Gary Fong’s Camera Of Choice For Day to Day Photos (2015)

Sony A7rII review at Mirrorlessons.
Zeiss Touit Super Short Review by Craig Litten.
Enter our holiday giveaway to win a CAME-TV 7800 3-Axis Gimbal! (Hughbrownstone).
A7S or SII maximum print size? (SonyAlphaForum).
Pixelmania awarded their Pixelmania Award to the Zeiss batis 85mm.

Anonymous: “I’ve seen that the danish shop Photografica also got a Zeiss Batis 25mm in stock now. http://www.photografica.com/product/zeiss-fe-25-2-0-batis-sony_65355/”

Marek: “Recently switched from Nikon. Last saturday I took one of my BEST cityscape shots ever with A7S. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaczkowski/23535293706/. I love that combo Voigtlander 35 f/1.2 + A7S!”

Anonymous: “How to expose and grade S-Log2 with the Sony a7S II and Sony a7R II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtUTjD8A0sw”

Emin: “Short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8if2T9HEpY with my Cokin filters + Sony A7R II + Nokton 35mm f1.2 II”

Jeff: “A few months ago it was raining crazy hard here in Hawaii and we decided to take the RX100 iv out for a spin. We played around with the 240fps as you will see. Then we did a few edits fr fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8BceEnXJM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXU3QHZSym8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1zdvT8OWcQ“

The Japanese-German partners Kipon and IBE today announced the development of the world first medium format to Sony E-mount lens reducer adapter! The Baveyes HB-S 0.7x “Speed Booster” will be offered for [shoplink 43141 ebay]Hasselblad C-F-CF lens series[/shoplink] owners. They can use those lenses with the “native” focal length and 1 stop aperture gain on Sony Full Frame E-mount cameras. Kipon did yet no share any info about the pricing of the lens and the possible shipment start.

TIMEDRIFT II from Martin Heck | Timestorm Films on Vimeo.

Sony Cyber-Shot QX30 Review (ePhotozine).
Pentacon auto 2.8/135 MC on A7II (SonyAlphaForum).
Trial By Fire: Switching to Sony For a Commercial Shoot Overnight (Fstoppers).
Nikon user with a new Sony A7ii (Best, Cheap, Most Convenient Adapter) on SonyAlphaForum.

Matthew: “I just wanted to let you know about a Kickstarter project that my company has taken live today that your readers might take interest in. We are Modula Optical, a small group of engineers in the optical industry, and we have developed a really unique 33mm f/2 prime lens for mirrorless cameras (Fujifilm X, Sony E, and Canon M) called the CM33. We love the compactness of mirrorless cameras, so we wanted to create a nice flexible pancake style lens where we push the optical quality absolutely as far as it can go using the design techniques we’ve learned over the years in other industries. And we also wanted to bring to modern cameras some of the really wonderful feel and usability of the classic manual focus lenses we grew up.

The other cool thing about the CM33 is a range of modular upgrade options. The most unique option is what we call “Mods” — special optical elements (filters, lenses, etc.) that can be inserted into the middle of the lens near the aperture stop, rather than screwed on the front ring. This lets us create some really interesting optical effects in a completely “as needed” way, rather than requiring a specialized lens to, for example, get a bokeh apodization effect or well-controlled soft focus effect.

If you’re interested, you can take a look at our Kickstarter campaign page, as well as a press release we’ve put out today and our new webpage. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me of course. I’m a frequent reader of sonyalpharumors, so I’d be thrilled if we warranted a mention there. We’re offering a very limited number of CM33 lenses at a significant “earlybird” discount for those who back us early, which may be of additional interest to your readers. By the way, I’m also sharing this info with your sister sites fujirumors and canonwatch (since it’s also relevant to those systems).

Some relevant links:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modulaoptical/cm33-compact-manual-focus-lens-for-mirrorless-with
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/11/prweb13059961.htm
http://www.modulaoptical.com
https://youtu.be/J7hemNnkut4“

Sony FS5 vs Samsung NX1 in 4K and 1080p from Tim Shoebridge on Vimeo.

Sony RX1r on Gold Box at Amazon Germany.
Canon new FD 2.8/35 Review by Phillip Reeve.
Great Yashica ML 28/2.8 shots on SonyAlphaForum.
Batis 25mm f/2 vs the Sony 28mm f/2 (iLoveHatePhoto).
Red river Cano Cristales, Colombia (SonyAlphaForum).
Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS Lens Review (SonyAlphaLab).
Sony A7R II Extensive Real World Review – Best Camera In The World? (Yannick Ciancianelli).

‎Matthias Kühle‎: “I recorded this real time polar lights video with Sony Alpha 7s at ISO 25600 and more. This is a significantly compressed and resized version. For better quality watch it in HD at Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QFgxSillKE”

Stan Moniz‎: “https://youtu.be/Gd_hvvMBOh8 New video up now! A short film on water and light focusing on what the Sony A7rii can produce @120fps @720p in 35mm crop mode. Shot with AquaTech Elite a7 Series II water housing / Sony A7rii / Sony 28mm f2.0 and Hoya hd3 filter“

The new (and very expensive) Meyer Görlitz Nocturnus 35mm f/0.95 E-mount lens is in Stock for the very first time on [shoplink 42362 ebay]eBay Germany (Click here)[/shoplink]. These are the lens specs:

Technical information:
Light intensity & focal length: f0,95; 35 mm
Optical design: 10 elements in 7 assembly units
Number of aperture blades: 10
Minimum focusing distance: 0,3 m
Angle of view: 46° (APS-C)
Gewicht: 680g
Optimised for APS-C sensors

Characteristics:

• Exceptional light intensity
• Ideal for low-key situations and shooting with available light
• Minimal chromatic aberration
• Well-balanced bokeh
• Near-silent aperture and focus adjustment
• Also ideal for video use
• Precise, high-quality workmanship

Stefan Fiedler sent me this:

—

At the recent Photo+Adventure trade show in Vienna, Austria my photo and fine art printstudio SALON IRIS proudly presented the giant panoramic photo print “Twilight Light” by Brooklyn, NY photographer Lazarus Jean-Baptiste. It is what we believe is the biggest ever in one piece printed and mounted photo exhibition print.
http://www.photoadventure.at/
http://www.photoadventure.at/weltrekord-megaprint-by-salon-iris/

Printed by SALON IRIS with an HP L28500 latex printer at photographic quality with 1200dpi resolution at the gigantic dimensions of 8,2 x 31,8 feet and mounted in one piece we could impressively demonstrate state-of-the-art photo and printing capabilities.

Brooklyn, NY based photographer Lazarus Jean-Baptiste (a.k.a. LAZARUS2020) was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He moved to NY at the age of 11 where he became a successful make-up artist. Over the past years the skyline of Manhattan has become his prefered “model”. He describes his photographs as “UHDR2” (Ultra High Dynamic Range and Resolution Cityscapes).
http://lazarus2020.com/
Please also see Lazarus´ bio attached.

Lazarus shot 26 individual photos with a Sony Alpha 7II at two rows of 13 images which were stitched for the giant panorama. The lens he used was a Canon EF 200mm F2.8L. He shot from from the New Jersey shores 1,5 miles away. Still individual persons can easily be identified in the windows of the Manhattan skyscrapers!

Interesting side note: Stefan Fiedler only met Lazarus Jean-Baptiste recently and by mere chance in front of the Photoplus Expo 2015 at the NY Javits Center when they started talking about the same Sony Alpha 7RII camera that they had both hanging around their necks. Over a cup of coffee Stefan discovered the incredible talent of the self-taught photographer Lazarus and they both decided to show Lazarus amazing work to the world – starting with the sensational panoramic print and more fascinating ChromaLuxe prints at Photo+Adventure.

——-

SALON IRIS (www.salon-iris.com) is a leading photo- and fine art print studio. It was founded 1996 by Stefan Fiedler in Vienna, Austria. The studios name refers to the legendary Iris inkjet printer that the studio used in the early days.

The highly successful Photo+Adventure trade show in Vienna, Austria attracts more than 20.000 photo and outdoor enthusiasts every two years.

Lenspire posted the content of an interview with Zeiss product manager Christophe Casenave. Here are a couple of interetsing informations:

1) Sony Alpha is in a phase of professionalization: “Sony Alpha is one of the most rapidly evolving system, the one in which most innovation is brought at the moment and it is a system in a phase of professionalization. We believe that we can help making this system appealing to professional photographers by providing pro-grade lenses.”

2) Reason for the Sony A7 success: “Many people like to provide old lenses they owned, or sometimes their parents owned, a second life. Even if these lenses are not ‘up-to-date’ or modern in terms of quality, they provide some kind of nostalgic look. Only this system allows to adapt so many older lenses.”

3) Why they launched the Loxia series: “We remarked that many people were adapting our ZM lenses, even if they are not all optimal for the digital sensor. In addition, we figured out that the AF lenses, while still quite compact, compared to DSLR lenses, still tend to get bigger on this system. The combination of these three factors gave us the idea to develop a new family of very compact, very high craftsmanship manual lenses”

4) Why the Loxia 21mm has a complete new design (not borrowed from the ZM series): “We could not do a symmetrical design, because we needed to ensure that the ray angle is low enough to avoid any kind of aberrations in the corners. As such, we chose a Distagon, with a very light retro-focus.”

Personal note: “Sony Alpha is in a phase of professionalization”…can’t wait to see that coming true at Photokina 2016!

Links to all Zeiss made FE Loxia and Batis lenses:
Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8 lens in US at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto. In Eu at Amazon DE, WexUK. In Asia at Digitalrev.
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2.0 lens at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto. In EU at Amazon DE, WexUK. In Asia at Digitalrev.
Zeiss Loxia 50mm f/2 Planar T* Lens for Sony E Mount at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama., WexUK, CameraPro.
Zeiss Loxia 35mm f/2 Biogon T* Lens for Sony E Mount at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, WexUK, CameraPro.
Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 FE lens at BHphoto and Adorama. In Europe at WexUK.