The Amazing Sony A1/A7/A9/APS-C & Anything else welcome Mega Thread!

I have an original version Minolta 35-105 which I use on my A6600 with an La-EA5 adapter. I love the colours, the DoF and it has a certain 'something' - and for £15 it's absolutely amazing. I use it for street photography quite a bit because of the range.

However, the only thing is, I find there is a slight delay between pressing the button and the photo. Not a lot, but enough to notice. It doesn't happen with my other Minolta lenses (80-200APO and 100 Macro), so I guess it's just a thing with this one. Anyway, I'm looking at the E-mount 18-135 which will do away with this (and the need to remember to take the adaptor out) but don't want to spend £300+ if it doesn't bring about real benefits.

Has anyone ever compared the two, or have any advice at all?

Many thanks.
 
Sticky aperture blades? Adapted lenses on the EA5 need to stop down when the shutter is pressed.

To test, does it do it shot wide open?

Also, if the camera is set to not take till focus is locked could be sticky focus, does it do it when set to manual focus?
 
the_accidental said:
Sticky aperture blades? Adapted lenses on the EA5 need to stop down when the shutter is pressed.

To test, does it do it shot wide open?

Also, if the camera is set to not take till focus is locked could be sticky focus, does it do it when set to manual focus?
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I shall have a go at checking this, as I rarely shoot wide open - thanks. It makes quite a clunky sound when focusing - but so does my 80-200.
 
So if you shoot wide open you shouldn’t hear the stop down or get delay.

If you MF and shoot stopped down you’ll just hear the stop down and get the delay.

So the combination lets you understand what’s causing it, and let you compare with other lenses.

On many lenses it actually quite easy to get at the aperture blades, or look down the lens (you can slide the little spring lever on the mount end to open/close them). They should look dry and clean.
 
the_accidental said:
So if you shoot wide open you shouldn’t hear the stop down or get delay.

If you MF and shoot stopped down you’ll just hear the stop down and get the delay.

So the combination lets you understand what’s causing it, and let you compare with other lenses.

On many lenses it actually quite easy to get at the aperture blades, or look down the lens (you can slide the little spring lever on the mount end to open/close them). They should look dry and clean.
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Thanks - is that what the clunking noise is? The stop down?
 
Bodian said:
I have an original version Minolta 35-105 which I use on my A6600 with an La-EA5 adapter. I love the colours, the DoF and it has a certain 'something' - and for £15 it's absolutely amazing. I use it for street photography quite a bit because of the range.

However, the only thing is, I find there is a slight delay between pressing the button and the photo. Not a lot, but enough to notice. It doesn't happen with my other Minolta lenses (80-200APO and 100 Macro), so I guess it's just a thing with this one. Anyway, I'm looking at the E-mount 18-135 which will do away with this (and the need to remember to take the adaptor out) but don't want to spend £300+ if it doesn't bring about real benefits.

Has anyone ever compared the two, or have any advice at all?

Many thanks.
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They will be very different lenses and produce pictures that don't look alike. I have used that minolta lens (it's lovely) but a modern super-zoom will give a busy, flattish and slightly hard rendering by comparison. I suspect the delay you detect is caused by the aperture being closed on the film lens, modern FE mount lenses operating at the taking aperture without stopping down before releasing the shutter. That is the clunk you are hearing.
 
Bodian said:
About time you got another one!
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I actually forgot about a couple of cheap bags I had ordered from Ali Express for my A7CII kit. :ROFLMAO:

Used them both a couple of times but have went back to using one of my Billinghams for that.
 
ancient_mariner said:
They will be very different lenses and produce pictures that don't look alike. I have used that minolta lens (it's lovely) but a modern super-zoom will give a busy, flattish and slightly hard rendering by comparison. I suspect the delay you detect is caused by the aperture being closed on the film lens, modern FE mount lenses operating at the taking aperture without stopping down before releasing the shutter. That is the clunk you are hearing.
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Many thanks.

The highlighted part is the bit I was concerned about. There's something pleasingly softish but not soft, with the old minolta lens that I really quite like. Maybe it's simply because a lot of modern lenses/photos have that slightly hard-ish look you mention, and so something unlike it is now more appealing?
 
If you want to hear the stop down noise you can assign a button to “aperture preview” then when you press it you’ll hear (and see) the lens stop down to the set aperture. I have c1 set to this for using adapted lenses.
 
I took two pictures with a smartphone...

The Deep Clean could have been better.

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Elliott.

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The last twice I've been out with a camera it's been my creaking old A7 rather than my A7III. I'm going to take the A7III and 40mm out next time, maybe the A7 and 24mm too.
 
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woof woof said:
It's a lovely sunny day today :D but no time for photography :( Good luck to those who have time :D
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I'm stacking logs for the winter as quickly as possible, just in case it rains. A beautiful chilly morning here, but clouding over now. When lunch is done it's back to work.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'm stacking logs for the winter as quickly as possible, just in case it rains. A beautiful chilly morning here, but clouding over now. When lunch is done it's back to work.
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I can't believe I've seen blue in the sky two days running. That's just not normal.

As it's quiet. More A7 and TTA 50mm f2 pictures.

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I really like the skies you're getting with that combo, especially contrasted against the sea.

Don't have any nice skies with my Sony kit yet, and not going to sneak an x100 pic in here ;)
 
the_accidental said:
I really like the skies you're getting with that combo, especially contrasted against the sea.

Don't have any nice skies with my Sony kit yet, and not going to sneak an x100 pic in here ;)
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Oh go on go on go on go on go on.

You can always say something to make it Sony thread relevant :D
 
In case anyone may be interested, my a9 will be going in the classifieds during the week. Collecting the a7cii and Sigma 50mm f1.4 mid week. I will add photo’s soon.
 
Hopefully you don’t have any of the usual Samyang quality control issues. They also often ship them with the original firmware and you may need to update the firmware
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Well the 75 arrived today and I’ve only had time to get it on the camera and shoot a couple of test charts etc.

First impressions - really nice size and weight, great handling on the compact body. Like my big boy Samyang (35-150) I like the mode switch for the ring between focus and aperture.

First issue - wouldn’t AF track on my camera, quick update from v1 to v6 sorted that out.

Second perhaps issue… it is decentered to a degree I can reliably spot it shooting tests, but not to the degree it won’t focus in the worst corner.

I can’t decide if I’ll send it back or not, I need to actually shoot properly with it to decide if it’s a practical issue or just something I can spot when doing odd things (like shooting resolution charts from a tripod, or placing fine detail at distance in the corner and shooting wide open focussed elsewhere).

In some ways if it was worse I’d forgive it more - the “bad” corner, if they were all like that wide open I’d just think “ah well the price you pay for such a small light lens” but otherwise it’s remarkably sharp. For my intended and likely use - people - portrait, candid and action when out and about - I’ll probably never notice it.

If it was full price it’d go back for sure, but it was a bit of a used bargain at £120… so I think I’m ok with a bit of cheap and cheerful. I suspect most people might never have noticed but I have the kit and know-how to test so I did.
 
LeeRatters said:
Shooting a very small, registry office wedding next week..... Something new for me! :)

The only decent advice I can find so far is "don't forget the 35GM"
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I probably shot 60% with the 50mm and 40% with the 35mm so I'd also say don't forget the 50mm (if you have one) ;)

A feature I recently found out about and was very helpful for the wedding was the minimum shutter speed setting set to 1/125 or 1/160, I can't believe I didn't know about this setting before :LOL:
 
snerkler said:
I probably shot 60% with the 50mm and 40% with the 35mm so I'd also say don't forget the 50mm (if you have one) ;)

A feature I recently found out about and was very helpful for the wedding was the minimum shutter speed setting set to 1/125 or 1/160, I can't believe I didn't know about this setting before :LOL:
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35mm, 24mm & 85mm ;)

Yeah, I tend to shoot handheld at minimum shutter with auto ISO anyway so no issue with that side of things - Just stick it in Av with exp comp as needed.
 
LeeRatters said:
35mm, 24mm & 85mm ;)

Yeah, I tend to shoot handheld at minimum shutter with auto ISO anyway so no issue with that side of things - Just stick it in Av with exp comp as needed.
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Depends on the registry office, they can be a bit of a crap shoot with some being much better than others in terms of lighting and the amount of room available. Very unlikely to need the 85mm, a 50mm would definitely be more suitable.

In terms using aperture mode with auto ISO for sure that will be grand and is the lazy way to do it. I often take the lazy way too, I was reminded recently though that shooting manual means less exposure changes which makes the files quicker to edit and with thousands of files to go through even from a small wedding that make a lot of difference.

If you don't have a 50mm, I would just use the 24mm and the 35mm for the ceremony, you will be able to use the 35 for pretty much everything. 24 might be handy if they want signing photos with witnesses and parents which they sometimes do and the space is a bit tight. 85 will be useful for portraits after but unless it's a large registry office it will be useless.

In terms of shooting the actual wedding move around a lot. I have always been good at that, too many wedding photographers are static during the ceremony which produces very boring photos, Move around like a ninja and you will definitely get better results. People often say about our work that you can really see that there is 2 photographers from the images because of all the different points of view, what they don't realise is that this is all me, my missus always stays at one spot at the front so I can move around as much as I want. You do need to be a bit more careful when working alone but as long as you know when to jump back to the front for the kiss it's all good.

I am just off the back of shooting 4 weddings this week so might be a bit jaded. 99.9% of the time people are great but there is always that 0.1% who are not. In my experience it's often the people that you do the most for that don't be nice to their photographer on the wedding day. Yesterdays wedding for example was for a relative although one I haven't seen in 20 years, the bride was a complete bitch and its right up there with one of the most difficult weddings I have ever shot. Also had similar bad experiences way back when I first started and wasn't charging a whole lot of money. Someone that chooses a very cheap wedding photographer or gets a friend to do it see no value in what the photographers is doing so can often be difficult to work with and in some cases just downright abusive and rude as they simply don't care, if they did they would have booked someone experienced.
 
f/2.8 said:
Someone that chooses a very cheap wedding photographer or gets a friend to do it see no value in what the photographers is doing so can often be difficult to work with and in some cases just downright abusive and rude as they simply don't care, if they did they would have booked someone experienced.
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That's interesting, would you not get this impression when talking to them before the wedding and then choose not to do it for them?
 
snerkler said:
That's interesting, would you not get this impression when talking to them before the wedding and then choose not to do it for them?
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I am not sure what you mean?

I neither work for cheap or for free for mates.

Most wedding photographers use an automated CRM we rarely have a conversation with a couple before their wedding. We don’t even have email contact a lot of times as the CRM automates everything.
 
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f/2.8 said:
Depends on the registry office, they can be a bit of a crap shoot with some being much better than others in terms of lighting and the amount of room available. Very unlikely to need the 85mm, a 50mm would definitely be more suitable.

In terms using aperture mode with auto ISO for sure that will be grand and is the lazy way to do it. I often take the lazy way too, I was reminded recently though that shooting manual means less exposure changes which makes the files quicker to edit and with thousands of files to go through even from a small wedding that make a lot of difference.

If you don't have a 50mm, I would just use the 24mm and the 35mm for the ceremony, you will be able to use the 35 for pretty much everything. 24 might be handy if they want signing photos with witnesses and parents which they sometimes do and the space is a bit tight. 85 will be useful for portraits after but unless it's a large registry office it will be useless.

In terms of shooting the actual wedding move around a lot. I have always been good at that, too many wedding photographers are static during the ceremony which produces very boring photos, Move around like a ninja and you will definitely get better results. People often say about our work that you can really see that there is 2 photographers from the images because of all the different points of view, what they don't realise is that this is all me, my missus always stays at one spot at the front so I can move around as much as I want. You do need to be a bit more careful when working alone but as long as you know when to jump back to the front for the kiss it's all good.

I am just off the back of shooting 4 weddings this week so might be a bit jaded. 99.9% of the time people are great but there is always that 0.1% who are not. In my experience it's often the people that you do the most for that don't be nice to their photographer on the wedding day. Yesterdays wedding for example was for a relative although one I haven't seen in 20 years, the bride was a complete bitch and its right up there with one of the most difficult weddings I have ever shot. Also had similar bad experiences way back when I first started and wasn't charging a whole lot of money. Someone that chooses a very cheap wedding photographer or gets a friend to do it see no value in what the photographers is doing so can often be difficult to work with and in some cases just downright abusive and rude as they simply don't care, if they did they would have booked someone experienced.
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Excellent advice [in general too] Tommy :) Thank you.

I should have went into more detail in the first post but at the time it was a flying visit to the forum. It's a very small affair, for someone I know. They literally had no-one. Pretty much no budget. Things are tough. When I found out the other week they were getting married (it's all very last minute if you get my drift......) I offered.

I was going to be pretty happy with just the 35mm. Plus the 24mm inside & 85mm outside if the weather holds.

It's still interesting reading & hearing how professionals work though even if there's no interest in being one! :)
 
Most wedding photographers use an automated CRM we rarely have a conversation with a couple before their wedding. We don’t even have email contact a lot of times as the CRM automates everything.
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Wow, this seems surprising. We met and discussed things with our photographer before our wedding (and indeed before hiring her) to make sure her style and approach would match something we were happy with etc. I can't imagine not doing that... I like to think we weren't tricky though, our approach was basically "we like what you do, you're the expert, just do what you do and let us know if you need anything" (but we did want to meet to get an understanding of all that).

Though in many things I'm of the opinion I pay a professional for their expertise, I'd be mad not to listen to them!
 
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