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A850 observations

T

Tony Beach

Guest
I use a Schneider PC Angulon 2.8 28mm for A-Mount for many years now.
It is a well regarded Shift lens and is also well known in Leica R land.

BG
I'm using that lens as well, and it is indeed very good. I also use my Nikkor 85/2.8 PC-micro with an adapter that has no glass in it, but that only focuses within a couple of feet (about right for "tabletop" shots), and when I get some bucks together I plan on getting a Schneider Super-Angulon 50/2.8 HM and later I will replace the Nikkor I'm using with a Schneider Makro-Symmar 90/4 HM. Both of those T/S Schneiders should be out soon, but they're going to cost an arm and a leg (about $7000 for the pair).
 

kit laughlin

Subscriber Member
Guy, nice images, and I have considered the 850/900 many times. what has stopped me is no Live View, which for architectural work I have found indispensable. I use tilt more than shift for controlling DOF, and I don't find any viewfinder accurate compared to pixel-level LV.

Having said that, and having just read the excellent review of the Mirex adapter, I wondering of my perceptions (finder vs. LV) are accurate. Can others who have used either of the Sony finders to focus tilt lenses comment on the accuracy of this approach? TIA, kl
 
T

Tony Beach

Guest
Guy, nice images, and I have considered the 850/900 many times. what has stopped me is no Live View, which for architectural work I have found indispensable. I use tilt more than shift for controlling DOF, and I don't find any viewfinder accurate compared to pixel-level LV.

Having said that, and having just read the excellent review of the Mirex adapter, I wondering of my perceptions (finder vs. LV) are accurate. Can others who have used either of the Sony finders to focus tilt lenses comment on the accuracy of this approach? TIA, kl
Lets see, I have an A850 and use it with my Nikkor 85/2.8 PC-micro (with a non-optical adapter) for close-up work; and I have a D300 that I've used that same lens, as well as Nikon's 24mm and 45mm PC-E lenses. I stopped using Live View on the D300 because it would generate hot pixels, and I was able to get very good results with the viewfinder on that camera. On the A850 the viewfinder is larger and brighter and makes focusing easier. Magnification plays a part though, so on a wider angle lens shooting at wider apertures I can see where Live View would be helpful.
 

GrahamB

New member
Guy, nice images, and I have considered the 850/900 many times. what has stopped me is no Live View, which for architectural work I have found indispensable. I use tilt more than shift for controlling DOF, and I don't find any viewfinder accurate compared to pixel-level LV.

Having said that, and having just read the excellent review of the Mirex adapter, I wondering of my perceptions (finder vs. LV) are accurate. Can others who have used either of the Sony finders to focus tilt lenses comment on the accuracy of this approach? TIA, kl
I have the Mirex T/S with 4 Mamiya M645 lenses I use with my a850. Coupled with a type M focus screen, I find the anglefinder VN at 2x a great help in focusing.

Graham
 

kit laughlin

Subscriber Member
Hello Tony,

Well, for architectural work, I usually stop down anyway, to deepen the slice of the in-focus zone, so if the viewfinder was good enough to see in-out of focus at wide open, that would do.

@ Guy: may I ask why you chose the 850 over the 900 (once again, this is an assumption; I assumed the tolerances, finder accuracy, etc., would be inherently better on the 900, as Sony's 'pro' model)?

I ask this as a hangover from the days over at FM; endless hours testing after market screens for optical in the quest to use MF lenses on FF Canons; determining that the AF and MF light paths were different, and different again from Live View, and so on).

Another thing I would love to know is whether the finder area difference is real. By this, I am wondering whether the alleged 98% vs. 100% finder difference between the 850 and the 900 is real—I find it very hard to understand how Sony would manufacture two different prisms, etc., or is the 850 subtly masked? If anyone here knows, please comment!
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Hello Tony,

Well, for architectural work, I usually stop down anyway, to deepen the slice of the in-focus zone, so if the viewfinder was good enough to see in-out of focus at wide open, that would do.

@ Guy: may I ask why you chose the 850 over the 900 (once again, this is an assumption; I assumed the tolerances, finder accuracy, etc., would be inherently better on the 900, as Sony's 'pro' model)?

I ask this as a hangover from the days over at FM; endless hours testing after market screens for optical in the quest to use MF lenses on FF Canons; determining that the AF and MF light paths were different, and different again from Live View, and so on).

Another thing I would love to know is whether the finder area difference is real. By this, I am wondering whether the alleged 98% vs. 100% finder difference between the 850 and the 900 is real—I find it very hard to understand how Sony would manufacture two different prisms, etc., or is the 850 subtly masked? If anyone here knows, please comment!
Mostly cost for me as it is not really my primary system and it is used for certain tasks and actually after a week of straight shooting performed extremely well. If i missed any shots from it than it would be gone but truth is it was nailing everything with focus and speed. Never hit a buffer and I was shooting pretty fast too. I may get another as backup actually or even a A900.

My real buy focus here is really on my MF kit and the Sony is a body 3 lens with a flash and most likely will not get expanded past that.
 

Jan Brittenson

Senior Subscriber Member
It's definitely not hard to tell there's an AA filter on it. I wonder if it's possible to have it removed - I think it would be totally stunning without!
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Exactly coming from CCD and no AA filter it is obvious. What kills me when all these this vs that especially with MF why people can't see this. Its so damn obvious there is a AA filter. I don't get it
 

Jan Brittenson

Senior Subscriber Member
Sorta makes you wonder if it's a money-making scheme - make $500 lenses look poor in order to sell people $1800 lenses that are high enough contrast to punch through the filter! I really can't see any other rationale for it. Okay, I'm only half joking; more reasonably, it's probably related to noise filtering: any fine detail too low contrast for the AA filter to have passed through can be assumed to be noise. You don't have to venture far to realize that the people who buy these cameras evaluate them mainly on how clean the images are at some arbitrary high ISO.
 

Terry

New member
Isn't another reason to go for 850 the tweaks they made to IQ. I thought the 850 handled noise a little better but not sure if the long awaited firmware update equalized things.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Not sure Terry but as my images above show the noise levels at 800 and 1250 look darn good. End of day for me at least i won't go past that and very happy with the results I am getting. I know the firmware certainly made the AF much better. The single runway models are all on continuous focus and tracking them as they are walking towards me. Rarely missed a beat. I put my AF point to the far right as I went vertical it kept the AF around the face area.
 

douglasf13

New member
Using or not using an AA filter has both positives and negatives, and I'm betting that most users benefit from an AA filter more than they would from extra sharpness. Plus, proper sharpening routines can equalize things quite a bit. Having had a Leaf back and an A900, I'm not sure which method I prefer, myself. I'm surprised how weak the AA filter is in my NEX-5. I've gotten moire in quite a few building patterns.

If I remember correctly, according to maxmax, the A900 AA filter isn't removable, due to the way it is directly fused to the sensor.
 

Jan Brittenson

Senior Subscriber Member
Too bad. Still an excellent camera of course.

Another observation: it seems the histogram always reflects the JPEG settings, even if no JPEG is saved... What's the best style if you want to evaluate the raw data only? (I do understand the histogram always has to reflect some processing, at least white balance and gamma.) I tried "neutral" a bit and it seems to work pretty well, but looks very similar to "standard"...

Did anyone bother comparing compressed vs uncompressed RAW?
 
I have the Mirex T/S with 4 Mamiya M645 lenses I use with my a850. Coupled with a type M focus screen, I find the anglefinder VN at 2x a great help in focusing.

Graham
Graham, it looks like I'm heading down this path and I'm curious whether you have found the issues that Pete mentions to be of an concern, in particular:

  • Swing limited to 7° with rise over 4mm
  • Tilt locking screw - looks like it needs to be removed/replaced for vertical shifts?
  • >5° up tilt would require some material removal from the adapter(as Pete says, this would be of limited use anyway)

It looks like the adapter can take another adapter and use a wide variety of MF lenses, but I've heard these aren't always as sharp as a 35mm lens. What are your thoughts on this?
 
Too bad. Still an excellent camera of course.

Another observation: it seems the histogram always reflects the JPEG settings, even if no JPEG is saved... What's the best style if you want to evaluate the raw data only? (I do understand the histogram always has to reflect some processing, at least white balance and gamma.) I tried "neutral" a bit and it seems to work pretty well, but looks very similar to "standard"...

Did anyone bother comparing compressed vs uncompressed RAW?
There was a long thread on Dyxum about this here. The conclusion:

Vivec said:
The only case where a potential loss of precision occurs in a (super) high contrast range within 16 pixels with subtle hues. But even there, the loss of precision is minimal.
What I find more relevant is that RAW will batch-process much faster than cRAW since the decompression step is skipped. Oh, and I don't really want lossy compression in RAW, even if I'm not supposed to be able to notice.

To get a good histogram I use Standard with only one adjustment, Contrast -3. Occasionally I use UniWB but less and less as I'm often not too happy with the colors I get, I don't ETTR much anymore so UniWB becomes a bit pointless.
 
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douglasf13

New member
Too bad. Still an excellent camera of course.

Another observation: it seems the histogram always reflects the JPEG settings, even if no JPEG is saved... What's the best style if you want to evaluate the raw data only? (I do understand the histogram always has to reflect some processing, at least white balance and gamma.) I tried "neutral" a bit and it seems to work pretty well, but looks very similar to "standard"...

Did anyone bother comparing compressed vs uncompressed RAW?
See here: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5531
 
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