Photoclub Alpha

The final release of Adobe Camera Raw 6.2, DNG Converter 6.2 and Lightroom 3.2 includes raw conversion support for the Alpha 33 and 55 models as well as the NEX-5 and NEX-3, Alpha 290 and 390 which were included in the Release Candidate versions. These August 30th releases are final version, RC versions are a form of beta test.

The bad news is that anyone using the LR3.2 RC as a temporary free solution for getting full profile correction without investing in Photoshop CS5 will lose their freebie. But Lightroom is eminently affordable, and it can function as a raw conversion front-end for any earlier Photoshop or Elements version. On its own, it is a mere 10MB of program data fatter than Adobe Camera Raw as a plug-in and runs with great efficiency on modestly specified laptops (etc). It’s a lean, keenly priced solution which offers many further benefits as a DAM (Digital Asset Management) library such as keywording, copyright control, metadata editing, version stacking and multiple catalogues.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/new.jsp

I am informed that support is included for the 16mm lens on NEX (profile) but I can’t tell whether it is the profile I supplied to Adobe Labs, or a new one, because my profile has remained unchanged on my system – same names, same modification date. And there’s no NEX-3 version which might be expected if they had created new profiles. So it looks as if it could be worth sending profiles into Adobe after creating them.

It’s fantastic news that Adobe has released ACR for the new Alpha 55 16 megapixel sensor before the cameras even hits the street – mine is on order, waiting! Not so great for Nikon users; no D3100 raw conversion in this release. But Canon users get the 60D (despite Adobe missing it out from their front page list). Adobe did this Sony friendly pre-release once before, for the Alpha 100, getting the conversion into place before the camera went on sale.

The bad news is that the Alpha 580 and 560 models are not in the list alongside the fixed mirror pellucid, transflective (anything but Translucent, please…) cameras.

The instruction manual for the Alpha 33 and 55:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=SLT-A33&region_id=1

is already on-line and shows a March 2010 publication date, which means that Sony has had these new cameras in existence since the beginning of the year, certainly well before PMA when mockups were shown. It’s likely that Adobe’s Thomas Knoll has been using one from the first bug-free pre-production model onwards!

Now all we need is the revised lens series with SAM or SSM motors fitted into the 16-80mm CZ, 16-105mm Sony, 18-200mm and 18-250mm Sony; the 11-18mm wideangle replacement, the 75-300mm SAL replacement, and a few other goodies. Hopefully all Zeiss glass gets SSM where possible. That 16-80mm CZ is four years old now as a design. A tweak to the maximum aperture, or the zoom range, would revive interest.

- David Kilpatrick

480 width ad:

OVER the past few days I’ve been looking at the NEX-5 and a range of lenses and optical systems. I’ve got adaptors for C-mount (16mm/TV/CCTV) lenses, Leica 39mm screw, Minolta MD and the LA-EA1 for Alpha A-mount. The NEX-5 has proved able to provide a surprisingly bright focusing image through a classic German microscope:

It also proved very competent with the Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 OS lens, the adaptor providing power for the OS which is fully functional, and also for auto exposure, leaving only manual magnified focusing to tackle.

Sony is expanding its line-up of over 30 A-mount lenses with new models that will appeal to seasoned photographers and those new to DSLR cameras alike – a 35mm f/1.8 DT (APS-C) SAM, an 85mm f/2.8 full frame SAM, and the long-awaited 24mm f/2 Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm f/2 for full frame with SSM ultrasonic focusing. In the interests of getting this report on line, it’s mainly Sony words, with a few added comments and edits.

I was going to post this on our Forum for NEX originally. It’s not good form to launch into what may be seen as ‘rival’ publications or journalists, so it’s the kind of thing which is often kept to blog pages or forum discussion. But Practical Photography is one the best-selling, and most powerful, photo magazines in the world.

So, I copied my ramblings and moved them here, instead of putting them in a forum post where just a few hundred people would see them. Tens of thousands of visitors see Photoclubalpha’s main site articles, and I want this to be seen, because it matters.

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The Sony NEX-3 and NEX-5 cameras are ultra-slim interchangeable lens models, referred to as ‘ultracompact’ or ‘compact system camera’ models by Sony. The lens flange to film distance is only 18mm, compared to 44.5mm for the Alpha system and very similar figures for all popular SLR brands.

The Leica M and screw mounts, with under 1mm difference between them, are 10mm greater than this at around 28mm. Screw mount Leica lenses can be adapted to M even though there is only 1mm difference. With 10mm difference, almost any lens ever made for any camera – even the Robot system, original Contax, maybe even the Pentax 110 SLR – can probably be adapted to fit the E-mount. In fact it will accept 16mm and 35mm (half-frame) ciné, C-mount CCTV lenses, and subminiature camera lenses.

You name it, the NEX will be able to do it. Telescopes, microscopes, endoscopes, whatever. And Alpha lenses, and MD lenses. There is even enough ROOM with over 25mm the spare to fit a true retrofocus format reduction converter – that is, a 0.66X optical unit which condenses the image from a full frame lens to fit the APS-C sensor. It is already done in the video and ciné world, and these converters have a wonderful bonus. Your 24-70mm f/2.8 SSM lens becomes, with a 0.66X reducing converter behind it, a 16-46mm f/2. That’s right – the same way a teleconverter loses you a stop or two, a format reduction converter gains you a stop.

Are you an Alpha Male or an Alpha Female?

Never feel that your chosen camera makes you the odd one out in a herd of Canon and Nikon users! You are the leader not the follower…

Perhaps you are the only one at your college or your camera club with an Alpha. Well, we reckon that makes you Alpha material, so we have designed two neat logos combining the symbols for Male and Female with the Alpha glyph. It’s an official Photoclubalpha garment not official Sony!

It would have been great to start with a low-cost almost giveaway T-shirt, but the quality of these can be poor especially in black. Yes, even the best black cotton will fade with wear and washing but it is a good quality garment to start with. That’s why it has to be £13.95 including VAT and postage* to cover our costs.

The Polo Shirt is, we think, a real bargain. Various local clubs and societies, as well as sports teams, have had similar polo and rugger shirts made by our supplier with embroidered logos. They look great and wear well at £17.95 each including VAT and postage. Photo above: white male T-shirt, black female T-shirt, black female polo shirt. The polo shirts with the female logo are tailored for women’s fit. T-shirts are unisex.

The T-shirts have the web address of Photoclubalpha written neatly in the classic Minolta typeface across the shoulders on the back. The logo and male or female text line are printed centrally on the front.

The Polo shirts only have the logo motif on the front, to a smaller size, in chest pocket position. There is no text, if anyone asks you what it means, you’ll have to explain it. The Polo shirts feature embroidered logos, the T-shirts are printed.

The T-shirt sizing is fairly generous – for example, size L is a neat fit for female size 20, loose on size 18.

Men’s Polos/all T-Shirts
XS – 34/46″
S – 36/38″
M – 38/40″
L – 40/42″
XL – 42/44″
XXL – 44/46″
3XL – 46/48″
4XL – 48/50″

Women’s Polos
(British Sizes – US sizes are one step smaller, XS=6 for example)
XS – 8
S – 10
M – 12
L – 14
XL – 16
XXL – 18

T-Shirts are unisex not tailored. Polo shirts are supplied in male tailored cut for Alpha Male, female cut for Alpha Female. T-Shirts are Heavyweight 100% Ringspun Cotton (175-180gsm); Polo Shirts are the same material, but a little heavier in weight.

Ordering by post

T-Shirts – available to in black or white, sizes XS to 4XL
Alpha Male – Black or White, with Alpha Male text line    £13.95
Alpha Female – Black or White, with Alpha Female text line    £13.95

Polo Shirts – available in sizes S to 3XL (M) XS to XXL (F)
Alpha Male – Black or White without text small symbol    £17.95
Alpha Female – Black or White without text small symbol    £17.95

The shirts are printed (for T-Shirts) or embroidered (for Polo Shirts) locally in Kelso and you may specify any size within the range shown; depending on demand, it may take up to 28 days for orders to be completed and despatched. We hope to keep stocks of popular sizes for faster delivery. Prices include VAT and postage*.

Cheques payable to ‘Icon Publications Ltd’ – orders to Alpha Shirts Offer, Icon Publications Ltd, Maxwell Place, Maxwell Lane, Kelso, Scottish Borders TD5 7BB. You may also post an order using the method described for fax orders below.

Ordering by email or fax

FAX your order with credit card (long number, cardholder name, security number and expiry date) and address information, written out with clear instructions for the garment/s, male/female design, colour and size required, to +44 (0) 1573 226000. Faxes are retained until you confirm receipt of order and shredded afterwards; we do not store credit card details, repeat orders need information repeating.

Alternatively, scan your document and attach it to an email sent to david@photoclubalpha.com

Ordering by Paypal BUY IT NOW - you must detail your size requirements using the Comments or Message field provided by Paypal, or in a clearly linked email. If you do not state size requirements, we will send size L.

Alpha Male T-shirt White

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Alpha Male T-shirt Black

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Alpha Female T-shirt White

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Alpha Female T-shirt Black

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Alpha Male Polo Shirt White

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Alpha Male Polo Shirt Black

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Alpha Female Ladies’ Polo Shirt White

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Alpha Female Ladies’ Polo Shirt Black

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View Order Cart

* For orders outside Europe, VAT is not applied. The 17.5% VAT saving is used to cover additional postage costs for worldwide buyers. The prices remain the same for all geographical areas. UK and European orders include VAT.

The Alpha System celebrates its Silver Jubilee or 25th Anniversary this month – though left uncelebrated by the inheritors of the Minolta AF legacy, Sony. They have no reason to draw fresh attention to the age of the system, as in four years they have taken it the same sort of distance that Minolta took the world’s first AF system in the late 1980s.

It’s not only Alpha’s 25th birthday. This is also the 25th birthday of modern AF SLR systems – all of them!

This is a multi-page article. See the links at the bottom of the page to Continue Reading after each page.

For Photoclubalpha and the historic Minolta Club of Great Britain, the anniversary does matter. A good many of you out there have been members since the launch of the system, often using the earlier SR and X manual focus systems before that. We still have a 1985 Minolta 7000AF and it’s still working just as it did when new.

25 years before the first Minolta SLRs appeared – a folding Minolta Six of 1935

I don’t mind showing my age to make a comparison. I was 11 in 1963 when I took my first pictures with an SLR camera. My father had bought himself a Pentax S3 – and the camera it replaced was 25 years old, a pre-war Zeiss Ikon Kolibri collapsible 16-on-127 model.

When the Kolibri was made, 127 was the ‘vest pocket’ format of choice. 35mm was on the rise, but 35mm SLRs had not yet arrived. They were as much a thing of the future as digital SLRs were when the Minolta 7000AF was launched.

But within that 25 years, there was hardly a single camera system made with interchangeable lenses that did not become obsolete. Only the ‘frozen assets’ of the cold war kept some systems, like the Exakta bayonet and the Praktina, alive. New brands were launched, from the British Wrayflex and Periflex to the Italian Rectaflex and many German oddities. It was not unusual for an entire system to be come and gone within a few years.

Even in the following quarter-century, the high years of the Japanese 35mm SLR, the succession of lens mount changes was bewildering. Independent lens makers like Tamron and Sigma were forced to make systems using interchangeable mounts not just because the public wanted it. A dozen or more mounts were made for every lens and in the 42mm screw thread fit alone there were endless variants – Praktica LLC (Pentacon Electric), Olympus FTL, Pentax ES and more.

It was more or less a 25-year cycle – the SR system was announced in 1958, and really got underway by 1960. It was to be another quarter century before the AF system arrived. We are now a further 25 years on – can we expect a totally new camera system, once again, in 2010?

Minolta’s SR bayonet mount, introduced in 1958/9, actually remained basically unchanged all the way through to 2005 when the last manual focus model, the X-370S, was available. It survives even now as a mount popular in China where the Seagull range from Shanghai Optical includes Minolta fit models. That mount only ever had one major revision, to add a linkage for open aperture TTL metering. The introduction of programmed exposure and shutter priority was cleverly enabled by using the existing design of lens mechanism and improving its accuracy, while adding a simple reference lug to the ƒ-stop setting ring.

Nikon’s 1959 F-mount proved similarly easy to improve without any basic modification. Both these bayonet mounts celebrated half a century of production in 2008/9 – another landmark, which Nikon was able to celebrate but Minolta of course could not.

Tamron’s 18-250mm lens – later adopted by Sony – was so good that it really takes some effort to beat it. Sigma has put that effort in, but the cost is a very much larger and heavier lens. If all you got was some better performance, it might not be all that exciting. But you get potentially superior anti-shake through its built-in OS, and faster focusing with HSM, the Sigma equivalent of SSM.

PENTAX UK is pleased to announce the launch of the PENTAX K-7 lens-interchangeable digital SLR camera. The K-7 combines a variety of advanced functions and user-friendly features to ensure outstanding reliability and capability within a compact, lightweight body (says the press release from Pentax in the UK).

The K-7 joins the current PENTAX K digital SLR camera series as a high-end model in the range. True to its series concept, it has been designed to deliver outstanding image quality combined with ease of use, to benefit photo enthusiasts of all levels, including advanced amateurs. The K-7 also includes revised and upgraded features including viewfinder, shutter unit, continuous-shooting capacity, and exposure and autofocus systems.

Protected by a durable, high-quality metallic body, the K-7 is extremely compact and functional — as with all other K-series models — delivering enhanced portability and manoeuverability. The model includes several new user-friendly features, including video recording, high dynamic range (HDR), and automatic horizon correction. All of these features serve to deliver a highly effective photographic tool, perfect for all discerning digital SLR photographers.

Nikon fans may be surprised that a 35mm f/1.8 has been launched at just £199, when prices are spiralling upwards in the UK. What a perfect lens for the D3, D700 or D3X! But wait – read the small print! Or, read the press release very carefully indeed.