Voigtländer 40mm f/1.2 FE lens review by David Braddon-Mitchell

Share

David Braddon-Mitchell tested the new Voigtländer 40mm f/1.2 Nokton FE lens and concludes:

“This lens has some very beautiful aspects. The bokeh is just glorious in many situations. Its speed means you can use a 40mm lens for portraits and get blur comparable to a 1.4/50, thus reducing the one disadvantage, to my taste, of a slightly wider standard lens for environmental portraiture.
What makes it possibly attractive is the speed: for street, for environmental portraits, for playing with the glorious bokeh in the lit-up nighttime of the city (sorry I have no samples of that sort yet!) For all that, it appears give to give excellent results across much of the field stopped down. Of course this will be a lot less appealing if chromatic aberration , flare and backlit bokeh aren’t good, so that’s what I’ll be testing next.”

The Lens is listed at Amazon and BHphoto without a pricing info.

Share

This week SAR readers photos selection

Share


Icc on SonyAlphaForum
Dancing Lights
I had a long evening/night trying to capture the lovely lights dancing in the sky.
Gear used: A7II + 28mm f/2

1) Submit your picture with a message and picture here: facebook.com/sonyalpharumors or on the SonyAlphaForum image section.
2) Like and comment the pictures from other readers here: facebook.com/sonyalpharumors/posts_to_page/ and on SonyAlphaForum.
3) A selection of most liked pictures by the community and by me SAR admin will be posted weekly on SAR.

Note: When sending a pic feel free to also add a link to your site to promote yourself!

Share
Read more

Reminder: Up to $200 off on Zeiss and Rokinon FE lenses

Share

These are the Zeiss Batis and Loxia lens savings:
$100 off on the Zeiss Batis 135mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$75 off on the Zeiss Batis 18mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$65 off on the Zeiss Batis 25mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$60 off on the Zeiss Batis 85mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$65 off on the Zeiss Loxia 35mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$65off on the Zeiss Loxia 85mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$65 off on the Zeiss Loxia 21mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.
$50 off on the Zeiss Loxia 50mm lens at BHphoto, Amazon and Adorama.

Rokinon Full Frame E-mount autofocus lenses:
$200 off on the 50mm f/1.4 at Amazon, Adorama at BHphoto.
$220 off on the 14mm f/2.8 at at Amazon, Adorama and BHphoto.
$100 off on the Samyang 35mm f/2.8 on eBay.

Rokinon APS-C E-mount manual focus lenses:
$80 off on the Rokinon 50mm f/1.2 APS-C E-mount lens at Amazon, Adorama and BHphoto.
$40 off on the Rokinon 21mm f/1.4 APS-C E-mount lens at Amazon, Adorama and BHphoto.
$40 Rokinon 12mm f/2.0 APS-C E-mount lens at Amazon, Adorama and BHphoto.

More deals info:
Superfast ADATA SD card now in Stock at Amazon.
You get the External Flash and a 64GB card for free with the A9 sold by BHphoto.
$200 off on the Tamron 45mm f/1.8 A-mount lens at Bhphoto.
The new Laowa 15mm FE lens is in Stock in the USA via BHphoto (Click here).

Share

Do you remember? We already had an Alpha 9 many years ago!

Share

[shoplink 53982 ebay]minolta_alpha_9[/shoplink]

Did you know we had an Alpha 9 may years ago? This is what ChemicalCameras writes about the [shoplink 53982 ebay]Minolta Alpha 9 Maxxum camera (here on eBay)[/shoplink]:

The Minolta Alpha 9 (a.k.a. Maxxum 9 or Dynax 9) is arguably the finest professional grade 35mm SLR camera ever made. It just oozes with ruggedness and quality. It is one of those cameras that once you pick it up you don’t want to put it down. It was released in 1998 with a feature set that left most of the competitors far behind. It was the last professional grade camera made by Minolta.

Great camera! And honestly, I would have loved Sony to make the body a bit bigger and more “Minolta” alike. Not just because of a matter of personal taste. But I think a bigger body would have served well for many different reasons (improved ergonomic, bigger battery, XQD card, heating control…). Maybe the future A9II will get a different design…

And we also have a new full review of the “new” Sony A9 by Imaging Resource:

Pros
New sensor offers incredible performance; Excellent image quality at low & high ISOs; Very good dynamic range; Phenomenal 20fps burst speed & deep buffer; Very good battery life for a mirrorless; 4K video; Dual card slots.
Cons
Slow buffer clearing; Only one UHS-II card slot; Touchscreen underutilized; No lossless RAW compression option; No 4K/60p option.

–
Minolta Maxxum A9 camera auctions on [shoplink 53982 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Sony A9 at BHphoto, Adorama, Amazon, BestBuy. FocusCamera. Calumet.de. Park UK. Wex UK. Jessops.

Share

DxOmark sensor test: Nikon D850 tops the Sony A7rII by a margin of two points

Share

DxOmark tested the sensor of the new Nikon D850. It beats the over two years old Sony A7rII by a hair. The Sony has a better High ISO performance but it’s the one stop imrpoved dynamic range performance at Low ISO that gives the Nikon the edge:

Against the Sony A7R II and Canon 5DS, the Nikon D850 offers an advantage at base ISO of around one stop against the Sony, and a massive 2.5-stop advantage over the Canon. The gaps narrow as sensitivity increases, though, so from ISO 1600 and above, the D850 and Sony A7R II offer broadly the same dynamic range, with the Sony just edging them. The Nikon and Sony both continue to offer around a one-stop advantage over the Canon for dynamic range between ISO 1600 and over the Canon 5DS’s top sensitivity of ISO 12,800. So good dynamic range above or around 10 EV is possible on the Sony and Nikon up to ISO 3200, compared to ISO 1600 for the Canon.

I bet the new Sony A7rIII (or A9r) will get on top of the DxO rankings when it will be announced in 2018.

Share

Nikon and Canon both going FF mirrorless in 2018. What will be Sony’s reaction?

Share

Both Nikon (rumor here) and Canon (rumor here) are finally going to compete against Sony in the Full Frame mirrorless segment. Both companies should launch their new FF system cameras in 2018 (probably at Photokina in September).

I honestly think Sony is not going to change their camera roadmap release to wait and see how those cameras will look like. We are going to probably see a new A7III and A7rIII before the Nikon and Canon release.

But for sure Nikon and Canon are looking at the weak spots of the Sony system and will try to exploit them. I hope Sony will “prepare” for this and improve a couple of things like:

1) Lower the price on Sony cameras and lenses. Make them more accessible for people to join the E-mount system!
2) Improve on delivering more “mature” software (Example: fix star eater issue bug)
3) Rework the APP system so that third party developers can sell their APP’s
4) Improve the service (still issues in some countries)
5) Add functions that are long available on other camera system like real full touchscreen functionality, real 64 ISO, and so on…
6) Don’t do unnecessary “cuts” on hardware: A9 should have had 2 fast SD slot cards! USB 3.0 should have been long standard too. Improve the focus by wire (which I personally dislike).

It’s time for Sony to really growth up and give a really hard time to Canon and Nikon :)

Share