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Help Needed: Sony user in Bay Area / Peninsula?

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curious80

Guest
I got into this unfortunate situation where a couple of my newly acquired sony lenses and a sony flash got damaged through a little accident and I have got my daughter's birthday coming up in a couple of days! Unfortunately our local photography shop doesn't carry Sony equipment for rent otherwise I would have gone for that route.

I am wondering if I can rent / borrow a lens and flash from some other fellow Sony photographer in the area ( I am in Palo Alto). I have my 50 macro and 100 f2 intact but what I need is a slightly wider lens like 35mm f1.8 / f2 or 28mm or some thing close to these.
 
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panyawong

Guest
I can lend u a 24/2.8 (offbrand) if its not too wide. PM me with yr contact info/date time u need if interest. BTW, how big of a flash u need? Can it be a none ttl flash?
 
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curious80

Guest
Thanks for your offer gsking, I definitely appreciate that.

panyawong was kind enough to lend me some equipment which greatly helped me on the party day! In fact he pretty much drove to my area to hand the stuff to me! Many thanks to him for saving the day for me!
 
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panyawong

Guest
Mr. Curious80, when do you plan to return the lens and flash you borrow?

Thanks for your offer gsking, I definitely appreciate that.

panyawong was kind enough to lend me some equipment which greatly helped me on the party day! In fact he pretty much drove to my area to hand the stuff to me! Many thanks to him for saving the day for me!
 
:banghead:

Road trip? Youse guys tink we should break his kneecaps? :deadhorse:

(I kid, I kid)

I know all too much about hindsight but borrowlenses.com is local and lensrentals.com might as well be. Either can deliver Sony gear the next day. (no affiliation).

I hope you get it worked out.
 

gsking

New member
Now I know whom to borrow an A900 from. :)

Dave, if you ever want to compare your 24mp to a 22mp MFDB, let me know. I'm curious how noticeable the AA filter is, and I'm thinking the DRO will make a big difference too.

Don't worry too much. I think my 70-200mm has been on loan for almost a year now. Not sure I'll ever see it again. ;)
 
Now I know whom to borrow an A900 from. :)
Yep, borrowlenses.com or lensrentals.com... no problem. :poke:

Dave, if you ever want to compare your 24mp to a 22mp MFDB, let me know. I'm curious how noticeable the AA filter is, and I'm thinking the DRO will make a big difference too.

Don't worry too much. I think my 70-200mm has been on loan for almost a year now. Not sure I'll ever see it again. ;)
A comparison would be interesting I'm sure, would be easy enough to organize. I can't comment on DRO or any of the other JPEG-related dead-weight in the camera though. :eek:

Just a heads-up, I'll probably cheat and bring the 135Z. :D
 

gsking

New member
LOL...heck, if you're not taking advantage of DRO, how do you manage with that puny sensor? ;)

I never found RAW to be worth the time. JPG on my A700 works better than RAW (at least with LR3), so if I want 40mb of dead weight, I'll shoot .mos files on my MFDB.

Crud...I just sold my Mamiya 200mm 2.8 APO. That would have made it a pretty fair fight...same FOV and DOF, too.

It was between the A850 and the MFDB, and I went with the latter. I figured if I went with the Sony, I'd never shoot film again and would have to sell off all my big toys. :)
 
LOL...heck, if you're not taking advantage of DRO, how do you manage with that puny sensor? ;)
Oh, I suffer through it somehow...



My own initial experiments with DRO indicated that a picture like the above would have looked washed out with a greyish cast... not what I'm after.

I never found RAW to be worth the time. JPG on my A700 works better than RAW (at least with LR3), so if I want 40mb of dead weight, I'll shoot .mos files on my MFDB.
Well, tastes differ of course. To my eyes, there is no comparison. Even with LR2 and Raw Therapee, I found that I could get much better results with RAW than JPEG, and now with LR3 the RAWs just sing. Add to that I don't have to care about white balance or fiddle with a billion possible creative style settings while judging on a tiny uncalibrated display, there is added convenience as well. I'm pretty sure the JPEG processing hasn't become any better in the intervening time, but I wouldn't know as I've never looked back. Not worth starting a JPEG vs RAW religious war over, there are already plenty of those on the 'net.

Crud...I just sold my Mamiya 200mm 2.8 APO. That would have made it a pretty fair fight...same FOV and DOF, too.

It was between the A850 and the MFDB, and I went with the latter. I figured if I went with the Sony, I'd never shoot film again and would have to sell off all my big toys. :)
You never know. I really meant to do some shooting alongside my film cams after I picked up the a900 but somehow that never seems to happen.
 

gsking

New member
Dave,

Really nicely done. Did you have to do any HDR processing on that to pull out both ends of the spectrum? I seem to have the same issue with RAW that you have with JPG. But then, the A900 was never renowned for having a good JPG engine.

I find that the MFDB is like shooting slide film...the highlights get blown out fast. Which keeps me shooting 120 negs. But yeah, 35mm film is pretty much a waste of time. I have a couple rolls left, including one of Panatomic 32 that I'm saving for a good occasion. :)
 
That's a straight two-shot merge, earth and sky, but prior to the merge I made the most of each capture in the areas intended for the final image, then just combined and blended the horizon in PS as 16-bit TIFF. What you see is an LR export of the PS, downsized by SmugMug.

I firmly believe that I couldn't have captured the same band-free tonality in the sky and the subtle tone in the landscape using two JPEGs. We may never know as I don't waste light like this shooting JPEGs, not since I saw the difference anyway. That last comment is not a dig at you or other JPEG shooters BTW, it's just how I see things.
 

gsking

New member
Aha, well that explains it. I don't shoot scenics. I do only people, and mainly with flash, so I never get a chance to do two shots anyways. :)

I agree...for stuff like that...RAW is the way to go. DRO would have definitely altered the darks, for better or for worse.

Now, time to go recover some gear. Where is this guy?

PS...I'll never waste a dime on borrowlenses. They have the gall to offer to take a 75% cut to rent MY lenses out, and then make me pay 25% of the value of the lens if they get the lens lost or stolen. No thanks.

You'll spend less buying a lens on Ebay and then reselling it than you will renting for more than a day.
 
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panyawong

Guest
Dave/gsking. It does work out fine. He did return just in time for my use. I would also be curious on your mfdb vs a900 comparison. :)
 
Panyawong, very glad to hear you got your gear back. The comparison does sound like fun, though I have to dig out of a hole at work before I can commit to anything.

Gsking, that's funny, it never would have occurred to me to ask a lens rental company to rent my lenses out to some oaf who won't care about them, may kick it around, etc. because there is no sense of ownership. I have dealt with them on the flip side, where I rent their stuff from them and have had no issues. I just looked a bit more closely at their site -- they have changed things, they look very, very similar to lensrentals.com now.
 
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