Is the A700 right for me?

[farmermike]

Why do I need to repeat myself! I just said HELL NO! The LENS HAS WORKED PERFECTY for me AND I USE HIGH SPEED FOCUS AND MY COPY HAS DELIVERED FAITHFULLY FOR FOUR YEARS!

-Sonolta

Sorry. I thought I forgot to send my post and now I see I sent it twice. Sorry I missed your URL for reseller ratings. I was sort of overwhelmed with all the responses and am still trying to chase down all the links. I did notice more than one person say DO NOT BUY FROM BROADWAY PHOTO, however.

[David Kilpatrick]

Seriously, the Tamron 28-300mm is not a good choice. The Sigma - the reports are real, not anomalies, there is a genuine problem with the gears but it would not stop me buying one (an APO DG 70-300 that is, not the cheaper plain model). Sigma will replace any lens sent to them with stripped gears in the UK - my son does their user website, and he knows their position on this. They may even replace lenses out of warranty if it's clear that the lens mechanism has failed. New stock should be modified enough to prevent this happening. Just don't buy an old s/h lens.

David

[farmermike]

I know it probably sounds like a bad idea, but I'd like to have one lens I can carry almost all the time. Seems like a 70-300mm would be way too tight at the lower end. Isn't that the equivalent of a 105mm lens on a 35mm? The old Nikon 105mm was the world's greatest portrait lens, but it's too tight for any close up work.

I was thinking a 28-300 would be perfect, although I realize that's asking a lens to do an awful lot, from wide-angle to long telephoto. What about this Sigma lens:

28-300mm F3.5-6.3 DG Macro

Costs a bit more than their 70-300 APO, but if it's decent it could sure do just about everything I'd like to do.

[Javelin]

People seem to rave about the Sony 18-250. it's not big and you would never have to take it off on a vacation. maybe supplement it with a Minolta 50mm 1.7 or even better the Sony 50mm 1.4

[KevinBarrett]

People seem to rave about the Sony 18-250. it's not big and you would never have to take it off on a vacation. maybe supplement it with a Minolta 50mm 1.7 or even better the Sony 50mm 1.4

I'm not sure I would go for the 50/1.4 over the 50/1.7. I seem to hear all kinds of BF/FF issues with the 50/1.4, and not so many with the 50/1.7, which is less than a third the price and not that much slower. Granted, the 50/1.4 is the most easily attainable lens at that speed for the A-mount, and with such shallow DOF it probably does present a challenge to use, even if it can be more rewarding.

[farmermike]

I can't remember who said it, but one of you suggested I look at Sony's 500mm lens for bird shooting. I read the reviews on it on dyxum.com and they seemed pretty darned positive, but I had one question. What the hell is a "bokeh?" Several reviewers mentioned it. Is that a British word us Yanks don't use?

[Dr. Harout]

What the hell is a "bokeh?" Several reviewers mentioned it. Is that a British word us Yanks don't use?

Bokeh is from Japanese which means out of focus, blurry... in photography it is used for the appearance of all the areas which are not in focus, such as foreground out of focus area, or background out of focus area.

[farmermike]

The 500 mirror is a good lens basically used in good light only...

When you say good light only, what exactly does that mean? Not so good and dawn and dusk I can see, but does the sun have to be out? If it's midday on a cloudy, gray day, will it work okay? Where I live--south shore of Lake Erie--that's basically every day from November to April, with few notable exceptions. If you need sunshine for this lens to work well it won't work well for me.

Mirror lenses often produce donuts. Below is a Minolta 500mm mirror example...

http://www.pbase.com/image/105784898" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Those are some UGLY donuts. The pix in the wikipedia article don't look nearly that pronounced.

I guess like everything else in life it's a tradeoff.

[jcoffin]

When you say good light only, what exactly does that mean? Not so good and dawn and dusk I can see, but does the sun have to be out? If it's midday on a cloudy, gray day, will it work okay? Where I live--south shore of Lake Erie--that's basically every day from November to April, with few notable exceptions. If you need sunshine for this lens to work well it won't work well for me.

Since it's a 500mm lens, the normal figuring is that you want something like 1/500th of a second shutter speed to hand-hold it. The standard rule for bright sun is f/16 at the reciprocal of the film speed/ISO equivalent. It's a (fixed) f/8 lens, so at ISO 125, so you'd get proper exposure in full sunlight at 1/500th@f/8. On a cloudy, gray day chances are that you have around two to three stops less light than that, meaning you'd just about have to crank the ISO up to around 500 to 1000 to get a proper exposure and a hand-holdable shutter speed. That's perfectly reasonable with an A700, but you're still definitely approaching the edge. If you get much less light than that, you're probably going to be depending on SSS, a tripod, or unusually steady hands to get really sharp pictures.

[David Kilpatrick]

Our light in Scotland is not so good in winter, and I get hardly any use out of the 500mm f8. In fact the only time I would use it would be for donut bokeh off sparkling water at sunset etc - one of my favourite FX. I find it next to useless for routine shooting, but I got it cheaply from an eBay seller, and it's a tool for an effect.

David

[farmermike]

Our light in Scotland is not so good in winter, and I get hardly any use out of the 500mm f8. In fact the only time I would use it would be for donut bokeh off sparkling water at sunset etc - one of my favourite FX. I find it next to useless for routine shooting, but I got it cheaply from an eBay seller, and it's a tool for an effect.

David

Don't you have about 3 hours of daylight on the first day of winter? I thought I remembered Ian Rankin mentioning that in one of the Rebus books. But in the summer you have almost 24 hours of daylight, don't you?

We don't have anywhere near those extremes in terms of daylight, but most winter days here in northern Ohio I describe a sort of like living inside a gray-colored balloon. Some days it's enough to charge your outdoor solar-powered lights, but other days it's not.

This digital camera world seems even more complicated and arcane than the film camera world was. For those of us who weren't pros, our choices were pretty simple: B&W or color; ASAs from 25-400; Kodachrome or Ektachrome for slides; Kodacolor or Fujicolor for prints; Ilford, Fuji or Kodak for B&W prints. You picked you color, your ASA and your film type and you worked with those parameters. If you developed and printed your own stuff you could push a stop or so, but if you didn't you were stuck with what you had.

But I guess in some ways it's the same old same old: higher speed means higher grain, be it a digital image or film. There's something to be said for the immediacy of digital, but I sure do miss the tactile pleasure of film. That's why I have to laugh at these digital photo frames. I think it's pretty damned stupid trying to force one paradigm into another.

[David Kilpatrick]

It's not quite that bad in Scotland. You have to go to Orkney or Shetland to get such extremes. Where I am (the south of Scotland, near the Border with England) is about the same latitude as Denmark, we get down to having six hours of daylight in midwinter but maybe less than four hours of proper night in midsummer. Certainly it doesn't get dark until almost 11pm and it starts to get light at 3am. Right now we have photographically useful daylight from around 8am to 5pm and in late March we start getting longer days than London and that lasts until late September. Overall the trade-off favours better light in Scotland, longer periods of low sun, more photogenic light.

Digital photo frames are an excellent idea. I am due to prepare one for my mother who will be 97 this month. She has lots of photos in her nursing home room, but a photo frame could hold everything. We did one for Shirley's mother when she turned 80.

David

[Vidgamer]

I put together a couple of digital photo frames for a couple of relatives. If you downsize your photos first, you can cram an incredible number of photos on there. I don't like the cheap ones that have really poor resolution, but even the better ones are still low-res compared to what we are used to. Even so, I do not hear complaints from the family members. I still give them prints for certain things, but for having 1000 photos (or whatever it is) in a slideshow, noone seems to mind the loss of quality/detail. The quality only has to be good enough... the rest, quantity and convenience makes up for.

[farmermike]

I guess I don't know enough about digital photo frames to comment properly. I didn't realize you could stuff them full of pix to show people. That's a pretty cool idea.

God, am I getting old, or what? I never thought I'd see technology pass me by, but in the digital photography realm I guess it has.

[Argonaut]

As long as we're not talking about the a700 so much any more ...... I own both the 500mm f8 mirror and the Sigma 400mm f5.6 APO-Macro. The mirror is a good lens, and with the higher ISO capabilities and the in-camera stabilization it's easier to use now. I formerly used it with a 7000i and never more sensitive film than ASA 200, more often ASA 100. You can do it. Drawbacks as people have said - bokeh is bad, donuts are bad (but surprisingly rare in my photos, don't know why). The positive, and it's a big one, is portability. Mounted on the camera it fits in an ordinary holster bag you can put on your belt. It's always with you, and after a little quick-draw practice, you can be on your subject in a few seconds. Count up the number of times you left the Big Banger at home and missed a great opportunity - that's where the mirror shines. Photoshop can deal with the problems if you have a really great photo.

That said, the Sigma is a much superior lens. If also focuses really close, so when the birds are missing you can do butterflies and so on. I bought mine at least 15 years ago and a couple of years ago it stripped its focusing gears. The Sigma factory put it together as good as new for about $150. I think so highly of this baby that I bought a second one on ebay for around $285 (neener neener!). I mean, they are no longer made. Someday I'll sell the second one and retire.

Do not buy the Sigma 400 not an APO macro. It's only OK. The APO Macro is a jewel. If you offered me $1000 for it I'd turn you down. None listed on ebay right now.