One Photo: Penobscot Bay Morning

This is my favorite photo from several trips along the Maine coast this past summer.  The wind was minimal so the reflections in this cove were awesome.  The lobster boat was positioned nicely, though because it was backlit I did lighten it up in Lightroom.  The clouds were magnificent and really lit up when the sun moved high enough to be above them.

The photo was taken an hour after sunrise, which gave the sun time to clear the horizon and disappear behind a bank of clouds.

As far as my gear, I rarely use anything wider than a 24mm equivalent lens (the wide end of my zoom lens).  But in this case I used a 12mm (18mm equivalent) manually-operated Rokinon lens on my Sony a6000 camera.

"Penobscot Bay Morning"

Sony a6000 with Rokinon 12mm F2 lens (18mm equiv.)

Aperture priority @ F5.6. ISO100. 1/800 sec

Processing in Lightroom Classic CC

My Sony A6000 has been Languishing. Perhaps that will end in July?

I have owned the Sony A6000 for over three years. I (mostly) love the body shape and ergonomics.  My main peeve is the thumb dial on the back plate.  I find this to be awkward to use and very finicky. I have no problems with the other buttons and dials and the menu system works fine for me.

So why have I not been using the A6000 much?  After all it has that fine 24mp Sony sensor, whereas my preferred Olympus and Panasonic systems have a smaller sized mFT sensor and are only 16mp. (I don’t own any of the 20mp Olympuses and Panasonics.)

Well, for starters my collection of Olympus and Panasonic lenses is larger and I am very happy with their performance and quality.  I use them interchangeably on Olympus and Panasonic bodies. Not counting my cell phone, 90% of my images are from my Olympus and Panasonic gear.

The lenses available for the A6000 pale (IMO) in comparison to what I have for mFT. The kit 16-50 (24-75mm equivalent) is okay if all you want are snapshots.  Wanting better image quality, I bought two Sony Zeiss 16-70mm zooms, one after another.  I was hopeful. I found both samples to be equal in sharpness to my Olympus PRO lenses, but the Zeiss was noticeably softer in the corners and edges and suffered terribly from CA. That was too bad, because I am primarily a zoom guy and the 16-70 on the A6000 would have made a nice looking and nice feeling combo. But it couldn’t compete with my Olympus gear. Back the lenses went to the retailer.

What I have done with the A6000 is “cobble” together a collection of primes, but I find I rarely use the system. Nevertheless, I have decided to invest in one more lens. It's on pre-order. Shipment is expected this month (July, 2018).

My current collection of prime lenses for the A6000 come from three companies. From left to right:

12mm F2 Rokinon for E mount

35mm F1.8 Sony

50mm F1.8 Sony

100mm Nikkor F2.8, with Nikon-to-E Mount adapter

The pre-ordered lens:

I am excited about the  lens I have pre-ordered.  It is another Chinese-made Rokinon lens.  It is a 24mm F2.8 autofocusing FE lens designed specifically for the Sony full frame cameras. On the A6000 that is the equivalent of 35mm.

When it comes to primes, I think the 35mm equivalent focal length is my favorite.  I am hoping it will do the trick for me and that I will pull my Sony kit out of the bottom drawer.  

The lens should work fine on the cropped sensor A6000 as it is the same mount as the full frame mount.  I'm expecting it to be nicely sharp even in the corners and along the edges because the A6000 sensor covers only the middle 2/3 of a full frame sensor. Therefore the (expectedly) weaker outer edges of the lens will not come into play on the A6000.  

Full frame lenses are often too big and heavy to handle well on the smaller, lighter APS-C camera. I don’t think this will be the case here, as this lens is only 1.5” long and weighs just 4.2 ounces. A lot of the weight and size is a function of the F2.8 maximum aperture (as opposed to something bigger like F1.4 or F2). The "slow" F2.8 aperture is also, I assume, one reason for the modest offering price of $399. 

From camerasize.com

The pre-ordered Rokinon 24mm FE is on the right with hood attached.

On the left is the Sony 35mm F1.8 without the hood attached.

[I wouldn't be surprised to see in maybe a year that the price will drop from time to time to something like $299.  This is what happened with the $349 Rokinon 12mm I own.  I bought it during a seasonal sale for $249 from a large and reputable New York retailer.]

I love the 35mm equivalent focal length and am pretty stoked about getting my hands on this new lens.  That being said, if the image quality doesn’t impress me, it will get returned.

Grandchildren at Christmas With Sony Gear

I tried a new camera and lens combination at Christmas this year.  I've had the Sony a6000 for two years, but the zoom I used on Christmas was a new addition to my Sony kit.  It's the full frame FE mount 28-70mm F3.5-F5.6  kit lens. On eBay I bought it supposedly "used"  for $250. If it had indeed been used it would be a surprise to me. It was pristine and the metal lens mount showed no scuffs or marks, which suggested to me that it had never been mounted on a camera. With an effective focal length of 43-105mm on the cropped a6000 sensor, it was the perfect thing for indoor family Christmas shots. 

I have reported in previous posts about how much I like the Sony a6000 (and NEX 5R and, prior to the a6000, the NEX 6) for flash photography. This is because of the little Sony branded Guide No. 20 fold up/down TTL flash that is small and barely noticeable, but which bounces light nicely off the ceiling.  (Unfortunately it does not swivel.) The model is HVL-F20M.  It’s not very powerful, but that is fine with me as it is small and light and has enough juice coming out of the two AAA batteries to create a well balanced (with respect to lighting) image, as long as the ceiling isn’t too high.

Flash is folded down in "off" position.

Flash flipped up to "on" position. Note slider for bounce versus direct.
I have always only used the bounce position.
This angle can not be adjusted.  Camera is aimed to the left.

The combo worked like this at Christmas: 

Using M mode, I set the camera aperture to F3.5 (wide open when zoomed out to 28mm), and the shutter speed was set to 1/100s.  Being a variable aperture zoom, as I zoomed in and out, the aperture varied between F3.5 and F5.6.  I set the ISO to Auto.  With the flash folded down in the “off” position, a typical ISO picked by the camera’s exposure meter was 3200.  But flip up the flash to the “on” position and the ISO dropped in half.  In other words, in this example, ISO dropped one stop to 1600. This cut the ambient light (i.e. light already in the room) in half and the flash “filled in” the missing half of light. This meant ambient light and flash was balanced in a 1:1 ratio.  All I had to do was point and shoot.

In summary:  In the above example, if I turn the flash “off” my exposure was 100% from ambient light and ISO 3200. If I turned the flash “on” my exposure was 50% from ambient light and 50% from flash at ISO 1600. 

I love this simple approach taken by Sony in-camera software.  Except perhaps to the most experienced photographer, the resulting images don’t look like a flash was used… at least in my opinion.  Yet the flash brightens the subject by directing (bouncing) light onto the subject. This improves the overall quality of the light, while at the same time improving image quality by reducing the ISO from 3200 to 1600.

A few of my snapshots from Christmas are below.  All were taken with a 1:1 balance between ambient light and flash.

Why I like my Olympus E-M1 more than my Sony a6000

In 2015 I wrote several posts about why I prefer my Sony a6000 over my EM-1. All that I wrote then remains true, but now it's time to reverse things. There are also reasons why I prefer the EM-1 more than the a6000. That's why I own both!  Because of the three items listed below, it is the EM-1 that is more likely to come along on vacations and excursions.

The Olympus system has three things going for it that trump the Sony a6000 for general all-around use.

In no particular order:

1.  Dual dials on the top plate. I use the front dial easily and nearly continuously to adjust EV compensation. The Sony has just one top dial and it's a thumb dial, with the second dial being the back dial (on the back side of the camera).

2.  A fabulous histogram. The Olympus live histogram is the largest I've used, and is very detailed with a red warning on the right side for all pixels that may be blown out (i.e. white with no detail). As you can see below, the histogram shows in red that a few pixels are "blown", which I presume are specular highlights off the plastic bag in which some of my fishing fly tying materials are stored.  Note too that the histogram sits at the bottom of the middle of the frame. This is where I can see it best. The Sony histogram sits on the bottom right side.  Because I wear glasses (I can't get my eye as close to the EVF as non-wearers) it is difficult for me to see the all-important right side of the histogram on the Sony. No problem on the Olympus. With both cameras the histogram is grey, but the Olympus has a useful "histogram-within-a-histogram": in green it overlays the gray histogram with a "sub-histogram" of what the center focus point is metering.  It's like having spot metering and matrix metering at the same time!

3.  Lenses. The mFT system has beautiful zoom and prime lenses, and there are so many excellent ones to choose from. I only have a few; however, they cover a wide range of needs. The 12-40 "Pro" F2.8 zoom takes care of 70% of my focal length requirements. It is sharp across the frame, and like many Olympus zooms it even has awesome closeup capabilities. Like the EM-1 body, it is weather-proofed. More recent purchases include the Panasonic 35-100 F2.8 and the Panasonic 14-140 "travel" zoom. For primes I have the Olympus 25mm f1.8 for low light situations. Mostly this sits in the bottom of my bag for emergencies, but it weighs just a few ounces. I also have the 60mm f2.8 macro. I love macro!

My two primes:  The 25mm (50mm equivalent) weighs only 4.8 ounces and is 1.4" long.
The 60mm macro (120mm equivalent) weighs only 6.5 ounces and is 3.2" long.

My three zooms.  The Panasonic "travel zoom" on the left is the newest and has not yet seen much
use.  But it will!  The 12-40 "Pro" zoom is in the middle.  The 35-100 F2.8 panasonic
is on the right.  This is the only zoom I own with internal zooming; that is it remains the same
length throughout the zoom range.

4. The Olympus IBIS (in-body image stabilization) isn't necessarily better than the OIS (optical image stabilization) on the Sony, but one advantage of IBIS is that when I use old manual lenses, they are instantly stabilized. This means my 50 year old Nikon 58mm F1.4 lens is fully stabilized when used on the Olympus! There is also an advantage with new third party lenses, like the Sigma 30mm and 60mm both of which I own in E mount for the Sony.  They are not stabilized lenses.  However, if I instead owned the same two lenses in the mFT mount (which is available) they would be stabilized on the Olympus because of the in-body stabilizing system.

Firmware 4.0

I may have to expand the above list.  I recently downloaded the new firmware 4.0. It has some really nice features that appeal to me.  I decided I don't particularly like the new silent shutter option for general use, but there are situations where it will prove helpful. I am excited about the focus stacking and focus bracketing features in particular. But I haven't used either in any serious way...yet. 

First shots with the old Minolta 100mm macro plus Sony A6000

In my prior post, I talked about my experience with an old Minolta 100mm macro lens on my Olympus E-M1.  With this adapted lens, I felt there were some focusing challenges with the Olympus that resulted in fewer "keepers" than I had hoped for.

It seemed to me that the lens was very sharp, and I certainly enjoyed its smooth action.  But I missed focus more than I was prepared for.  In other words, sometimes the area that turned out to be in focus, when viewed on my computer, was slightly off from the area I intended to be in focus.

Missed focus is inevitable with flowers out doors.  It was caused by either my slight movement or the movement of the flowers, or both.  A tripod would have prevented camera movement but not flower movement.  Bringing the flowers indoors and using a tripod would obviously have been a solution.  But to my way of thinking, it wouldn't have been much fun.

The reason I wanted to try this same lens on the Sony a6000 is that the Sony has focusing assistance that is, in some ways, the opposite of what's available on the Olympus.  I feel that with Olympus, there is too much lag between achieving focus and releasing the shutter.

Sony A6000 plus Minolta 100mm F3.5 macro plus Nissan i40 flash

Bottom Line:  I think I get more accurate results with the Sony.

Here are the differences in how one focuses these two camera bodies, at least when using adapted manual focus lenses.

1) Focus Peaking:

a) The Olympus focus peaking, when shooting macros, shows too great an area in focus... more than what actually is in focus.  The Sony focus peaking shows a narrower and more accurate (IMO) area of focus, though if there is not enough contrast, sometimes the peaking does not work at all! Again, I'm only concerned here with macro focusing.

b) The Olympus focus peaking works when the shutter is unpressed.  However, it disappears when half pressed, leaving an operator time-lag between focus and shutter release.  The Sony focus peaking works when the shutter is unpressed, but continues to work when half pressed. The photographer can therefore ride the shutter button half-pressed while focusing.  This reduces operator time-lag between focus and shutter release.

2) Magnification:

a)  Both systems offer magnification choices.  The Olympus allows magnification of 3x, 5x, 7x, 10x and 14x.  The Sony offers 5.9x and 11.7x.

b) The Olympus maintains the magnification all the way through the shutter press.  This helps me maintain focus.  However, you are unable to see your overall composition.  The Sony loses magnification at the half press which makes me feel I've lost focus.  On the other hand because it pops to full view when half pressed, I am able to confirm my composition.  For landscapes, I would prefer the Sony choice. YMMV.

A few sample images:

Why I like my Sony a6000 more than my Olympus E-M1: Part 6: The 3:2 aspect ratio

I guess now that I'm writing part 6 of this little series on the reasons I prefer the a6000 I should mention again that I can also write a series of posts (and I do plan to do that) as to why I prefer the Olympus E-M1 over the a6000.  Both cameras have their advantages and disadvantages.  And both have reasons to prefer it over the other.

Below I have written about my Olympus images from a June trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada. I didn't bring the a6000.  That's because Olympus has one big trump card... LENSES.

Although I used the Olympus E-M1 on this trip, the camera unfortunately (in my opinion) has a 4:3 aspect ratio.  This is what most point and shoot cameras and my iPhone have.  It's a bit squarer than the 3:2 aspect ratio of the Sony a6000.  The 3:2 ratio is the standard format on dSLRs and film SLRs. For travel photos I prefer the 3:2.

The other night I uploaded a set of favorites from the PEI trip to my Web site. If you are interested, please take a look here:
http://www.peterfraileyphoto.com/pei2015

I noticed in this batch that although there were 25 landscape-oriented images from my Olympus, I cropped 20 (80%) of them to 3:2, and two of them were cropped even narrower, to 2:1.  It's too bad to waste the pixels, but the cropping improves the composition in my opinion... or I wouldn't have done it.

At 16 mp, the Olympus resolution measures 4608 pixels x 3456 pixels.  Crop to 3:2 and you have 4608 x 3072. This calculates to 14.2 mp.

I like what you get from the a6000.  With its native 3:2 ratio and 24 mp sensor with resolution of 5059 x 3373, one can employ the full 24 mp when capturing a landscape at 3:2.  This is quite a bit more resolution than what I am getting with the Olympus. Combine this with the fact that each pixel from a 24mp APS-C sensor is slightly larger than each pixel from a 16mp mFT sensor, you can see that the Sony provides both more and larger pixels. I am not sure this makes a difference to the human eye, but all things being equal more and bigger pixels is a good thing.

[Here's my math.  The squared dimension of the a6000 sensor is 60% bigger than the squared dimension of mFT sensor.  And 24mp is 50% more than 16mp.  Therefore, because the a6000 is 60% bigger and only has 50% more pixels, then each pixel is bigger on the Olympus.]

4:3 (native Oly aspect ratio)

3:2 (my preference)

4:3 (the result of some recent fly tying)

3:2 (my preference)

Why I like my Sony a6000 more than my Olympus E-M1: Part 5: Autofocus with native lenses

When it comes to autofocus with native lenses (Sony E mount and Olympus mFT mount), until two months ago, I would have given the Olympus the edge... slightly. I feel certain that when using single autofocus (AF-S), the Olympus is a tad faster than the Sony. This seems to be especially true in low light situations. Yet, I've never noticed the difference to be enough to actually make a difference in my type of shooting.

However, in the last couple of months, I've begun to use what is called "back button focus" (BBF).  I will explain how this works further below, but it basically allows you to obtain either single autofocus without changing out of the continuous autofocus mode.  

It is with continuous autofocus that the a6000 shines (compared with the E-M1). On the a6000 I find AF-C to be as fast and confident as AF-S.  On the Olympus I do not have the same confidence in AF-C.  It seems much slower and more tentative, going in and out of focus repeatedly and at a rapid pace, as it seemingly hunts to achieve  focus.

Now let's go back to setting up "back button focus" on the a6000:

I have set the a6000 to operate in AF-C. Then I  programmed the AEL/AFL button on the back of the camera to be a focus lock button. In the menu, you also need to turn off "AF w/shutter". I generally I use the smallest single "flexible" focal point.  (There are other good focus area options that are beyond the scope of this post.)

I've programmed this button as the AFL button.
It's in a perfect location for my thumb while maintaining a good grip.
The button is a nice size and gives a nice click.

This is how BBF works:

If you are photographing a still object like a landscape, press the AFL button with your thumb and release. I generally use the center focus square to achieve focus on the intended main subject, and then recompose if the main subject is to be off-center. You can now take one or more images without refocusing.

Now let's say a deer runs across your view.  Here's a chance to use continuous autofocus. Just press and hold the AFL button and it will continuously focus as you pan the camera, but you must keep the focus point on the deer. There are some other cool focusing options that I have played with but not used.  In particular, the AF-C with "lock on" seems to have great potential, as it would in this case lock onto the deer and follow it around the frame. Additional features can be realized by choosing a different focus area, like wide or zone, but I won't go into that here.

Now with the Olympus, you can also set things up with BBF. It's just that AF-C seems so sluggish.  But more importantly to me, the actual button is in the wrong place and too small and squishy. I guess it's an ergonomics issue for me.

This button is too far to the left to easily reach with your thumb while maintaining
a good grip. It's also smaller and softer than I like.

Why I like my Sony a6000 better than my Olympus E-M1: Part 4: Focusing with old manual lenses

What I am talking about here is using manual lenses with adapters on the a6000 (and Olympus E-M1).  Obviously one difference is that the focal length of any given lens differs on these two cameras.  For example, my Tamron 90mm macro lens works out to an effective 135mm on the Sony and 180mm on the Olympus, due to the respective crop factors of 1.5x and 2x. On the Sony it's a nice portrait length.  On the Olympus, not so much... but it gives a nice reach for flowers at botanic gardens.

What I like about the Sony is how it handles focusing with my old manual Minolta, Nikkor,and Tamron lenses.

One of my favorites.  A Nikkor 58mm.
At a 1.5x crop factor it makes a very nice portrait lens with an
equivalent focal length of about 85mm. And it's F1.4!

According to the serial number this is about 50 years old.
I inherited it 40 years ago.  Though I am slowly selling off my old manual lenses,
I doubt I will ever sell this one.  It was my first lens!

Like the Olympus, Sony has focus peeking, and I do use it. With focus peaking activated via the Sony menu, it will function without touching the shutter. Just hold the camera up to your eye or watch the LCD and focus the lens with your left hand. But more importantly to me, Sony's focus peeking feature operates even while half pressing the shutter.

This is what I do: 

I press the shutter half-way and hold it there while I am focusing the lens with the left hand.  When the subject shimmers from the peeking (I like the yellow peeking choice, but you can choose also white or yellow... my E-M1 offers only white) I then fully press the shutter. I like the fact that once I've focused, my shutter finger is already half-way to activating the shutter.

On the other hand, with the Olympus I feel there is too much of a delay between reaching focus and activating the shutter.  This is because the peeking only works with the shutter button unpressed.  As soon as you half-press the shutter the peaking unfortunately ceases.  It may be all in my head, but this makes me feel momentarily lost.

Summary:

Basically with the Sony, once you have achieved focus you are only a half-press away from capturing the image. With the Olympus, you are a full press away. Especially for macro photography I feel it's easy to lose focus with the Olympus during the full press of the shutter.  (Please note that I am not talking about native lenses. What I've described is how these cameras function with non-native lenses.)

Why I like my Sony a6000 more than my Olympus E-M1 (Part 3: The flash system-page 3: The Nissan i40 flash

This is the third (page 3) of three posts about how I use the Sony flash features and capabilities.  The first post about the a6000 flash feature is here and the second post is here. Please read those posts first because in them I described the very nice way (in my opinion) the Sony flash firmware on the a6000 (and at least the NEX-5R and NEX-6) works with my preferred ISO setting: Auto ISO.

All of my flash use is with the in-camera flash or with a flash mounted on the camera, almost always being bounced. I have not done any remote or triggered flash as that is currently both beyond my knowledge base and beyond my interest.

The Nissan i40 is a small but highly capable flash which is also available for other camera brands.  It operates in various modes but my interest is in TTL and manual modes.  It also provides flash for high speed sync should you be using the flash for fill-in on bright days outdoors.  However, the high speed sync only works in manual mode.

To get an idea of the diminutive size of the i40, I have pictured it here with an Olympus FL 36R and a Metz 50 AF-1 flash.  [Incidentally, both the Metz (my copy is programmed for Olympus cameras) and the Olympus work just fine on the Sony when operated in manual mode.]

Left to right: Nissan i40, Olympus FL-36R, Metz AF-1

The i40 rotates 180 degrees in either direction and angles upward 180 degrees, with 6 positions when rotating left or right (I presume 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 degrees), and 3 elevation positions above 45 degrees horizontal (60, 75, and 90 degrees).

For the baby pictures that follow, I rotated the flash head 120 degrees (4 clicks) to the right or left, depending on where I was standing relative to the natural light coming through the lightly veiled windows at the hospital (where baby Evan was born the day before). This allowed me to use flash without any direct flash on the baby's face.  I also elevated the flash head to 45 to 90 degrees above horizontal depending on whether I was aiming downward toward Evan or was shooting at his level.

Three generations

Catching up on emails, texts and Facebook

My wife is a happy grandmother

Also three generations

Happy parents are looking pretty good, I'd say