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A900 findings

H

hardloaf

Guest
As promised here are some A900 findings which I've accumulated so far.

1. Optimal ISO range is 320-800, 320 is the best, top limit depends more on your converter and taste, so decide for yourself. This means that in this range you don't underexpose and bump ISO if needed, but you don't go above the top limit and start underexposing. If you need high quality low ISO go with good ND or polarizer.

2. Wouldn't bother with ETTR - this camera is better than that, just shoot as you did on film, by meter, and your colors will be better.

3. UniWB is highly recommended, especially if you shoot scenes with dominating red or have weird light. Daylight is not safe either - more depends on actual colors in picture, so UniWB is a good safety guide.

4. Use Zone setting to adjust light meter bias - it goes in 0.5EV steps and -1 opens shadows at cost of highlights, 1 or 2 gives more space for highlights at cost of shadows.

5. You'll have hard time finding lenses which can outresolve this sensor. Not only because it is 24M, but also because it has weak anti-aliasing filter. In my experience Sony 50/1.4 is very good at this, Zeiss 135/1.8 is simply outstanding. I also like manual Zeiss Flektogon 35/2.4 through chipped M42 adapter, even though I'm not sure if it can outresolve the sensor. There should be others of course. This also raises requirements for tripod/head if you need really sharp shots - even with 2 sec. delay and mirror lock up, remote release and tripod I still get slightly different level of sharpness in two consecutive shots sometimes.

6. For M42 use chipped adapters programmed for each worthy lens exclusively. James Lao is recommended (http://eadpt.cn/eadpen.htm). I'm not affiliated with him and had problem with his product, but in my opinion he is still the best in this regard. You'll have working metering and proper EXIF info, both are important.

7. NR for long exposures - so far I don't find it useful at all, if your converter can suppress hot pixels better use converter, but jury is still out here. Need to do more testing.

Shameless plug goes here:
If you are on Mac, you may find that my converter (RPP, link in the signature) can "magically" make your A900 produce even more details, better noise and colors and higher DR. Give it a try :)
 

Georg Baumann

Subscriber Member
How interesting indeed, thanks for your findings. I did not now about your SW and will give it a shot. Would you think your SW to provide better results than C1?

Hoswever, I am struggling to understand your point of not shooting ETTR.

Why would that be? Are you saying the metering from the alpha is not good enough and you do recommend to use an external lightmeter like a Seiko or similiar instead, or did I misunderstand that?

Best wishes
Georg

P.S.
Very kewl Avatar! :D
 
H

hardloaf

Guest
How interesting indeed, thanks for your findings. I did not now about your SW and will give it a shot. Would you think your SW to provide better results than C1?
In my opinion it's better, but what else could you expect from it's author? :) It's very different and requires learning for sure.

Hoswever, I am struggling to understand your point of not shooting ETTR.

Why would that be? Are you saying the metering from the alpha is not good enough and you do recommend to use an external lightmeter like a Seiko or similiar instead, or did I misunderstand that?
No, I meant using camera light meter (or external one if you care), but don't push histogram to the right and use camera light meter as it's intended, i.e. expose most important part of a picture around camera midpoint.
ETTR had some reasons for old cameras with low DR - noise was too close to the midpoint and we had to do this to minimize it. With late cameras which have over 9 stops of DR ETTR is very harmful for colors - midpoint is the most colorful place in A900 gamut and noise is not an issue there any more. In A900 gamut slowly narrowing down from midpoint to shadows and very quickly narrowing down from midpoint to highlights. This means that brightest stop of the camera range has most of colors gone forever and they cannot be restored with negative exposure compensation. I'd say all color critical parts should be below top 1.5 stops. Veiling glare from lens and sensor are the culprits here.

Very kewl Avatar! :D
Thanks :)
 

Georg Baumann

Subscriber Member
Interesting.

I can not test that now, but as soon as my alpha is there I will try it.

I still think, because the brightest levels have the most data, it should be a valid technique. Noise being less an issue with modern cameras, agreed.

But when exposed to the right and then using fill light in LR for example to open up shadows..... well.... that is what I often did so far to good result.

Now I am curios what other fellow alpha900 user found in that respect.
 

Georg Baumann

Subscriber Member
- even with 2 sec. delay and mirror lock up, remote release and tripod I still get slightly different level of sharpness in two consecutive shots sometimes.
I would think 2 sec is not enough, the longer your focal length the more I would add to that time. The minimum I use is 4 second for wide angle and 8 seconds for really long shots.

Increasing the delay should provide more consitent results.
 
H

hardloaf

Guest
Interesting.

I can not test that now, but as soon as my alpha is there I will try it.
You can test everything with any more or less recent good camera, I'm sure you have one already.

I still think, because the brightest levels have the most data, it should be a valid technique. Noise being less an issue with modern cameras, agreed.
Squeezing scene with high DR into sensor or film range is a totally valid approach when needed, same as exposing for shadows. ETTR however assumes that it's always better to shift histogram to the right, even when your scene is only 6 stops wide and sensor is 9.5 stops wide. You probably already noticed before that slightly underexposed shots can be amazingly colorful even after exposure correction and I definitely noticed that ETTR shots can be very dull after correction even if there was no clipping. So my point is that ETTR is not always better and shouldn't be used unconditionally. The whole approach that you need to pay attention only to highlights is very limiting - what's really important is were we place critical part of a picture on a sensor range. This critical part can be anywhere - in shadows, highlights or in the middle and we should understand that moving it closer to the middle gray will improve it's appearance and try our best. That's it :)
 
H

hardloaf

Guest
I would think 2 sec is not enough, the longer your focal length the more I would add to that time. The minimum I use is 4 second for wide angle and 8 seconds for really long shots.

Increasing the delay should provide more consitent results.
I'll try it - thank you for the tip. I always used couple of seconds and it worked for me, time to change old habits I guess :)
 

douglasf13

New member
Thanks, Andrey. As far as camera metering, would you say that metering middle grey at +.5 ev, or detailed whites at +3ev, makes sense? Iliah mentioned this a couple of months back.
 
H

hardloaf

Guest
Thanks, Andrey. As far as camera metering, would you say that metering middle grey at +.5 ev, or detailed whites at +3ev, makes sense? Iliah mentioned this a couple of months back.
I think it's more matter of taste and habits. Range -1 .. +1 from middle gray is the best one for colors, so pick your placement depending on conditions. I'm staying with A900 default because I often shoot outside and current 3.2EV gray point works fine for me - less clipped highlights.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Completely agreed with Andrey. I have done some tests in the past on my 1Ds2 and found exactly the same regarding exposing to the right. The A900 seems no different. Now I try to get the right exposure (pun intended :D) in the camera. The camera meter is very accurate as compared to a Sekonic external meter in reflective mode, but I found that incident readings work best with the A900.
 

kuau

Workshop Member
Edward are you shooting in Matrix Mode most of the time or reflective? Or.. are you using a sekonic external meter incident mode?

Steven
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Hi Steven,

I try to take incident readings whenever I have the time. If not, I find the camera meter to be very trustworthy, however reflective light readings should always be interpreted depending on subject matter. I realized that many claims, especially on DPR, that the A900 meter underexposes are baselss. Many new comers to photography expect the meter to think for them, unfortunately.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Bottom line on in camera cam meters almost every company Canon, Nikon and my bet Sony as well tune the meters to underexpose slightly to protect themselves from about a million daily complaints from blown highlights. Honestly this is just a fact of life and the same with using AA filters with complaints by the millions from Moire. Seriously and I don't mean too offend anyone but these cameras are designed with the amateurs in mind that just stick the camera on auto and go, plus jpeg all the way. That is the design mindset. Obviously they are made for Raw shooting and such as well and in more capable hands can adjust at will. But also every Raw converter will render each Raw differently as well and some will be more underexposed and some will not. The end of the day there is no standard and you will have to fine tune for your raw converter. My Phase back is about 1.25 stops under in LR and slightly under in Raw developer by about 1/2 stop. Also on meters what many folks don't even think about is where the weight area of the meter sits, so that throws another curve in the mix.
 

Terry

New member
I'll try it - thank you for the tip. I always used couple of seconds and it worked for me, time to change old habits I guess :)
what are you using to release the shutter? Reichman's review sort of blasted Sony for the remote because the sensor is in the front of the camera.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
what are you using to release the shutter? Reichman's review sort of blasted Sony for the remote because the sensor is in the front of the camera.
The remote that is provided with the camera is not intended to be used as a cable release. It's only for taking pictures of yourself when you're in front of the camera or playing a slide show :D Moreover it doesn't even lock the mirror up. You'll have to buy a normal cable release like I did ;)
 
H

hardloaf

Guest
what are you using to release the shutter? Reichman's review sort of blasted Sony for the remote because the sensor is in the front of the camera.
I bought a wired one on ebay. $5 or something :)
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
Bottom line on in camera cam meters almost every company Canon, Nikon and my bet Sony as well tune the meters to underexpose slightly to protect themselves from about a million daily complaints from blown highlights. Honestly this is just a fact of life and the same with using AA filters with complaints by the millions from Moire. Seriously and I don't mean too offend anyone but these cameras are designed with the amateurs in mind that just stick the camera on auto and go, plus jpeg all the way. That is the design mindset. Obviously they are made for Raw shooting and such as well and in more capable hands can adjust at will. But also every Raw converter will render each Raw differently as well and some will be more underexposed and some will not. The end of the day there is no standard and you will have to fine tune for your raw converter. My Phase back is about 1.25 stops under in LR and slightly under in Raw developer by about 1/2 stop. Also on meters what many folks don't even think about is where the weight area of the meter sits, so that throws another curve in the mix.
For serious shots I find myself more and more using manual exposure and slowly working myself into the range where I have the right lightning seen on the camera monitor (which usually is very tricky to judge) and the histogram covering the whole area and not exceeding to the right or to the left.

Once this is set up I can thn work without controlling exposure for a whole while :thumbup:

Especially in my M8 this proves to give optimum results. Will see how good this works in the A900 ;)
 
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