About the second imahe the I made with the X Vario. Love the blues.

Because I purchased this camera second hand, the following two posts are the first two images I made with it. You can see that the image numbers are quite low. I was actually quite impressed with them, the rendition is very much Leialike probably because it's a Leica. I'm still getting used to the camera and I'm sure it's going to take a few thousand exposures to get to where I'm comfortable with it. Just keep on making pictures.

After a long wait and keeping my eye on the market, I actually got a very good offer on a display piece so I jumped on it. I didn't purchase the Leica EVF because I have the Olympus model. Works great and is cheaper. I use it too on my Olympus cameras. It's not the fastest focusing camera on the planet and the lens isn't the brightest on the planet but I do like the build quality.

For years now, actually ever since I can remember, I wanted to own a Leica camera. A genuine Leica that they developed and built (not a rebranded Panasonic). On the other hand I didn't, or wasn't prepared, to pay the premium they're asking for the top models on offer today. Not to mention what they expect to get for their lenses! When the X Vario came out I also wasn't prepared to pay the premium they wanted so I just sat back and waited, and waited, and waited.

As you can see I've been practicing quite hard at this manual focusing stuff on the Alpha cameras. Do I find it getting easier, well yes and no. It all depends what lens I've got mounted. Presently the best lenses I've used are both Zeiss, the 50 f2 Planar and the Tessar 85 f4. Both exhibit excellent colour and are very sharp. The best rendition I've seen on the Sony sensor so far. Some of the Voigtländer lenses have a very long throw and I'm in real trouble with a couple of them. I think these will be used more on the Nex line and my M43 cameras where they perform very well.

The image above was taken during the blue hour and in low light conditions. It was actually nearly dark and the lens was wide open at nearly MFD. This is one that I nailed but it doesn't happen often with this lens. I must find the correct settings for nailing focus without using the magnification function, as that puts me off totally.

This is me prcticing my manual focusing skills. At least winter has something going for it, and if you haven't guessed it yet I just don't like winter (although it's not too bad if we get snow which is rare where I live). As you can see I do sometimes nail the focusing with these manual focus lenses, and when I do, I'm quite impressed with what can be achieved in terms of dynamic range and lens rendition. Sharpness is also very good and the Nokton 35 f1.2 II is sharp wide open but only at close focusing. I would not recommend this lens for anything nearing infinty. Well, I don't use it for that anyway.

I must admit I'm having problems with manual focusing on the Sony Alpha A7 and A7R cameras. I find it much easier on the Nex family and evn on the M43 cameras. It must be the FF sensor thing. The Zebra function the cameras offer is great in my opinion and once I figured out how it actually works I never switched it off again. To get the best possible use out of it, ensure that you see some Zebra stripes in the viewfinder. If you don't then you're underexposing the frame. The way I set it is to use EC to back off the expsure (if required) until I don't see any stipes in the viewfinder and the bring the EC back up until I do see some. This gives me my required exposure for the shot; and it works.

Theproblem I'm having is nailing the focus on the exact spot where I want it. On the Nex and M43 cameras I was able to do this quite quickly and I could be pretty certain the focusing was correct. I'm not able to fo that with these Alpha cameras, my focusing is just off what should be in focus. Sometimes I've got backfocus and sometimes front focusing, caused by myself of course and not the camera because it's me that's focusing the lens.

I'm going to try the following methos for awhile to see if things get better. Set the cameras to raw + jpg and set the jpg for B&W. Turn down the peaking setting to low and colour to red which seems best for me in this config. You might prefer yellow because it's really a personal thing. Hopefully this will help me focus on the correct point.

As you can see in the image above, take wide open at f1.2, I don't think I nailed focus correctly on the bench, but it hard to see in my opinion. Anyone out there have any more tips to help me get better at this. One point though, I do not like using the magnified view, maybe that's my problem but I really have trouble with this function and I don't intend using it in the future.

I just couldn't resist this Sony Alpha A7, it's perfect for my type of photography. I love using older (and newer) legacy manual focus lenses on modern digital cameras. And this is principly the reason I purchased the A7. A bonus for the camera is the E mount which allows you to use all the native E mount lenses on the market today, albeit at a lower resolution. By lower resolution I mean 15MP files which is about the same as the best M43 camera on the market today, and with those you can safely print a 45cm x 30cm size but how often do you print at those sizes? So any smaller prints are going to be exceptional. Sony are planning on bringing out their FE lenses for the Alpha system but I'm not planning on aquiring any of those except the 28-70 I bought with the camera. I like at least one native lens for each system just to see how it actually performs with those lenses mounted.

Be careful when using rangefinder lenses on these Alpha models, just as you had to be careful what you used on the Nex-7. Colour shift will hapen with these lenses at focal lengths of 35mm ond wider. SLR lenses don't cause this problem and you have a lot of lenses to chose from. Everyone has their favourites and mine are C/Y and Pentax which have proved to be excellent on other systems.

However, that doesn't mean these lenses will perform well on the Alpha cameras because they are of course full frame. With the other systems the sensors used are either APS-C or M43 and using the sweet spots of the lenses, the central portion. Problems normally occur at the edges where smearing can be seen and testing each lens before use is a must on these cameras. I like using a 50mm lens, hence my purchase of the Zeiss Planar 50 f2 which performs very well on the A7. I thought I would pay a little more for one lens which I could use for years to come and no further purchases would be necessary. I will report back with some images from this lens when I have the time.

I think one thing should be said here about the Sony Nex family of cameras and that is the name Nex has been retired and no more Nex cameras will be brought to market. The Nex cameras have only be renamed Alpha cameras so we may see another Nex camera come to market only it will be called an Alpha.