Photoclub Alpha

Continuing to make profiles when time permits, here is a reasonably detailed profile for the Sony DT 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss zoom (2007) created using the Sony Alpha 550 14.2 megapixel camera using Manual Focus Check Live View at 14X to set the lens focus and ensure the chart is positioned to use 100% of the frame.

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/DSLR-A550 (DT 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA) – RAW.lcp

Right click to download this 56Kb file which should be placed in the Lens Profiles/1.0/Sony folder of the directory on your computer which holds Adobe Lens Profiles.

This profile has been created at full aperture and f/8-f/11 depending on focal length, at 16mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 80mm focal lengths and involved 90 raw captures.

It is possible in ACR/Lightroom to use profiles which are not created on your own camera type. This profile can be applied to any APS-C Sony or Minolta camera using the 16-80mm lens; because the A550 is currently the highest resolution body, the CA data gathered is more accurate than would be possible using a lower resolution body but may need a saved adjustment in defaults. Individual lenses differ slightly and may also need adjustments.

I have checked the operation of the profile on files from A100, A700, A200, A380, A350 and A550 and it’s very effective in removing CA. Illumination is much improved at 80mm (notably). You may prefer to turn the geometric correction down to zero (off) when the angle of view matters more than perfect straight lines – and also, where people are in the shot near the edges at 16mm. The distortion of the lens is optimised to lessen ‘stretched faces’ at the ends and corners of the shot, applying the profile removes this slight barrel distortion and does not improve groups. It’s most useful for horizons, rooms, seascapes, and subjects where a good straight rendering is critical.

It has been suggest I should add a donation button for these profiles. By all means see our subscription page, there’s a downloadable PDF of the latest Photoworld magazine for $3. I could easily have zipped profiles and sold them in the same manner, but that is not why photoclubalpha is here; Adobe provide the software to do this free (OK, I know what the rest of their stuff cost me…) and profiles should be made public domain by creators.

- David Kilpatrick

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.

.

The European press launch

David Kilpatrick recorded the proceedings at Le Meridien Lav Hotel, Split, Croatia on March 11th 2010 using a Zoom H2 portable digital recorder. Shirley Kilpatrick transcribed the audio, with subsequent editing to translate verbal output to read well as text. This is a multi-page document please use the PAGE navigation at the foot of each page to continue reading. It is a very long document.

SONY has shown itself to be lagging behind the competition as we reach the third bend on the second lap of the development of HD-video capable DSLRs. At PMA 2010, nothing ‘real’ was shown and the closest they came to further launches in the Alpha range was an advanced pre-production prototype of a 24mm f/2 Carl Zeiss T* ZA SSM.

But Sony may prove yet to be the tortoise – or perhaps to be Brer Rabbit. They could make the finishing line, the goal of a truly useful video DSLR, before Nikon/Canon/Pentax/OlySamPanny get there.

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.

My review of the Sony Alpha 550 was supposed to appear at the end of November, allowing one week abroad in good weather with plenty of subject-matter, in Tenerife. Sadly that trip had to be cancelled, and the Nikon D3S arrived for review on the day we were meant to have travelled. So, with far too much work to do on the D3S, I’m “going to press” here with my initial thoughts based on a fairly short time using the Alpha 550.

There are 11 pages in this review, please use the Next Page navigation at the end of each page to continue reading. A sponsor link appears before the end of each page – “Get camera lenses at Shopping.com’s affordable deals.” Our thanks to Shopping.com for spotting and sponsoring this review!

This review has been updated August 2010 – see the second to last page for new Adobe Camera Raw Process 2010 results, a massive improvement with Alpha 550 files.

According to Sony UK, the Alpha 5oo and 550 were shipped to UK dealers starting at the beginning of this week (October 19th) – though calls to WarehouseExpress, and to our local Edinburgh Sony ACE dealer, produced no knowledge of the new cameras. WE said that they expected the camera ‘hopefully within the next month’ and Edinburgh Sony Centre Shandwick Place said ‘we will have it in stock on October 29th’.

Paul Genge of Sony UK confirmed that deliveries had in fact been made by October 22nd to selected dealers and that ‘both cameras have been available since the beginning of the week’.

However, a Google search showed no for sale items except Hong Kong based grey market shippers. WarehouseExpress still showed a pre-order status for the Alpha 550 and its kits. We have been trying to obtain one for the past two weeks, as review samples were not available. The initial report in Photoworld magazine has been completed with the help of our Photoclubalpha subscribers round the world who already have the camera, and will appear in the edition printed next week.

UPDATE: Monday October 26th – WarehouseExpress had bodies, 18-55mm and twin lens kits all in stock this morning.

- DK

Peter Crouch cuts a striking figure on the football pitch at the best of times and when recently asked to train the UK Sony ‘Twilight Football’ team ahead of their big game on the 22nd September, the outcome was some simply stunning imagery. (Editor’s note – continue reading to see the ‘stunning imagery’… but have somewhere handy to put the hair you tear out)

ALL the current DSLRs made – whether by Canon, Nikon or even Sony with the A700 and A900 – state their maximum fps continuous shooting speed as being with NO autofocus, and NO exposure metering changes. There’s a lot of talk on forums about the 7fps of the new Alpha 550 – 14.3 megapixel CMOS APS-C with a good high ISO capacity – being in some way crippled because it has been made clear by Sony that this speed applies to a ‘lockdown’ of focus and exposure with the first frame. This is not surprising as it’s a quiet, mirror-up mode using the off-sensor live view to maintain contact.

My Sony Alpha 380 was supposed to arrive before July 13th according to SimplyElectronics.net – via Amazon – claiming UK despatch of 2-10 days delivery after debiting my card on July 6th from a July 3rd order. Well, it didn’t arrive by July 21st, and after some email exchanges I have apparently obtained a refund for the charge they made for an item they did not have (though this was still showing as ‘processing’ in August). Warehouseexpress.com had got the A380 plus 18-55mm kits  by that time, for £10 less, and delivered in 24 hours. Update August 9th: under a month later, the warehouseexpress kit price has fallen by 10% (£50) to £548 inc VAT.