PlayMemories Camera Apps “Smooth Reflection”

Best primes for the A5000 (DxOmark).
IBELUX 40mm f0.85 lens first seen in flesh at Newsshooter.
Making compact technical camera for A7/A7r at Chiek.co.kr. youtube http://youtu.be/YdYB3BWE08c
Quick test of A6000 with Zeiss lenses (in Swedish) at Fotosidan.
A7r RAW is not all that raw. The full discussion is at Dpreview forum.
Zeiss is having a Touit photo contest, 1st prize is a free touit (including the new 50mm)… “One year of Touit – show us your best image!” http://blogs.zeiss.com/photo/en/?p=4948

Alex: “Now I did something new. Again with the A7R + 50 Summilux 1.4 ASPH FLE I had an event at a bar where people had the chance to get a professional portrait. The best pictures I posted on my new Facebook page: Faces. All of them where shot at 1.4 or 1.8 and the difficulty was to get the people motivated while try to stay on focus because only a slight movement of few millimeters was enough to get the whole picture blurry. The challenge was also to not get one guy shot right but 12 on the same evening. I was very happy that I could hold my promise and every one got one really nice and professional portrait :)
So even though I wished I had autofocus it’s also possible to shoot manual if you try hard enough.”

James: “Sony HK has brought their pro camera support program online. I hope we get this in the US soon.”

Andres: “Not a rumour, but some findings about A6000:s PDAF system. It does not work with all lenses, and I guess it depends on what kind of focus motor is used. Here are the findings with the lenses I’ve tested:
Sigma 19mm f/2.8 – does not work
Sony 18-55/3.5-5.6 (old kit zoom) – does not work
Zeiss 24mm f/2.8 – works
Zeiss 16-70 mm f/4 – works
Sony 35mm f/1.8 – works
Sony 50mm f/1.8 – does not work
Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8 – works
Kinda dissapointing since the 50/1.8 is one of my favourites, and I was looking forward to fast AF performance with that lens :(” SAR answer: Tried to perform the firmware upgrade??? :)

Michael: “Know you´re busy with the a77 stuff. But found this in a forum, and thought it was funny and a nice little feature (had in my powerzoom Canon years ago) that nobody talks about. I mentioned it to you some weeks ago: in a video it seemed as if the a6000 in fact allows you to take a still-picture while video-recording. Apparantly it does :)“

This is the 2x2x2 meter Camera!

Now, where should I start to explain this project… First of all, I know the guys behind the Cubestories project (www.cubestories.com). I know how they work and how hard it has been and still is to realize their vision. It all started years ago when they heard Ilford would stop to produce the famous Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) paper. They decided to buy the last 16 rolls and built this special cube camera obscura to be able to shoot 1×1 meter pictures in direct positive. So every picture you take is a one of a kind! But don’t think that it is a sort of giant Polaroid camera. Unlike the Polaroid pictures the results on the Ilfochrome are of astonishing high quality and astonishing durability (more about it on Wikipedia). Plus, they are the first guys shooting reportage outdoor (with such a huge camera)! The presentation can be read on Cubestories.com (Click here). And some press about the Cubestories project can be read on ThePhoBlographer, DamnMagazine, Photoscala, Repubblica.

Help them to survive…
Now what happened is that they discovered that most of these Ilford rolls are expired or will expire soon. Therefore they have to shoot all the 16 rolls (about 300 pictures) this year to avoid major color shifting. And there is no way to complain with Ilford Switzerland because well, they went bankrupt (Source: Wikipedia). There is also no time for finding sponsors to cover just the travel and development costs. So they asked me to help them. So here we are!

Help them to die in glory…
It’s important to know this is a unique and one time project. Also every penny that they will earn will cover the pure high material costs which are as high as $26,000 (paper and development). Something that will be impossible to repeat in the future because there is simply no more of that special paper to buy anymore. If you like the project just donate or buy one of the pictures you find below. You will support the project to survive until its natural death in dignity :)

How to support the project:

1) With a one time donation of $10 you can (if you want) get your name on the official Cubestories Supporter page:

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2) You can buy one of these five limited edition prints for $150. These are the pictures of the cube (not taken by the cube). Only 25 prints per picture are available and are numbered and signed by the Photographers (Martinelli,Pizzini,Salvà) who built the camera. These are 30×30 centimeter (unframed) high quality ink prints that will be shipped in rolls within 3-4 weeks of the purchase. Click on the image to enlarge. Every picture has a history you can read here: http://www.cubestories.com/cube/.

Buy option is at the end of the picture list:

Note: You can buy more pictures but only one at a time because PayPal doesn’t offer the possibility to select more than one picture for every purchase.

3) On special request you can visit the Photographers in Merano (Italy) to get photographed (or take a photo of your wish) with the camera. Contact them here: cubephotographers@gmail.com.

Disclosure by SAR and Amonsul VOF:
The money will be collected by Amonsul VOF from (Belgium). They will use all the donations to cover the pure material expenses necessary to realize the 300 pictures (paper and development). SonyAlphaRumors supports the project for pure passion reasons only. I saw them at work, I know how hard it is to get a picture with that thing. Those guys deserve to finish the project!

Andrea (sonyalpharumors),
Supported by Ale (43rumors), Patrick (fujirumors) and Stefan (canonwatch).