Tag: macro

FE 100mm f2.8 MACRO GM Lens – Damn You Sony!

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Just when I think I’m immune to lens lust Sony drags me back in!

Alright, this is not an in-depth review because this lens hasn’t even reached the stores yet.  It come out in early November.  But it has already destabilized my photographic equilibrium with its compelling mixture of desirable features and the stellar reviews the experts are giving it.

So just to put my own spin on it, here are the features I find most exciting.

  1. Fast autofocus.  Okay, probably not blazingly fast because no macro lens can be.  There’s just too much focus racking needed in a macro lens for that.  But its four XD Linear AF motors make it orders of magnitude faster than my current Sony 90mm f2.8 macro.
  2. 1.4X magnification.  That compares with the 90mm and its standard 1.0X magnification.  This is a big deal.  Filling the frame with your subject is what makes for better macro shots.
  3. The reviewers stressed that the Optical Steady Shot (OSS) system actually did seem to work very well on macro shots.  That’s always been a sore point for me with the 90mm lens.  There’s nothing steady about the image unless I’m on at least a monopod.  If this pans out it will be a major upgrade to my macro experience.
  4. The reviewers also stressed that the images when using a 1.4X or 2X teleconverter were still very good which if true means that 2X and 2.8X magnification would be achievable.  I’m most skeptical of this claim.  Whenever I’ve used Sony teleconverters I’ve always noticed a very significant image quality degradation (especially with the 2X unit).  If this turns out to be true it would be a very nice benefit.

Okay enough hyperventilating.  So let’s give some of the bad news.  It’s fifteen hundred bucks!  And I’ve checked the resale value of my 90mm lens ($450).  So I’d be forking over an extra grand or so.  Gack!!!!

Oh, the pain, the pain.  Well, Christmas is coming up.  And I do have some rarely used lenses hanging around maybe I could shrink that grand down to five hundred bucks.

It’s funny just a few months ago I think I was saying how glad I was that I no longer obsessed about camera gear and lenses in particular.  Sure I’m always interested in descriptions of the new odd-ball super-macros that the various Chinese lens manufacturers seem to create constantly.  But I’m never too excited because these lenses tend to be not of the highest quality.

But here Sony has dropped this thing in my lap with basically everything I wanted except a 200mm focal length (and that would be compensated for if it actually does work as well as they claim it does with a 2X teleconverter).  And here I am with my mouth hanging open, desperate to get my hands on this piece of photo kit.  They truly are evil geniuses sitting there in Tokyo (or wherever the hell their corporate headquarters is in Japan) and saying, “Now we’ve got photog right where we want him.”

And they do.  Damn them!!!

 

 

Macro Autofocusing with the Sony A7 IV.  Some Tests and Thoughts

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Lately I’ve been changing the way I take macro shots of active insects like bumble bees.  Previously I have used magnification and single AF.  This works well for slow insects.  But not as well for fast moving butterflies and bees.  So talking to someone who does a lot macro he recommended continuous autofocus.  So I tried it.  One problem is that magnified view doesn’t work during continuous AF.  But what I did find was that the keeper rate did improve greatly for fast movers like bumble bees.

And that got me thinking.  A-mount lenses also don’t have magnified view in AF modes.  So it occurred to me that these lenses would also become more accurate in continuous AF macro shots.  So I tried out the Minolta 200mm f\4 macro lens and it worked quite well on larger insects like bumble bees and dragon flies.  Then I tried it on really tiny flies and this was haphazard.  For these I found throwing it into manual focus and using magnified view was the only way to get really tiny critters in perfect focus.

 

And that is limiting with live creatures in the outside environment where every puff of breeze ruins the focus.  So this leads me to think that the 200 macro will be limited to larger insects.  The Sony e-mount 90mm macro will be much better for the really tiny things.  And for slower insects I’ll use magnified view and single AF.  For faster bugs I’ll go with continuous AF and spray and pray I get the perfect shot.

Testing the Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro and Sony 135mm f\1.8 A-Mount Lenses with Sony LA-EA5 Adapter on  Sony A7R IV Camera – Part 2 – First Impressions

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I took the camera out yesterday and played around with the 200mm macro.  The A7R IVA has a very nice viewfinder but what I doscovered was that A-mount lenses on the LA-EA5 are not considered eligible lenses to use a feature called “AF in Focus Mag.”  This feature allows you to autofocus while in a magnified view and it is a fantastic feature for doing macro work.  Not having this feature with the 200mm macro is a sore disappointment.  I didn’t anticipate this exclusion.  Damn you Sony!  But that being said, I am going to see if I can use animal eye AF to compensate for this.

With respect to general performance the autofocus speed is acceptable.  And in the short time I’ve tested it, the accuracy of the focus seems quite good.  The A7R IVA camera is relatively close to my A7 III in action and function so there aren’t too many things to get used to.  Today, if the weather holds out, I want to try a running dog focus tracking experiment.  Harry (or Larold as he’s been nicknamed by my oldest grandson) is our younger pointer and he is incredibly fast.  I’m going to try and track him as he sprints across the front lawn.  I think I read that tracking doesn’t work with Animal EYE AF.  This seems strane so I’ll try it both ways, animal and human eye AF.  But even if the tracking is just on his head I think it will be an interesting experiment.

I also want to try out eye AF on insects and hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds will especially benefit from the tracking function.  Losing focus on a hummingbird with a macro lens and its very long focus windup usually means a costly time delay in getting the set up again.  And believe it or not I’ve never used tracking on hummingbirds before with my normal lenses and camera even though they are available.  When you’re set in your ways you can miss a lot of useful opportunities.  I’ve been reminded of that recently but this one really got me thinking.  I have to go over the A7 III’s capabilities and see what else I’m missing out on.

 

Stay tuned.  Much work to do.

 

 

14MAR2020 – Photography – Macro – Focus Stack – Hyacinth Shoot

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As noted earlier I had a touch of cabin fever so I decided to try my first outdoor focus stack.  What this means is that I have to drag along a laptop computer and a tethering line in addition to the camera and tripod.  All of this is easy enough.  What isn’t easy is telling the wind to stop blowing for the requisite two or three minutes of exposure time.  And in fact, this picture is cropped as tightly as it is because some leaves were blowing around in the debris pile.  Looking at it now I also note that the left side shoot is a little over exposed.  So let us say as art it’s slightly underwhelming.  But as an experiment in field macrophotography technique it will be “required reading at the Academy.”