Photoclubalpha

Following the suggestion of a professional photographer friend, I spent too much of yesterday on this site and its parent. I will probably come here too frequently!

Having realised that at 76 I can no longer carry my Nikon 300S and all its lenses for longer than a couple of hours, and needing something which will satisfy my needs which I can carry for a whole day, I have transferred my affections to the Sony A7R. Having read all written here AFTER buying it, perhaps I should have waited for the A7S, but it is done now.
With the 24-70 Zeiss zoom and the Zeiss FE 35mm-f2.8 I am set to go. Macros will be satisfied with an old Nikon manual 135mm Micro-nikkor + adapter. I need a long zoom, but haven't the cash for the Sony one yet and it isn't really long enough for the safari we plan in the New Year. Any alternatives out there at a better price?

My photography is mostly landscapes and buildings during our travels - that is what retirement is for, isn't it? But I also have a 'studio' set-up for taking publicity shots of the furniture I still make occasionally. Very few 'high activity' shots (skiing, mountain-biking) and for those, my Sony RX-100 mk1 works fine (I'll upgrade to the latest Mk3 when I have the cash).

I thought about the Fuji system when making my new purchase but was put off finally by the lack of cover from DxO for the Fuji module. This software is the first stop for all my shots, before they go to Lightroom and Aperture. I am somewhat anxious about Apple's plans to replace Aperture, bit the latest version will keep working for several years after it has gone and I can wean myself off it to do everthing I need to with Lightroom. I don't use Photoshop - PS Elements provides me with the few services I can't get from the other pieces of soft. Occassionally, mainly for B&W, I use Lightzone, which has an interesting approach, similar to that of the Efex plug-ins.

I look forward to participating in this community but will need to be very careful with my time - my wife is always finding things for me to do away from my screen!

Welcome artHarris - good to have you here

Looks like you're sorted for your approach. Look forward to seeing your A7R pictures. We don't have many A7x shooters yet.

The telephoto zoom for FE mount is currently restricted to the 70-210/4 unless you want to go to other mounts. I guess you could go for one of the adapters to A mount which would keep autofocus etc. to a point. There are some good lighter weight A mount zooms, e.g. Sigma 70-300 APO DG Macro.

Thanks, Birma,for the suggestion. I don't like the reviews of the Sigma I see quoting flimsy build, and, as I use a big zoom rarely, I'll leave such a purchase until the last moment before our safrari, hoping something better turns up.

artHarris wrote: This software is the first stop for all my shots, before they go to Lightroom and Aperture. I am somewhat anxious about Apple's plans to replace Aperture, bit the latest version will keep working for several years after it has gone and I can wean myself off it to do everthing I need to with Lightroom. I don't use Photoshop - PS Elements provides me with the few services I can't get from the other pieces of soft. Occassionally, mainly for B&W, I use Lightzone, which has an interesting approach, similar to that of the Efex plug-ins.

Welcome to the forum!

I have heard good things about Lightzone. It used to be a commercial product, but now is an open source project with a new version:

http://lightzoneproject.org/

Does Aperture support your new A7r? If not then you might be making the move to Lightroom sooner than you had planned. These days I use LR (currently 5.6) plus PSE 9. Rarely use PSE though since for most photos I can do what I want in LR.

Thanks for the Lightzone news - I hadn't noticed.

Concerning your point on Aperture, since everything goes through DxO, and is transferred to Aperture as a big TIFF, Aperture doesn't treat it as coming from the A7R. But why would it not support the output directly? I'll see what happens tonight.

artHarris wrote:Concerning your point on Aperture, since everything goes through DxO, and is transferred to Aperture as a big TIFF, Aperture doesn't treat it as coming from the A7R. But why would it not support the output directly? I'll see what happens tonight.

Okay, if you process your A7r raw files in something else and then only use the converted tiff files in Aperture then if Aperture doesn't support your A7r (or any later cameras) then it won't matter. Raw processing software must have support for your camera though in order to process the raw files. Your current DxO, for example, won't work with a later camera unless you update it to a later version.