.

All concentration. Sony a99 with Minolta 100-400mm Apo. f/6.3 @ 1/800th, ISO 640

There's really only one drawback using this method. You have to take a lot of images to make sure you get the sharp frame you are after. Unfortunately this dramatically increases the processing you need to go through afterwards. And I mean dramatically. For example, to get a decent 'hit rate' using this method, I took over 3500 images on the day. That's not a typo. 3500 images! And of that, around 80% are out of focus and will needed to be deleted. I'll probably end up throwing away 3000 images. But at least I'll be left with about 500 sharp ones.

Despite the tedious post-processing that this technique requires, I'm very happy with the results. If you don't have the latest and greatest gear, or a camera system that isn't optimised for fast action autofocusing, then this really should be your go-to technique.

Of course there is a better way. And it's not going to please the 'gear doesn't matter' brigade. Because for some types of photography (in fact for most types) the gear does matter. This was made abundantly clear to me later on in the afternoon.

Out in front. Sony A7iii with Sony G Master 100-400mm. f/5.6 @ 1/1600th, ISO 400

My mate Stewart turned up in the late afternoon to see how I was getting on. We chatted for a while, I told him that I was using the pro-focus technique, and he asked me if I would like to try using his Sony A7iii with Sony 100-400 G Master lens for a while?

Who am I to turn down an offer like that! So of course I said yes - thinking that I would fumble my way through, making a terrible hash of trying to follow and capture the action. OMG - was I wrong!

You can always hear the roar of the bikes approaching before you see them so you have some time to prepare. Stewart told me he had the camera set to focus tracking with a wide autofocus area, so all I needed to do was point and shoot. Yeah - right!

And yeah, he was right! As the first riders came screaming around the bend, I held the camera up to my eye, the focus points instantly locked onto the front rider, and they all lit up green. Click-click-click, the shutter fired in blazingly quick succession, and I had a series of tack-sharp images. All of them!

Need for Speed. Sony A7iii with Sony G Master 100-400mm. f/5.6 @ 1/2000th, ISO 400

I almost couldn't believe the speed and accuracy of the autofocus on the A7iii, paired with the Sony G Master 100-400mm teleophoto. It was mad, crazy, unbelievably fast. And the results were so much sharper than anything I got with the Minolta 100-400mm or Sigma 180mm. Period! I've never used anything quite this fast and accurate before. It was scary good - and exhilarating - I'm not gonna lie. 

It also happens to be over NZ$7k worth of kit! So yeah, there's that.

If you can afford it, and if you need it, then absolutely go for it. If I was doing this for a living it would be a no-brainer.

And for the rest of us mere mortals? Well, there's always the pre-focusing technique. Which does work. It just requires a lot more computer time in order to find the 'keepers' from the rest. 

Oh well. I'd better get back to post-processing then, I guess?

Alive and kicking

It's been 6 months since I last posted on this blog! Why so long?

Well, as my last post described I had a bit of gear trouble, which took a couple of months to work through. My Sony a57's sensor was out of alignment, resulting in blurry images no matter what I did (unless the camera was focused to infinity). The camera store was really good about working this out with me (thanks Greg and the team at Photo & Video in Christchurch). They tried to find me another a57 (or equivalent) to replace the faulty camera - since it wasn't really worth repairing the sensor alignment issue.

Anyhoo - long story short - they couldn't find me a replacement, so I took my Olympus E-M1 back (with two Panasonic kit lenses). I dived back into micro four thirds, and even started a new Wordpress blog about it. So I may not have been writing about photography on this blog, but I have been writing on another.

So why this new post here? What gives?

Greymouth Street Races 2022. Sony a99 with Sigma 180mm macro. f/4 @ 1/1000th, ISO 200

A few reasons spring to mind -

A) it's about damn time I wrote something on this blog!

B) the Wordpress experiment didn't go all that well. I didn't really enjoy Wordpress as a platform.

C) things are starting to happen again in my photography sphere, and I want to write about them.

and D) it's about damn time I wrote something on this blog!

First things first, you'll notice that the above image, of last weekends (as I write this) street races, wasn't taken on my Olympus E-M1. I still have the Sony a99. And I still enjoy using it. And I still have access to some fantastic lenses for it. So no - I still haven't given up on using the Sony A-mount system. Things have, in fact, got even more muddy in those waters recently. Let me explain....

No.74. Sony a99 with Sigma 180mm macro. f/4 @ 1/1250th, ISO 200

Stewart - my photographer friend who I can borrow all this Sony gear from (hi Stew), called me recently and asked if I was still interested in using the Sony A-Mount gear. He has moved over fully to Sony E-Mount now, and was wondering whether I wanted his A-Mount gear!

That would be a YES!

We left it at that, but with the Greymouth Street Races coming up, I had an excuse to spend a full day on photography (a rarity). I got back in touch with Stewart and asked if he might have any telephoto lenses I could borrow for the a99. A couple of days before the event Stew turned up at my house with a bag full of lenses and proceeded to hand them to me. Two stood out as useful - a Minolta 100-400mm APO f4.5/6.7 and a Sigma 180mm f3.5 macro. But he also 'gave' me a Minolta 100mm macro (fungi photography here I come!), a Minolta 28-75mm f2.8D (gorgeous), and a beautiful Minolta 85mm f1.4.

See what I mean about being able to get good glass for the Sony A-Mount system! There's no way I could afford to get the equivalent lenses for my Olympus - or any other system, for that matter. I feel very blessed, and very spoilt. But I can't lie, I'm also now a little confused.

No.99. Sony a99 with Minolta 100-400mm APO. f/6.3 @ 1/800th, ISO 640

I've written before on this blog about how much I enjoy using the Sony a99. It's a full-frame beast of a camera, with a tonne of great features, and is a joy to use. But, (there's that but) I've also said that it isn't a camera body that I could base a system around, given that it's had a lot of professional use and is certainly nearing the end of its rated lifespan. So I would need to get another, lighter used a99, or similar, to seriously consider it as my new system going forward.

And there in lies the rub.

For some reason, Sony users here in New Zealand who have mint condition a99's, expect ridiculous prices for them. Far more (and I mean FAR more) than I would expect to have to pay for one. I know they are a good camera, but come on people...

And it doesn't stop their either. I would also consider getting an a77 - their top A-mount APSC body, if not for the fact that it too tends to fetch crazy-stupid prices on the secondhand market. What is it with these Sony users?

No.54. Sony a99 with Sigma 180mm macro. f/4 @ 1/1000th, ISO 200 

I guess I'll just have to bide my time and wait for something to come along at the right price? I'm sure it will? 

And even though the Sony A-Mount is a 'dead-end' (discontinued a year ago by Sony), for me it's practically the ideal camera system. I love the weight and feel of a traditional DSLR, but I also really love the 'new' technology that includes electronic viewfinders. The Sony SLT (single lens translucent) technology has both.

I think at this point I'd be crazy not to be thinking about going down the Sony A-Mount route. With my Olympus E-M1, I have the camera body and two Panasonic kit lenses. That's it. With the Sony A-Mount, I have the full-frame a99 (admittedly on its last legs), a Minolta 28-75mm f/2.8D, Minolta 24-105mm f/3.5-4.5D, Minolta 16mm f/2.8 fisheye, Minolta 50mm f/2.8 macro, Minolta 100mm f/2.8 macro, Sigma 180mm f/3.5 macro, Minolta 100-400mm f/4.5-6.7 Apo, and last, but by no means least, a Minolta 85mm f1.4. See what I mean.

If I sell my Olympus E-M1 kit, I still won't have enough for a used a77 or a99. Not without selling some other gear, or subsidising the purchase some other way. Like getting money from doing some photography. Which I will be doing shortly 😄

BTW - my next post will be about my day spent using the a99 and various lenses to actually take the street race images that accompany this post. It was an enlightening experience. But that's a story for next time...