Low Light Sony A7Rii test: Metabones IV vs. Commlite adapter – Sony 35mm vs Canon EF 40mm f2.8

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX90V Review (Photographyblog).
Camera Power Rankings Month 3: Sony Climbs to the Top (ResourceMag).
Sony’s RX10 II captures Oregon beauty with aplomb (Imaging Resource).
24 hours with the Sony RX10 II, a 4K-ready superzoom camera (Engadget).
Subtle decentering in the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 (SonyAlphaRumors).
Tascam DR 70D recorder firmware adds highly useful medium input setting. tascam.com/product/dr-70d/downloads/

Hicksfilm: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na8ZJsElsGc Here’s a link to my latest BMX piece, shot on an a7s with 28-135 OSS F4 and rokinon 8mm 2.8 Fisheye.
All the slow-mo was shot on the RX-100IV at 240FPS and 120FPS. The full-res 120FPS on this tiny camera is truly spectacular for my uses.“

Imaging Resource had a meeting with the Sony folks in USA. And they shared the chart above which finally clearly shows how Sony’s interchangeable camera business is growing:

The presentation included stats from market research firm NPD, stating that Sony has been the #1 mirrorless camera maker for the last four years running. As with everyone else, 2013 was pretty awful, but check out the numbers since then. For the first half of 2015, their ILC sales were up 42% over 2014. Let’s underscore that: 42 freakin’ percent growth, in a generally down market. 

and

Sony has shown an impressive ability to develop technology and innovate, and I guarantee that the results the DI division is turning in will translate into even more investment there going forward. I have no idea what’s coming next, but am confident that the next few years will see even greater advances than we’ve seen in the last few.

Yes, we can expect great things from Sony!

The only thing that worries me here is that A-mount seems to be completely out of the picture. And Also the APS-C E-mount systems needs a sign from Sony (A6100 and new APS-C lenses).

One more wish:…we need bigger cameras too. A new A9 series with larger body, larger batteries, better grip/balance with bigger lenses, no overheating issues and so on…that would be nice!

Metabones just sent me the following press text:

Vancouver, Canada, September 18, 2015: Metabones^® adds phase-detect autofocus (PDAF) support for Olympus OM-D E-M1 and Sony Alpha 7R2 to its EF-mount Speed Boosters and Smart Adapters through firmware update version 1.8, available from Metabones’ web site for download.

Free of any potential misalignment issues, on-sensor phase-detect autofocus is capable of attaining excellent accuracy. Overall, phase-detect autofocus offers a significant performance improvement over contrast-detect autofocus, and for shorter focal length lenses the autofocus speed approaches that found in digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras. Performance, features and limitations of our solution are comparable to other on-sensor PDAF systems involving adapted DSLR lenses on mirrorless cameras, such as A-mount lenses on Sony Alpha 7R2 with LA-EA3 adapter, Four Thirds System DSLR lens on Olympus OM-D E-M1 with MMF-3 adapter or Canon SLR lens on EOS M3 with Mount Adapter EF-EOS M.

Limitations include:

1. During video recording there is no AF (Olympus) or only slow contrast-detect AF (Sony).
2. Continuous AF may have unsatisfactory performance (phase-detect AF) or not supported (contrast-detect AF).

Also added to Metabones firmware update version 1.8 is fast contrast detect AF for other Olympus cameras including E-M5II, E-M5, E-M10 and E-P5. Contrast-detect AF accuracy on Olympus is lens-dependent with most Canon-brand lenses introduced over the last 10 years working satisfactorily. However, some older Canon lenses and some third party EF-mount lenses may not be able to achieve pinpoint-accurate focus on Olympus cameras with contrast-detect AF. These lenses should be used on OM-D E-M1 instead.

In addition, AF support for JVC GY-LS300 is added to this new firmware version. Existing Panasonic contrast-detect AF support is enhanced with 24p added as a supported frame rate for single-autofocus (AFS) during video recording.

By simply downloading and running Metabones App Version 1.8, new autofocus support is added to the following Metabones products:

• EF-E Smart Adapter Mark IV (model number MB_EF-E-BM4)
• EF-E Speed Booster ULTRA (model number MB MB_SPEF-E-BM2)
• EF-E T Smart Adapter Mark IV (model number MB_EF-E-BT4)
• EF-E T Speed Booster ULTRA (model number MB_SPEF-E-BT2)
• EF-Micro Four Thirds Smart Adapter (model number MB_EF-M43-BM1)
• EF-Micro Four Thirds Speed Booster (model number MB_SPEF-M43-BM1)
• EF-Micro Four Thirds Speed Booster S (model number MB_SPEF-M43-BM2)
• EF-Micro Four Thirds T Smart Adapter (model number MB_EF-M43-BT2)
• EF-Micro Four Thirds T Speed Booster ULTRA 0.71x (model number MB_SPEF-M43-BT4)
• EF-Micro Four Thirds T Speed Booster XL 0.64x (model number MB_SPEF-M43-BT3)

The following discontinued products must be updated by factory service. Please contact Metabones customer service for details.

• The original EF-E Smart Adapter
• EF-E Smart Adapter Mark II
• EF-E Smart Adapter Mark III
• The original EF-E Speed Booster

Sony RX10 II Unboxing

Gold Box on the Samyang 8mm A-mount lens at 18:00 at AmazonDE.
RX10ii samples at Optyczne.
CEA Introduces New Terminology for Digital Imaging Sector (MirrorlesRumors).
Cheap lenses are not good (Joerghaag.com).
Your top 3 favorite Legacy Lenses (SonyAlphaForum).
The winners of the “2015 Drone Aerial Photography Contest” (TheNakedCamera).

Emon: “I’m a director & photographer based in NYC (www.emonhassan.com) and have recently started filming a documentary on BMX (www.fb.com/genbmx.com) with the Sony A7s. During my trips around the country for the doc I’ve been taking some time out to shoot stills. Shot a lot of assignments for The New York Times with the A7s since May and this did an amazing job despite being “just” 12 mp.
I’ve been a dedicated Canon 5D Mk II shooter for 6 years but can’t wait to get my hands on the upcoming A7r II because it promises to be exactly what I need for my work. Been putting the A7s through its paces (it’s a BorrowLenses.com rental) to see if it fits with the type of work I do. The answer, it seems, became a “yes” with the A7rII announcement..
I most recently filmed for five days at the Las Vegas BMX Nationals with the A7s and also took some time to make photographs at Red Rock Canyons (coming soon).
Check out my growing Montana gallery & my info:
http://emonhassan.photoshelter.com/…/G0000…/C0000NpbSwwKdRao“

Quinn Willoughby: “A short blog written on using my old Sony A77 and and Nikon D750. See if you can tell the difference. http://www.quinnwilloughby.com/blog/2015/7/22“

Mirrorlessrumors spotted a new Tamron patented describing the lens design of three new Full Frame lenses for the Sony E-mount system. The 28mm f/2.8, 50mm f/2.8 and 60mm f/2.8 lens. All do features in lens stabilization, 6 group and 7 lens design and a close focusing distance of 30cm.

At last we could get some affordable FE lenses. While those may not be very fast they would certainly be a nice light lens trio to carry in your bag. Just for fun let us know…

 Loading ...

Original Japanese Patent via Egami.

Nino Leitner from Cinema5D interviewed Claus Pfeifer from Sony Europe about the Sony FS5 and how it uses XAVC in a “surprising way”.
The new E-Mount 4K camcorder can be preordered in two versions:
FS5 body only at Adorama and BHphoto.
FS5 body with kti lens at Adorama and BHphoto.

Dan Chung from Newsshooter tells us more about “The Holy Grail of DSLR filmmaking”, the Genus prototype lens adapter with built-in electronic ND filter

And Elliot Smith from Newsshooter introduced us the new Veydra E-mount Cine lenses.

Note: The Sony A7sII now got listed at Amazon US too (Click here)!!!

Yesterday Sony announced that it will add 14 Bit RAW recording on the A7sII, A7rII and yet not defined “additional cameras”. There is one uncertainty highlighted by Diglloyd:

I am puzzled why an uncompressed format would be offered versus a lossless-compressedformat. The core issue is file QUALITY, not file FORMAT. Lossless-compressed is identical to uncompressed in quality, but saves a lot of space.

1. An “uncompressed” A7rII file would creat 74MB per file (75% larger than the current Sony 11-7 Bit compression).
2. An “lossless-compressed” would create files that are almost one-third less big than the uncompressed version

Some more open questions:
1) Will Sony add the feature on A-mount cameras , first generation A7 cameras and on the A6000 too?
2) What will be the effect on the buffer memory?
3) Will it (and by how much) slow down operations (playback and so on).

Let’s hope Sony will answer those questions soon…