Sony Diaries: A Recent Wedding in January, 2022

 

Sony Diaries #1039: Details in B&W

These and other selections will be available for print sales in May (2020)

What to do, what to do...

or how one news item from Sony can alter one's plans.

For the last 4 years, I've been shooting Weddings and Events with a Sony a99. This is a camera that embodies perfection for my style of shooting: excellent AWB, useful LiveView, quiet (not silent) shutter, dual card slots,  full frame, useable autofocus for video. I'm on my 2nd aA99 body, and the recent release of the a99II meant that new a99's would be taken off the market soon. 

The a99II improves on "perfection" but it comes at a high cost: $5000CDN. I've been getting more and more requests to shoot video and the a99II would be the ideal hybrid Stills/Video camera as it comes with 2 of my must-have features for shooting wedings these days: 4k video (really good 4k) and 5-axis stabilization. But still, $5000CDN  is a lot of weddings.

I've looked at the RX10II and it ticks off almost all the boxes except for the inability to use lenses faster than F2.8. In-body stabilization (IS) is the tried and true Sony SteadyShot but it isn't 5-axis. I've looked at the a6300 and it doesn't have a headphone jack and no IS at all. 

Today, Sony announced the release of the a6500, which builds on the (fastest/quickest in the industry) autofocus of the a6300, 4k video and ADDED 5-axis stabilization! Like the a6300, the a6500 still doesn't have a headphone jack but I use a pre-amp anyways. But the 5-axis stabilization is the deal-maker for me. And all for $1700CDN!

One may ask: why not use the a7 Series of full-frame cameras? 

Well, I did, for 1.5 years with an a7II. It wasn't ideal for shooting weddings and events. slow focusing and very expensive native FE lenses. Since I have alpha-mount lenses, I use the LA EA4 adaptor and this further slows down auto-focusing, disabling all the focus points that the a7II is known for. And apparently, even the native FE lenses are slow to focus, in this blog entry by Mann & Frau Schmidt.

The a6500  is an APS-C, cropped sensor camera, fine for Video but will take time to get used to for Stills.. For me, it'll be a different way of looking , having used mostly full frame bodies. But hey, cropped sensor doesn't seem to be a negative for Kevin Lam and Ramon Cespedes!

Sony Diaries #967: Kyle: a portrait session

Sony Diaries #966: Will it be in Colour? Or will it be in B&W?

For personal expression, freed from the constraints of Art Director demands and agreed-upon specifications, a photographer is faced with the delicious dilemna: colour or black-and-white.

When is it appropriate to use either one?

The general rule (and always meant to be broken) for a B&W image is one with a varied range of blacks, greys, whites, strong graphic elements, with good contrast between the elements. I use B&W when I don't want colours to get in the way of the message.

I use colour when colour IS the message!

Fortunately, all digital capture is in colour and with the magic of channel mixers and tone mixers and photo suites (Photoshop, Camera RAW, LightRoom, NIK, etc), any colour image can be converted into a B&W image worhty of Ansel Adams.

But what is also true is that not any image will work in B&W.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to shoot a portrait session with Amanda, for TrilliumWest (arguably, the coolest, most progressive real estate brokerage in Ontario!). All the shots had to be in colour but as I was editing, it struck me that some images would look good in B&W too.

may or may not work in B&W

I think this will work in B&W

the following works, for sure

 the following only works in colour

So there you have it.

Sony Diaries #963: Recent portraits

the beautiful folks at TrilliumWest