Going backwards - A580

[mvanrheenen]

Get out of your small circle of friends and connect to other people.

Says the shining example of humility and kindness.

[Winkler Prins]

Get out of your small circle of friends and connect to other people.

Says the shining example of humility and kindness.

I don't pretend to be human or kind. Do you?

[Atgets_Apprentice]

Get out of your small circle of friends and connect to other people.

Says the shining example of humility and kindness.

I don't pretend to be human or kind. Do you?

Can you pretend to be civil?

[Argonaut]

There is a very useful feature on this board. Click on the Winkler's profile button and add it to your list of foes. From then on its messages will not appear for you. You can't feed it if you can't see it.

[mvanrheenen]

There is a very useful feature on this board. Click on the Winkler's profile button and add it to your list of foes. From then on its messages will not appear for you. You can't feed it if you can't see it.

Never knew that, thanks Argonaut!

[Greg Beetham]

Try using an less cheap-ass NEX. The difference will be huge. And don't expect it to be an Alpha 900. It is not about you, it is about the resulting images.

By the way, this forum is dead. Bfitzgerald has already left. The forum won't relive until you have left. Stop being rusty and scaring newcomers. Get out of your small circle of friends and connect to other people.

[/quote]

I know but you guys can't be trusted. So why would a newbie expose him/herself? Apart from the fact that this is the equipment discussion. I show my images to anyone who is able to find them on the internets. And I value the opinion of people I trust and respect.

I think you’ve exposed yourself more than we wanted, or needed.
Yes it is ‘the equipment discussion’ as you put it, SO WHY ARE YOU DISCUSSING PEOPLE?
Mark is quite entitled to his preferences on cameras, he certainly doesn’t need permission from you as to what he can like or dislike, especially when he has actually accomplished and contributed to this forum whereas you have contributed nothing but the occasional drive-by insult.
You don’t have to concern yourself with Barry F, he can come and go as he pleases and has done so before.
You don’t need to concern yourself with me and what I do either, stick to camera discussion which is what you are supposed to be doing.
Greg

[classiccameras]

I do hope Barry F has not left, he has been so helpful with advice and recommendations. I valued his knowledge as I value Greg's and other peoples.

Come on guys, we take pictures don't we.

Pete

[bfitzgerald]

Must have missed something here, but anyway I was a bit tied up with a wedding yesterday. I did use the A57 as my primary camera so it's possibly relevant to the discussion about the A580.

Yesterday was a super hot day here, and with full on beaming sunshine nearly 30 degrees and very little cloud cover. Field use wise I found some problems with the SLT concept, the biggest was of course the viewfinder. In this lighting, you are working twice as hard with an EVF when you are outside. Inside it's not really an issue and works well enough. With hard lighting again I ran into problems, the biggest was simply not being able to see people's faces/expressions clearly in strong back-lighting situations.

You're basically reliant on using fill flash, but I frequently had to look away from the viewfinder just to be able to see what people were doing facial expression wise. Obviously this is pretty important for this type of shooting. So I had to adapt with a focus lock and quick look with the other eye or a quick look with my main eye. In this type of lighting, an EVF pales in comparison to an optical viewfinder. As I've said before in the past the EVF just can't handle big DR situations like this, even with the exposure simulation turned off it's not great.

Sometime this single most important element is to be able to see the shot and clearly, a small penta mirror VF isn't ideal but it's passable and works, a bigger pentaprism VF is a better solution. So it's caused me to take a pause and consider if this SLT angle is going to work for me. I wasn't unhappy in other respects, I didn't get any green line problems, AF was much better than the 50%+ throw away D7k rate, the Metz for the most part worked well and was happily firing away even in very high temps. Inside the EVF was fine, as was the AF for the most part, battery life was ok at about 600 ish tad more real shots. Minor adjustments to metering as expected nothing out of the way there either.

It's just those tricky tough situations that the EVF is just a not very good solution, it left me yearning for an OVF camera. And before anyone says well don't shoot in that light, it's tough luck you get hired for a shoot and you're there come rain, shine, snow storm that's it the day is booked. I really don't think many working shooters are going to seriously consider EVF's in their current form to be a satisfactory solution or something they want. This is the first time I've shot an all day event with an EVF and the benefits (ie in tricky AF situations the focus peaking/magnify is good) are probably outweighed with the disadvantages/limitations of EVF technology. Not that I'm unhappy with the shoot I got some nice shots, and it went well. But in that hard light I ended up working a lot harder and having to take more shots to cover iffy facial expressions that I just can't see (and forget the back LCD in this light)

I have to conclude I think that the tricky AF could probably be handled with live view on the back LCD and MF with peaking and magnify, and you could use your OVF just fine outside! Maybe the A580 is worth a look, possibly with a VF magnifier to boost the size. It's certainly made me pause and think about the entire EVF concept, in real world shooting it's a compromise no question about it (in this tricky lighting) I don't think Sony have really thought this through properly end user wise.

[classiccameras]

Go missing for a few hours and people get worried!

Very interesting field review of the A57. This is where a camera proves its self or exhibits handicaps.

Its sort of made your mind up for you in a way. Good camera for a most other subjects but not indoors, especially if the pictures are important.
They are hard to beat for land scapes etc, but!
So what OVF camera would you consider, for me on my budget it would have to be a Pentax K5 which is a steal at the moment from SRS Microsystems, £449 for body.

[bfitzgerald]

It's fine indoors but outside in hard light it's weak (or rather the EVF is weak)
On a cloudy day you won't have problems, but the DR is just not there in the EVF.

Don't be tempted with the K-5 on paper it looks just the ticket but has a defective AF module, plus Raw NR another issue. It's just not worth it Pentax are truly an awful company to deal with, even worse than Sony and Nikon (both have their own problems neither is impressive support wise) Honestly I've never dealt with a company that out and out bare face lied to a customer and didn't even respond to written correspondence. My advice don't go there at some point you might have an issue, and you will be left on your own.

I wanted to like K mount, but the range is small...the QC is just as bad as Nikon or at least was, IBIS isn't enough reason to look at Pentax. Still ranks as the worst ever company I've dealt with, even worse than Pioneer who are another terrible company. When you have an experience like this, you never again look at products they make.

[Dr. Harout]

My niece has the a57. Side by side the EVFs of the a57 and a99 differ hugely. If you set the parameters correctly, then you won't feel that you're looking through an EVF (in case of the a99). While that is not the case of the a57's EVF.

[bfitzgerald]

I can't comment on the A99 as I've not used one. I have the A77 and whilst it offers no colour tearing and higher resolution I didn't feel that it was showing and DR advantage. More to the point, appreciate your input on this...however if the price of good EVF technology is the A99 then that's a price that is too high for most of us.

You can to a point work around things, but it is far from ideal. I imagine the A99 shows less of the noise the A65/77 show esp in low light too (I noticed that too) The A57 is somewhat better in lower light than those 2 models. I would expect the A99 pulling a feed off the full frame sensor to be better. I personally think the technology isn't there yet to really nail the EVF weaker points.

[bakubo]

Barry, high DR environments are probably the worst situation for an EVF, IME (only used the Olympus E-M5 and Panasonic G3). Having said that, I have written about how I have adjusted the many jpeg settings on my E-M5 to get a pretty good display even in high DR (still not as good as an OVF), but I shoot in raw so I can fool around with jpeg settings and they won't affect the raw file. If you are shooting raw have you tried making adjustments to the A57 jpeg settings? Minimum contrast, probably portrait, turn on DRO/DRO+, etc.?

[Dr. Harout]

Barry, high DR environments are probably the worst situation for an EVF, IME (only used the Olympus E-M5 and Panasonic G3). Having said that, I have written about how I have adjusted the many jpeg settings on my E-M5 to get a pretty good display even in high DR (still not as good as an OVF), but I shoot in raw so I can fool around with jpeg settings and they won't affect the raw file. If you are shooting raw have you tried making adjustments to the A57 jpeg settings? Minimum contrast, probably portrait, turn on DRO/DRO+, etc.?

As I shoot only RAW, I adjusted the settings to Portrait, with contrast set to -3. Under these settings the EVF is great.

[classiccameras]

I'm following this thread with interest and its a learning curve for me.
Barry, thanks for the heads up on Pentax, makes you wonder what the K50 and K500 are going to be like. It was mostly the reviews of the K5 that got me interested and my local dealer's hype. I never read one bad review of the K5 or at least in the reviews I read.
There is only a couple of options left, Canon and Fuji that might meet the criterior.
As for EVF and LCD's any body got a view on the A-65, the reviews said the EVF was superior to the 57, would it be a good step up from a 57. I'm not a huge fan of very high pixel counts for various reasons.
In some ways, I wished I had stayed at 12mp.
I am interested in the camera settings people have mentioned, any recommendations for landscapes on my 37/57.

Thanks