Thanksgiving Photos Through An Underwhelming Lens

We had a nice big group of family for Thanksgiving at our house. Its no longer possible to have four generations present, and there’s some sadness in that.  But three generations were well represented, and the youngest generation is gaining in numbers!  

The 20 pound Butterball turkey was cooked (as always) on a charcoal Weber, and it was its usual success.  And with everyone contributing their favorite recipes (Laurie prepared a signup sheet earlier in the month), you can imagine the assortment of good food we had.  Not the least of which were the four desert pies!

[By the way, one advantage of cooking the turkey on the grill is that it frees up the oven!]

Turkey day photography:

In preparation for the day, I put together three combinations of cameras. 

Left to right: In my opinion, the best quality images can be expected to come from the Olympus E-M1 and 12-40 F2.8 zoom.  Next in image quality would be, arguably, the Sony A6000 with 28-70 full frame kit F3.5-F5.6 zoom.  And bringing up the rear (on the right) is definitely the Sony NEX 5R with the very compact and marginally sharp 16-50mm F3.5-F5.6 kit lens. All were equipped with flashes capable of bouncing.  (If a flash doesn’t bounce I won’t use it indoors.)

I mention all of this about the cameras, because in spite of having my best gear available, I nevertheless always picked up the last one on the list, the Sony NEX 5 with kit lens.  Looking back to Thursday, I can only conclude that all things considered at the time it was the best combo for the job.

That might be hard to imagine, but clearly getting the best image quality was not an overriding concern.  All these cameras and lenses take images that are “good enough” to document our Thanksgiving celebration. The Olympus and a6000 would have given better image quality, but who cares.  The Olympus with the F2.8 lens could have given me the shallowest DOF, but who cares.  The Olympus flash can bounce left or right, or rearward; but I didn’t want to think about that.  You see, I was just making snapshots. The results will be viewed on computer screens, or on cell phones or tablets… or, on this blog at no bigger than 750 x 600 pixels! I suppose I could have just used my iPhone camera but I felt its equivalent 30mm wide angle lens was too limiting.

So, because image quality was not my number one priority, I went with the smallest and least intrusive of the three combos.  I find even with family members that the smallest camera keeps things informal and casual. This is especially true when using a flash.  Keeping the camera and waist or chest level also helps, as people these days are accustomed to that sort of photography.  

It would have been nice to avoid a flash altogether, but I needed the extra light.  It allowed me to get the ISO down from 3200 (ambient light) to 1600, generally.  I could have increased the flash output further to decrease ISO further, but at that point things start to look a bit unnatural (i.e. the deer in the headlights effect). Neither of my Sony’s have a silent shutter.  The Olympus does.  But since I was using a flash, a silent shutter would not have helped me be stealthy.

Again, the images below are all snapshots.  These shots and a bunch more I haven’t shown here will help us remember who was with us this year and what we ate. (Always take a lot of food closeups... so you can easily recall the menu items from prior years.)

The first image below is my favorite.  

Sony NEX does blue awesomely

I am a big fan of blue.  In the 1950's I fell in love with my Dad's Kodachromes.  Most of the ones I remember where taken in the American West as we drove through the National Parks on our way to his new job on the West Coast. I remember nothing but sunny days. Ever since viewing his slides from Yellowstone, Bryce, Death Valley and Yosemite, I have loved deep blue sky and puffy clouds.  He never did use Velvia, but when using Kodachrome he taught me to under expose by about 1/3 (or was it 2/3) stop to bring out the richness of the sky.  Of course, the rest of the slide looked underexposed, but I don't think I really noticed.  Today, with digital, I am more likely to ignore his advise and to "expose to the right".

I am very picky about the color blue.  If you swing blue one way you get a magenta cast.  If you swing it the other way, it gets a bit green.  I don't like either.

On this day, I was thrilled with the results I got from the NEX.  For the images in this post, I used the NEX5r with the 16-50 kit lens. I used no filters. I own the NEX6 also, but as far as I can tell the results are identical.  I used the Lightroom landscape sharpening preset for each of them, and the first image (the only vertical image)  has a +.4 EV lightroom exposure adjustment.  I used the default color profile (Adobe Standard).  Some of the images have been cropped.  On several I used the shadows slider to brighten up the dark areas.  Other than that I did nothing in post processing.

There's nothing great about any of these images.  They were all taken yesterday along the highway while doing a day trip to Vermont to see our brand spanking new grandson.  The weather here in New England has been terrible in my view.  We are in a heat wave and the humidity is torturous.  So spending the day in an air-conditioned car and an air-conditioned hospital was a good coping strategy.  Obviously I had a camera with me for the baby, but I just couldn't help taking a "sky shot" whenever we stopped.

I am looking forward (not today) to comparing these results with what I get from my Olympus E-M5.  I know there is an entire cult of Olympus jpeg fans who say the Olympus blue is unique and spectacular.  However, I shoot RAW, and as far as I know Olympus has never shared its color profile with Adobe.  So, I am left with what I can do in Lightroom and Photoshop.  I have created my own color profile using ColorChecker Passport, but it is almost identical to Adobe Standard.

By the way, like many, I have found viewing online photos with Internet Explorer yields poor results.  On my monitor (which is calibrated), Internet Explorer makes the sky too green.  It is too saturated.  Others have said that this phenomenon occurs only when the viewer has a high gamut monitor (which I do.)  But regardless, I find that Chrome gives results that are color-accurate.

So... BEST VIEWED IN CHROME AND NOT IN INTERNET EXPLORER

As the saying goes, "your mileage may vary".  But to me, this is what blue should look like.  No green tint.  No magenta tint.

Sony NEX-5R deal of the century

I have never bought something more quickly than when I saw the following deal on Amazon, thanks to a post from another photographer on one of the Sony online forums.  In fact I ordered it so quickly that I forgot to change the default postage to the "free" shipping option.

The screenshot below is what I bought.  This is Sony's latest NEX-5 series camera.  For $328 I wonder if this was a misprint?  Regardless, they honored the price. 



This second screenshot is the same thing, as advertised the next day! This second price is pretty good, too, if you find some of the filler items in the box to be beneficial.  For me, only the second battery (a generic worth about $15) and the 32gb memory card (worth about $22) are worth keeping.

This really is one small camera.  And to think it has the Sony 16mp APS-C sensor in it!  I am not too sure I am happy with the sharpness of the 18-55mm kit lens but I can easily sell it on Amazon or EBay.  I may keep it, I may not keep it.  I'm not sure yet.

What I have done is put the "pancake" 16-50mm zoom on it, which I already own.  This makes a wonderful alternative to a compact camera.  I've tested the 16-50mm lens against my go-to compact camera, the Panasonic LX5 and found that the 16-50 outperformed the LX5 at all common focal lengths and F-stops.  This testing was done on another Sony camera, the NEX-6; however the sensor is the same on both the NEX-6 and NEX-5R.

How will I use this camera? 

At least for now, the NEX-5R and 16-50mm pancake zoom will be slotted as my "grab" camera.  I have a small padded fanny pack that is a perfect size for the camera with lens attached, spare battery, and the auxillary flash.  I do have one concern ... if any of my kids see me wearing a fanny pack, I'll never hear the last of it.  haha.