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Sony a7ii Sample Photos Jan2015

This camera story starts with my long simmering desire to own a full frame camera. I’ve been in the Canon camp since 2004, and have owned several really nice lenses, a Canon L USM 17-40mm zoom, and a Canon L USM 24-105mm. I started out with a 10D body (stolen on vacation), moved to a 30D. These bodies are APS-C, which means the sensor is smaller than full frame, and thus the lens undergoes a multiplication factor (essentially a zoom) of 1.6. It has always worked fine, good quality pictures, but it came to bug me that a good portion of the deliverable light of my lens pair was being “thrown away”.

At some point in my development, I purchases a used Olympus Four Thirds system e-420, for the unbelievable price of $300, perfect body, two sweet lenses, camera bag, other goodies. This setup weighed half that of my Canon rig, and the quality just blew me away. Paradigm shift . . .

I gave this camera to my Dad because it was small and easy to use, and in the pursuit of going even lighter, picked up an Olympus micro four/thirds PEN PL5. This camera also took great photos and was smaller yet, weighing all of a pound. It did have the disadvantage of being so physically small that the controls were not easy to manipulate in the field. After a year with this camera, it came to my attention loud and clear that I was using it 95% of the time over my much heavier Canon setup. I guess I don’t like a stone around my neck as much as I used to.

Back to full frame SLRs. The a7 came to my attention and I read up on it for a good year, thinking I’d be able to finally have full frame and take advantage of my two Canon zooms, and have a light body, all in one. It helped that it was advertised as being “the smallest full frame SLR made”.

Finally I pulled the trigger in early January 2015, body only. This mirrorless SLR has garnered a reputation for being compatible with lenses from almost every lens maker out there. A small industry of Sony to <whatever> lens adaptors has sprung up around the a7.

Lenses:

Decades ago, my Dad gave up on being a serious photographer and handed me his Nikon bag. It had a lot of lenses and his old film body, an FE model. I also shot Nikon back in the day (an FM body being my last film camera), mostly Kodochrome slides. I also still have several Nikon lenses. And it occurred to me that all these lenses were fair game for the Sony, as long as I could relearn to shoot in manual mode. Between the two bags, I ended up with this treasure trove:

Nikon Prime lenses:

Nikkor 24mm : 283g

Nikkor 28mm : 276g

Nikkor 50mm : 258g

Nikon Series E 50mm

Nikon Zooms:

Nikkor 24-120mm

Nikkor 35-135mm

Nikkor 35-105mm

Osawa 80-205 mm

It’s ironic. I almost threw this stuff away, I thought all of it was essentially worthless. Twenty-thirty years later, these lenses are doing great on this Sony a7. Old Nikon lenses are sharp, esp the primes. For their small size, they are heavy! Quality glass. Irony #2 – I probably won’t even use the Canon lenses on the Sony. The adaptor is expensive, the end result is heavy, and the purported performance is rated marginal.

I’ve taken a couple hundred pics with the Sony, here’s some sample work. All these were shot RAW and processed in Lightroom, with jpgs exported for this slide show. Shots in the neighborhood, mostly. The point here is to demonstrate sharpness. In some cases, high ISO was used. It didn’t seem to hurt picture quality as much as one would think. In a few cases I did use the ISO smoothing feature in Lightroom. But mostly these pictures have very little post processing applied to them.

All RAW images are 24M size, I use Lightroom5 to create JPGs in the range of 1M +/-. These are uploaded to Smugmug, and launched from here.

(click thumbnail for gallery)

Misc fall color photos 2014

It’s been a decent fall for color. The season started off cold (!), and wet, but it came around, we had plenty of warm dry days to eke out some pretty good stuff. Despite a cold start, as of late October there have been no hard freezes. This fall is notable for how long the skeeters have stuck around. I still see one occasionally.

These are random photos from multiple locations, taken mostly as as excuse to go outside.

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Frank Goode 91st Birthday

The best pictures are here. Click photo . . .

These are good, but not quite as sharp

Mancation 7 – 2014

Can it be seven years? Mancation is showing it’s age and the effects of pestilence and injury. Last year I didn’t make it – some horrid bug laid me low. I heard after the fact that Scott came, then laid around on the couch, ill.

This year the our numbers were further decimated. Wes was suffering from his 8th or 9th concussion and a broken collarbone. Jeremy had a shoulder and ankle injury, combined with sleep deprivation from working 70 hours a week. Scott also bowed out.

So it was down to Mike, Doug, Guy, and Tim. I think that Mike and Doug are the only ones who have never missed a year. Guy is a close second, having missed only one year, maybe?

No one planned a damn thing this year, we were so up in the air, so at the last minute we decided to eschew a cabin and just camp. Hartman Creek fit the bill: close at a mere 100 miles, with biking and boating nearby. I hauled my camper up to stand in for a cabin.

And it worked to great effect. The weather came and went. It was cool and it rained at night. Despite the late date, the skeeters were out in force, so for three nights in a row we partied it up in the camper. Ranger Betty came around one night and had her pistol half out of the holster before we turned it down, just in time. (Later she told me she actually didn’t hear the music at all, just Doug – all the way back at the Ranger shack.)

Final tally: lots of mountain biking. Hartman has enough of it to make it worth going that way. One lake float, two river floats: the Little Wolf (aka River of Crashing and Bashing), and the Mecan (River of No Worries.) Lots of music and good food. One swollen lip, one cracked boat. And the distinction of “lowest cost trip ever”.

Here’s the pics, in one big chronological schmear.

Michigan Trip 2014

Our only child is just off to college at Marquette, her bed at home still warm. But the starting gun has fired, the Honda roars to life, and we’re off in a cloud of dust.

Since our final distination is Michingan, the first stop in LaCrosse was exactly the wrong direction. But we were determined to take in Tim O’Brien, who was appearing with Darryl Scott at the sleepy LaCrosse Folk Fest. I’d never heard of this fest before but apparently it’s been going on for 30 years. This is the first year it was held down at Riverside Park. Nice venue, great weather. We only managed to snap a few phone pics. The O’Brien set was interesting. This is probably the 8th time I’ve seen him, the 2nd with Darryl. He plays with a lot of different combinations, his shows are always close to spectacular.

Given this small backwater venue, these two worked hard, played hard, the show had a gritty, ad-hoc feel to it. The crowd barely filled 60% of the tent (and we were worried on the way up about getting a seat), but they screamed and cheered mightily.

We did catch 3-4 other acts during the day, all interesting, but T.O. is operating at a whole different level.

The next day, Sunday, we drove all the way across the state and across the UP, made it to St. Ignace. On Monday we braved coal black storm clouds getting to Sutton’s Bay. Stayed in SB in a delightful B&B, the Korner Kottage, for 3 nights, Linda and Jim Monroe, proprietors extraordinaire. Excellent breakfast chefs too. This gallery includes a few shots of our bike ride on a TART trail (Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation Trails). This 17 mile paved section went all the way from Suttons Bay to west Traverse City. A very sweet pedal.

We timed the trip to meet up with old Boulder friends the Skovrons and Saffels, who were up in Leland. One night we put together a picnic at Peterson Park, high above Lake Michigan, looking west. In attendance, Goodes, Saffels, Skovrons, Bruce, Jim’s sister Annie and husband Greg. (I hope I got all that right.)

Check out the video at the end. ( They don’t even have to pay for FOOD !! )

Here’s a few random shots from around Leland, and Fish Town.

Final stop: Traverse City, our kind hosts Bob and Debbie Stuber. Bob is a LaCrosse native, Debbie hails from Cadillac. They just relocated to TC. Debbie was allegedly more “enthusiastic” about this lateral move than Bob, who “got with the program” seconds before being replaced by a younger man. They scored a very nice house in the suburbs, with a huge separate living area expressly for Tim and Eileen. We approved.

This gallery includes shots of a bike ride up Old Mission Peninsula, all the way to the Old Mission Lighthouse at the northern tip. We stopped for lunch at a MicroBrew Pub whose name escapes me. We had 40 miles in by the time we got home. The scenery looking out across Great Traverse Bay left us breathless. The water in the shallows a bright turquoise green, then a deep blue further out. Wind whipped up the whitecaps. The road meandered along the shore.

Also included are just a few shots of a really cool float of Boardman River. Bob has two yaks and a canoe. Debbie and I got the yaks. The river was full of yokels in rented yaks and tubes, having a good time and taking their time. It was hard to paddle thru some of these crowds.