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The Lowdown After 1st wedding with a900 (many img)

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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Hey All... thought I'd share some thoughts and insights gleaned from my first outing with the a900 at a wedding.

To set the scene know that I was the second shooter... and due to the fact that I'm in the middle of a system change, I shot the whole day with the a900/sigma 50/f1.4. The main shooter, a good friend, agreed to let me use one of his backups as needed for wider/longer shots.

RE: The sigma.
Focus at distance with the 50/1.4 is difficult, to say the least. Inside about 10 feet it is very accurate and consistent. Outside (roughly) 10 feet, focus shifts pretty noticeably to the rear... so... long distance shots at large apertures are dicey. I'm keeping it, as it is sssoooooo nice and very accurate in tight, intimate situations (and the sharpness/bokeh are also fantastic), but might pick up the sony as well to see how it behaves at distance. BTW, choice of aperture seems to have little effect on focus shift on my copy.

RE: the a900.
Firstly... the color, resolution, DR (and viewfinder) all lends themselves to wedding work. The second cam I was using was a 40D and I had not realized just how bad the vf was until buying the a900. The camera is amazingly responsive IMO for such a high res camera... easily outperforming my older 5D in "snappiness". I'm quite happy with the files at iso800 and below. 1600 is fine as well, especially downsized to reasonable dimensions... but still quite noisy. I think as I get the courage to really push the histogram to the right, this will get better. But, man, I hate to take that chance with wedding dresses. :D DR seems to drop at higher ISO, but detail is still pretty strong. Chroma noise at iso 1000 and above is a bit too intrusive for my tastes, but again becomes less noticeable at smaller reproduction. The AF was accurate, for the most part... but I stayed in one-shot mode. Continuous AF (servo AF) seems useless on this cam :( ... but I'm hoping is better with the zeiss lenses. I'm not expecting it to be. I made the mistake of setting the AF to shutter-priority instead of AF-priority and found myself outrunning the AF in action sequences. In essence, I'd trip the shutter before AF lock and end up with OoF shots. :thumbdown: Battery usage was actually pretty miserly. I have the grip installed and at the end of the day I exhausted one battery and had about 20% remaining in the second. This was after about 9 hours of shooting and roughly 2000 exposures... many using flash. Not bad at all. The explicit battery level readings are nice!

RE: the HVL-58AM flash.
In general, I really like the 58. Took a bit to figure out the swivel mechanism, lol... but it's growing on me. It's pretty powerful and recycles fairly quickly. TTL worked quite well and bounce flash tended to be fairly well exposed. It might just be me, but the pre-flash seems a bit more noticeable to me than on the canon flashes. Strangely, I did overheat the flash at one point... and it wasn't even a very active moment. I can only surmise that because I was at a lower ISO, that the flash was working harder than I realized... and being that it is silent as the capacitor recharges, I must have been overdoing it a bit without the requisite "whine" to remind me how it was working. After a brief cool-down (a minute or so)... it functioned perfectly the rest of the night (about 4 more hours) with no more overheating.

So... in the end i found the camera very capable if one is willing to shoot smartly once things got dark (ie lower iso with supplementary bounce flash). AF is accurate if not a tad bit slow (could be the sigma though). The camera is very responsive and the resolution, dr, color response, and general handling are well suited to most wedding work.

In all, a tough but rewarding day.

Enough talk... a few images:

ISO 400


ISO 400


ISO 400


ISO 400


ISO 200


ISO 640


ISO 200
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
A few more:
iso 400


iso 800


iso 800


iso 1250 (fairly underexposed... i'd bet it was closer to iso 2000 or so once i pushed the exposure)


iso 800
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
BTW... NO noise reduction on these... at 100% the noise is DEFINITELY there... but at print sizes below 16x20, it would mostly be negligible.
 

douglasf13

New member
Really nice, Shelby. I particularly like the shot of the groomsmen:thumbup: Wonderful.

As far as your fear of ETTR and white wedding dresses, try setting your camera to -1 ZONE, and set the AEL button to "spot meter toggle." Then, just spot meter the wedding dress with the AEL button with an exposure comp of +2.5 EV, and you should be golden. :)
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Shelby, very very nice photos :)

Douglas, I'm afraid I need some tutoring about the Zone setting. Could you explain to us what it does exactly. From the manual, I had the feeling that even Sony doesn't know :D
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Douglas... thanks for the kind words and the suggestion about metering. I'll have to check it out. I already use your settings from the "Setting UniWB" Post, which I find really helpful for getting an accurate histogram with UniWB.

Edward... thanks so much for the positive words as well. I am loving this cam... warts and all, lol.
 

douglasf13

New member
Shelby, very very nice photos :)

Douglas, I'm afraid I need some tutoring about the Zone setting. Could you explain to us what it does exactly. From the manual, I had the feeling that even Sony doesn't know :D
Sure thing, Edward, I'll do my best, but I should give the disclaimer that I'm far from a scientific tester of such things, so everyone should test this stuff on their own as well. :)

ZONE is one of the more nebulous adjustments in the Sony line, and, up until the last year, I misunderstood what it did. Initially, I believed it to be a simple change in the contrast curve for jpegs, and I set it to -1 in order to get a more realistic in-camera histogram in relation to RAW. I've come to figure out that it is more than that, and is probably responsible for me not having as many underexposure issues as some do (happy accident!)

To my surprise, the ZONE setting actually changes the way the camera meters in both jpeg and RAW! Essentially, using -1 ZONE meters the camera one "click" brighter than ZONE set to zero. I say "click," because it depends if you have your camera set to .5 or .3 exposure adjustment increments. ie, right now, I have my camera set to .5 exposure increments, so setting -1 ZONE effectively forces my camera to meter a half stop brighter. I'd love it if others would play around with this and report back, because there is little info on the web about it, and, like I said above, I'm far from a color-chart-resolution-target-tester kind of guy, so results could vary.

There has been a lot of talk in various forums about amazing highlight DR in the A900, and, while the A900 does have nice highlight roll off, I think that most of the extra highlight DR is coming from the fact that the camera meters very conservatively, and setting -1 ZONE gives a bit more ETTR in the metering, like other camera brands. Also, this conservative metering causes a lot of underexposure, which I think is causing extra noisy results in the A900 reviews on the web (definitely the case with the Imagine Resources test.) All of this being said, not using ZONE at all is perfectly fine, as long as exposure comp is used to make up for it. Since I spot meter at +2.5 and +3 a lot, I use -1 ZONE, because there is no way to spot meter at +3.5 on the camera's meter.

Does this rambling make sense at all?? :eek:


Shelby, as far as metering goes, I'd be curious how your camera reacts to spot metering +2.5EV vs. +3EV on the whites that you want detail in. Iliah Borg states that middle point to green channel saturation on the A900 is about 3.2 stops. So, metering the detailed highlights (white wedding dress) at +3 should work (leaving .2 for margin of error,) but I don't know if he is using ZONE +0 or -1, and he hasn't returned my email about it. For me, it seems +2.5 is the way to go, if you're using ZONE -1, which would equate to +3 if you're not using ZONE....I think!?!? Man, talk about confusion.

Wow, this may be my most boring post ever. I can't wait to go on vacation next week and take some pics! :LOL: Once again, cool pics Shelby.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Shelby nice user review, glad it is working out. I watch this forum pretty closely myself. That Sony does have my eye
 
S

Shelby Lewis

Guest
Thanks Douglas!I just did a very quick test with your suggestions above...

... and with UniWB I spot-metered a white towel outside that was drying in the back... easily the brightest object in the viewfinder. In aperture priority, with zone -1... the in-camera histogram registered jjuuusstttttt shy of blowout in the whites.

Perfect!

One thing I did noticed. Using Douglas' in-camera settings for optimal UniWB histogram...

- aRGB
- neutral CS
- contrast -3
- saturation -1
- brightness -3

... setting for zone -1 "grays out" the contrast setting in-camera. Not sure it means anything, but just something I noticed.

Thanks.
 
S

Shelby Lewis

Guest
Shelby nice user review, glad it is working out. I watch this forum pretty closely myself. That Sony does have my eye
Thanks Ray... it's a great camera. You'd really enjoy it. I'm still in the market for MF as the sony is kind of "MF Lite" in my eyes as far as image quality... but the color separation, sharpness, and overall image quality continue to impress me... ESPECIALLY coming from the canon 5D.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Thank you very much Douglas. What you say makes sense, and even Sony's manual starts to make sense now :D

The manual says:

"Preventing an image from becoming overexposed or underexposed, a rich tone is reproduced. When a higher value is selected, it prevents an image from becoming overexposed when shooting a bright area subject; and when a lower value is selected, it prevents an image from becoming underexposed when shooting a dark area subject."

Now since you can't change contrast when you change zone settings, my guess is that zone changes the camera metering as you say, together with the tone curve.

I wonder why zone has not been included in IDC settings.

Sure thing, Edward, I'll do my best, but I should give the disclaimer that I'm far from a scientific tester of such things, so everyone should test this stuff on their own as well. :)

ZONE is one of the more nebulous adjustments in the Sony line, and, up until the last year, I misunderstood what it did. Initially, I believed it to be a simple change in the contrast curve for jpegs, and I set it to -1 in order to get a more realistic in-camera histogram in relation to RAW. I've come to figure out that it is more than that, and is probably responsible for me not having as many underexposure issues as some do (happy accident!)

To my surprise, the ZONE setting actually changes the way the camera meters in both jpeg and RAW! Essentially, using -1 ZONE meters the camera one "click" brighter than ZONE set to zero. I say "click," because it depends if you have your camera set to .5 or .3 exposure adjustment increments. ie, right now, I have my camera set to .5 exposure increments, so setting -1 ZONE effectively forces my camera to meter a half stop brighter. I'd love it if others would play around with this and report back, because there is little info on the web about it, and, like I said above, I'm far from a color-chart-resolution-target-tester kind of guy, so results could vary.

There has been a lot of talk in various forums about amazing highlight DR in the A900, and, while the A900 does have nice highlight roll off, I think that most of the extra highlight DR is coming from the fact that the camera meters very conservatively, and setting -1 ZONE gives a bit more ETTR in the metering, like other camera brands. Also, this conservative metering causes a lot of underexposure, which I think is causing extra noisy results in the A900 reviews on the web (definitely the case with the Imagine Resources test.) All of this being said, not using ZONE at all is perfectly fine, as long as exposure comp is used to make up for it. Since I spot meter at +2.5 and +3 a lot, I use -1 ZONE, because there is no way to spot meter at +3.5 on the camera's meter.

Does this rambling make sense at all?? :eek:


Shelby, as far as metering goes, I'd be curious how your camera reacts to spot metering +2.5EV vs. +3EV on the whites that you want detail in. Iliah Borg states that middle point to green channel saturation on the A900 is about 3.2 stops. So, metering the detailed highlights (white wedding dress) at +3 should work (leaving .2 for margin of error,) but I don't know if he is using ZONE +0 or -1, and he hasn't returned my email about it. For me, it seems +2.5 is the way to go, if you're using ZONE -1, which would equate to +3 if you're not using ZONE....I think!?!? Man, talk about confusion.

Wow, this may be my most boring post ever. I can't wait to go on vacation next week and take some pics! :LOL: Once again, cool pics Shelby.
 
H

hardloaf

Guest
I wonder why zone has not been included in IDC settings.
This is actually a good sign - could mean that Zone affects only metering and cannot be implemented in IDC since it's not a post-processing option, but one of camera meter controlling parameters. Why contrast is disabled with it is an interesting question though.
Surprisingly I never paid attention to this option.
Need to research it.
 

douglasf13

New member
...One thing I did noticed. Using Douglas' in-camera settings for optimal UniWB histogram...

- aRGB
- neutral CS
- contrast -3
- saturation -1
- brightness -3

... setting for zone -1 "grays out" the contrast setting in-camera. Not sure it means anything, but just something I noticed.

Thanks.
Yeah, the contrast curve was the original reason that I started using -1 ZONE, but little did I know at the time that if was also affecting my exposure.

It'd be interesting for someone to shoot a scene with -1 ZONE, and then shoot the same scene with no ZONE, but with all seven different contrast options, and then look at the differences in IDC.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Just to lunch off this thread and provide more user experiences to date:

Been shooting weddings with a pair of A900s for a few months now.

Best wedding set up is a A900, D700 and a M8.

IMO, Sony needs a "fat pixel model" ... full frame, 12 meg or so ... which, with the A900, would be the perfect wedding combo to use with the fast Zeiss primes. An A800 anyone?

Last week's wedding was a ton of shots in a very wide range of situations: ranging from formals in fat light to some really dark conditions ... but I'm going to try some of the higher ISO shots in C1 to see if the noise is better controlled like is seems to be with the M8 files ... so I had to upgrade C1 to v4.8. I'll let you know how it goes. I need to master the really low tungsten ambient light situations better than I'm doing now.

The HVL 58 flash is okay ... and the swivel innovation is actually better on camera than conventional swivel flash if you are using a Lumiquest type bounce ... because it keeps the bounce oriented correctly ... if a bit lower than I'd like in portrait mode. But I don't use a ton flash as the main source so it's okay for my applications. The Minolta/Sony flash system is excellent in back-lit conditions.

I had the Sigma 50/1.4 for my Nikon which does have a nice feel to the images, but it isn't that Zeiss look. The Sony 50/1.4 is actually a little closer in feel, is lighter, and focuses better at all ranges. But I don't use it much.

IMO, Nik Define 2 is the Sony A900's best friend. That software seems to really work well with the Sony higher ISO files for some reason .... better than on the M8 files. Maybe it has to do with the higher resolution (???).

A few from this weekend's wedding:
 
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