Merry Christmas

Today is Christmas day, celebrated by many in North America. Here in Toronto, we have had soft snowfall this morning, enough to cover the trees, and we are truly having a white Christmas!

I received my Christmas present from a loyal Lens Bubbles reader, my daughter Megan. It was two frames, one with picture of the words Lens Bubbles, made from her favourite pictures from this blog; the other is a collage of pictures from the blog. This has been one of the best Christmas presents I have received. In addition, I am blessed to have my wife and four kids, a gift I celebrate every year.

I want to wish all my readers a very merry Christmas, if you celebrate it, and may Santa bring you all the toys you ever wanted.  Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, you never know, some jolly fellow might bring the toys you want anyway in his sleigh, er, delivery truck.

Lens Bubbles - Created by Megan.

Outside my window - NEX-6 & E16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS

The Upgrade Dilemma

The inter web is abuzz about the Sony A7/A7r; even none Sony users are talking about them. I have been following these two cameras even before they were announced through the rumour mills. Now that they are a reality, should I upgrade my NEX-6 to the A7/A7r?

I happen to like the NEX-6 a lot. In fact, it's one of the best cameras I have used. No complains about its image quality, nor its usability; if it were a full frame sensor inside the NEX-6, I would be all set for a little while. But, there is always that little thing called money. Upgrading is usually expensive. For mortals like us who has limited funds to spend on camera upgrades, a $1700 camera is a significant chunk of disposable income to blow on a camera. So what are the options?

Get a Metabones Speedbooster -- This almost gives you the illusion of a full frame camera, but of course it isn't. I am always leery of optics that gets in the way between a lens and the camera. As good as the Speedbooster is, there are limitations; and it does optically modify the lens in front of it. What you get in image is not really exactly the same as what you would get natively on a full frame.  And, there is the problem of mounts. If you are like me, who have lenses in many mounts, you would need Speedbooster in different mounts. True, one can get the Canon version and then buy cheap Canon to whatever adapters, but that again, increases the margin of error with double adapters.

I could sell some of my existing lenses to fund the purchase. This is really something I try to avoid. I don't plan to add many more lenses to my collection, but at the same time, I don't want to reduce what I have either. However, if the upgrade urge is uncontrollable, this might be the way to go.

Another option is to sell/trade in my 5D Mark II, and sell fewer lenses. This sounds better to me.

Finally, do nothing. Keep and make use of the 5D Mark II and ignore the A7/A7r ever existed.

Yeah, I know you lucky people are laughing at my dilemma.

Men At Work - NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS @50mm f5.6 [wide open]. Click for larger.

Sony NEX-6: What I Like Best

Now that I have had a chance to use the NEX-6 for a couple of weeks, I get to know a little more about the camera.  Still haven't gotten to use all the features, just the ones I normally use.  Here is the list of features I like most about the NEX-6:

Built-in EVF - Without saying, this is one of the features that make most people upgrade from existing NEX cameras.  Basically, the EVF is one of the best on the market.

Programmable AEL button - This is the hallelujah feature for me because I use mostly manual focus lenses.  I have assigned MF Assist to this button, which when pressed, will enlarge the view by 9.6x for easy focus fine tuning.  My thumb no longer have to travel all the way down to the "C" button for this.

Electronic Level - Very handy feature for keeping the camera level.  I have made a lot of use out of this feature.

Flat Camera Bottom - Can't tell you how much I hated the humped bottom of the NEX-5/5N.  Can't mount the camera properly with that stupid hump.

Mode Dial - I don't change shooting mode that much, as it's usually set to "A", but I welcome this very convenient feature for the times that I need to shoot in other modes.

Standard Hot Shoe - Very handy to have when external flash, or wireless flash trigger is used.

Built-in Flash - I don't use it much, but could be useful for fill-flash in strong lights.

The Thumb Wheel - Excellent implementation and in the perfect place.  This wheel allows me to change aperture or shutter speed with auto focus lenses.  Sadly, it's pretty much useless when used with manual focus lenses, except when I shoot Shutter Speed Priority "S".  Wish it can be re-programmed to exposure compensation.

That's about it.  The new features of phase-detect focus, WiFi, User Installable Apps don't interest me much.

Hospital Entrance - NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS Lens. Click for larger.

A Small Annoyance with the Sony 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS Lens

One annoyance with the 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens that came with my NEX-6, is that after it wakes up from sleep, it does not remember what zoom position the lens was in, and resets to 16mm.  I find this very disappointing.  The aperture is retained, but not the zoom position.  I am sure this little issue can be easily remedied with a firmware update, but probably not many people will find it as annoying as I do, so the chance of it fixed in firmware is pretty slim.

Streetcar on Spadina - NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6. Some cropping. Click for larger.

Sony NEX-6: Initial Impression - Part IV: 16-50mm Kit Lens Continued

Continued from Part III.

Couple days ago I was photographing some night scenes with the NEX-6 and the 16-50mm lens.  The camera/lens was consistently unable to lock focus so most of the time it just focus itself to infinity, but sometimes doesn't.  So I thought, no problem, I would focus the lens by hand. A strange thing happened.  When I turn the focusing ring, the lens zooms.  It turns out, I had to set the focus method to DMF in the menu.  What this does, is that once the camera finishes focusing, you can turn the focusing ring to focus while half-pressing the shutter button.  The camera will automatically enlarges the focus area and you can then do the focus fine tuning.  Not exactly intuitive like the Canon USM lenses where you just turn the focusing ring to do focus adjustment after the camera achieves AF.

Skylon Tower - Sony NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 @ 16mm f8. Click for larger.

I also had a chance to put the camera/lens on a tripod.  This is the preferred method of testing lenses.  I did find that the lens is slightly sharper when used on the tripod, especially on lower speeds.  On the wide end of 16mm at f8, the image quality is nearly as good as the 16mm f2.8 pancake lens, especially at the edges where both lenses are about equal.  The 16mm pancake is much better corrected for distortion though.

The lens is progressively better as the focal length increases, both in terms of sharpness and distortion.  It's very good at the long end of 50mm.  Very little distortion and is quite sharp wide open.  But then again, wide open is at f5.6.

The American Falls - NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 @50mm. Slightly cropped. Click for larger.

After a few days of use, my take on the lens is that if you ignore the very bad distortion at 16mm, which Lightroom 4 has a profile for this lens and can correct it easily and quite effectively, the lens is very versatile.  The small size and wide angle have a lot of appeal as a kit lens, and it's not too expensive when bought as a kit with the NEX-6.  In fact, I am starting to like this little lens.

Light Shades - NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6. Click for larger.

Sony NEX-6: Initial Impression - Part III: 16-50mm Kit Lens

Continued from Part II.

The Sony 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 lens has two very desirable features: wide angle at 24mm (35mm full frame equivalent), and it's a pancake zoom, thus very small.  I am not a lens snob, but I don't have fondness for kit lenses that come with cameras.  The very worse ones that I have used, unfortunately, are Sony E-mount kit lenses.  They are relatively sharp, but the distortion is horrendous.  This include the 16-50mm f3.5-5.6.

The 16-50mm kit lens has an electric zoom, which I don't care for. I very much prefer mechanical zooms. The zoom action is actually quite noisy and not very precise. It's great for video, but not for still photography in my opinion.  In terms of build quality, I think the 18-55mm kit lens is better.  The 16-50mm lens feels more plastic and cheap, not to mention is has a weird 40.5mm filter thread. Why not make it 49mm like the others?  The lens is not exactly small in diameter.

My particular copy of the 16-50mm kit lens is not very sharp at the wide end of 16mm, even at f8.  At longer focal lengths, it performs much better. What really turns me off, though, is the barrel distortion at 16mm.  Have a look at the picture below:

RAW vs JPEG - NEX-6 & 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS. Click for larger.

On the left, is a thumb nail from the RAW file, and on the right is the jpeg version (I shot RAW+JPEG in B&W).  Just look at how bad the native distortion is.  Yes, correction is easy, and Lightroom 4.3 has a lens profile for it, but after correction, the lens is no longer 16mm wide, as you can see in the picture above in the jpeg version.

The other major defect is how severe the vignetting is at 16mm.  You can see the (very) dark corners in the RAW picture above.  Perhaps that's why the lens doses not come with a hood, as a hood might make it worse. Again, it's easy to correct, but it tells you how much compromise was designed into this lens.

In actual use, if you don't shoot pictures with straight lines, it's not so bad. At 16mm f8, it's almost as good as the 16mm f2.8 pancake at f8, though the 16mm f2.8 is slightly sharper at the center. The wider angle of 24mm equivlant is definitely a plus, but if you are going to use this lens as your everyday, primary lens, you may be disappointed, especially if you care about image quality.

New condos - NEX-6 & 16-50mm kit lens @ 21mm f8. Click for larger.

In Part IV, I will have more to say about this lens.