Where I work there is a formal, company sponsored photo club. They have a budget and they have funded events where they go together to an arboretum or a museum and talk about equipment and techniques.\u00a0 They have a charter and code of conduct.\u00a0 They include everyone and value everyone\u2019s contribution.\u00a0 They give out tee shirts at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t belong to that club.\u00a0 Life\u2019s too short.\u00a0 I get together with about four or five guys who work there at lunch time.\u00a0 We\u2019ll go to a park or walk down the street or try to find a building that\u2019s interesting.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We also occasionally take over a conference room during the lunch hour and throw our personal off hours photo results up on the big screen that usually features power point presentations of diversity training or unconscious bias hectoring or whatever else Big Brother needs us to absorb that week.<\/p>\n
And some of these guys are pretty good.\u00a0 It\u2019s spring, and from a photographic point of view there\u2019s finally a reason to live.\u00a0 Normally we would already have gone out on a lunch time jaunt to see the dogwoods and weeping cherry trees in bloom.\u00a0 But this year several of these guys have been shanghaied into a shift change to work on a big engineering project.\u00a0 All of that ends on Friday, May 11th<\/sup>. To celebrate my brethren\u2019s release from bondage I\u2019ve scheduled an outing for the next Wednesday to a park that we hope will feature birds and bees and flowers and trees.\u00a0 Maybe even a few butterflies.\u00a0 And to make it interesting for me I\u2019ve reserved a few lenses from a rental company for two weeks starting May 11th<\/sup>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve rented the Sigma MC-11 \u00a0EF to E mount adapter and the Sigma EF mount version of their 150 \u2013 600 Sports zoom and their 180mm f\\2.8 macro lens.\u00a0 I watched a video that the The Camera Store guys made testing out the MC-11 with Sigma EF mount lenses on one of the modern (A9 or third generation A7\u00a0 cameras) Sony full-frames.\u00a0 They rated the autofocus performance almost exactly as good as Sony native glass.\u00a0 Now there is a catch.\u00a0 It\u2019s only warranted to be that good with certain lenses.\u00a0 The Art and Sports series are covered.\u00a0 So the 150-600 is in that group.\u00a0 The 180 macro is not.\u00a0 I spoke to the rental company and they didn\u2019t know one way or the other.\u00a0 But they did say I should try it.\u00a0 Of course I\u2019m the one paying for the privilege but I figured it was worth a shot.\u00a0 So in about two weeks I\u2019ll have something to say about the A7 III, the MC-11 and birds in flight.\u00a0 Sony has never allowed me to even try such a photographic feat but here we are, a brave new world.\u00a0 And with any any luck the 180 macro will prove to be good for butterfly shots.\u00a0 Currently my only long macro is the Minolta 200mm f\\4.\u00a0 But it\u2019s screw drive and if I want autofocus I have to use LA-EA4 with its \u201ctranslucent mirror.\u201d\u00a0 For me that\u2019s something of a compromise.\u00a0 If the 180mm and the MC-11 combination turns out to have pretty good autofocus I will most probably buy those two items and retire the 200 mm to static macro and short telephoto opportunities with the LA-EA3.<\/p>\n So this is just me salivating in anticipation of the opportunity coming up in a couple of weeks.\u00a0 To say that I\u2019m impatient would be the greatest example of understatement since Jack Swigert said \u201cHouston we have a problem.\u201d\u00a0 So stay tuned.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a Sony shooter these tests will give you information on options that aren\u2019t currently available in the native Sony e-mount ecosystem.\u00a0 And, even if they were, the cost would be prohibitive even to someone with my gear obsessed psyche.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where I work there is a formal, company sponsored photo club. They have a budget and they have funded events where they go together to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[660,3,659],"tags":[1019,1018,1017,20,32,330],"class_list":["post-2780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camera-reviews","category-photography","category-photography-reviews","tag-sigma-150-600-sport","tag-sigma-180mm-f2-8-macro","tag-sigma-mc-11","tag-sony","tag-sony-a7-cameras","tag-sony-a7-iii"],"yoast_head":"\n