CHG_CANON wrote:
I just finished posting some examples from the Butterfly Haven at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. I've only been once before and when checking hours on their site, I found Thursdays are free for IL residents. I figured maybe more crowded, but 10am to mid afternoon, it was a continuous stream of pint-sized visitors. I can see how some of the winged ones might have felt like the toys in the daycare in Toy Story III...
I've rented a Sony A7II for the week and purchased a Metabones FD - E mount T. I have several FD L lens that are just not getting the work. I'm finding I favor my EOS 1v for film work with EF lenses. Seeing what the manual focus lenses will do on a digital body is an effort to either divest of the FD mount equipment or to see if they're a viable option mounted to Sony.
I'm impressed so far. The aperture is manual on the lens. For ISO and shutter, I can manage these with the camera to the eye with the details in the view finder. The biggest + is the subtle shimmer for the plane of focus in the EVF (electronic view finder). Although you can zoom the focus in the EVF, I found the zoom shaky and not stabilized making the focus via the manual lens a bit problematic. But, getting the focus "right enough" via the EVF zoom and then watching the simmer zoomed out via the EVF, I found the results from this set-up to be comparable, if not interchangeable, to my AF lenses and EOS 5DIII. I think with some more practice, I've found a viable platform for the manual focus lenses.
The images shared in the Photo Gallery are all but one from the New FD135mm f/2. The Sony doesn't capture the aperture so you have to guess at the approx aperture from the DOF of the image. I used a Canon Extension Tube FD 25mm to reduce the minimum focal distance to about 30 inches on the FDn 135, good for when I could get near a butterfly or moth, but useless otherwise. The images mix between the tube off and on, I have no way to know except guessing. The final moth image is the New FD50mm f/1.2L that can focus much closer at about 18-inches.
Overall Pluses
The in-camera stabilization had every image sharp. Any failures / throwaways are my focus abilities, not camera shake. I was shooting 90% from a monopod and kept the SS around the 1/focal length. More testing will be needed on my ability to handhold at slower shutters.
The ability to manually tune the stabilization to the lens focal length is a wonderful tool.
The noise grain is manageable with LR and Topaz Denoise. Although, the settings needed to be tuned to the Sony characteristics that differ from my existing Canon presets.
The camera and lenses are smaller, even with the Metabones that adds some length to the lens.
Overall Minus
I'll have to learn the menus and see what I can customize. I haven't yet found a low-speed continuous shoot. I also couldn't figure out what nor why the EVF shows the last image sometimes and continues to shoot at other times. Too many times when I wanted a run of images, the camera wasn't shooting and instead was showing me the details of the last image.
Also, putting the lens to the Metabones to the camera takes a good deal of care to assure everything is aligned and properly locked together. Not recognizing some near misses, I had a lens falling off the camera more than once, but thankfully, each time was only a near miss and no actual disasters.
I'd also like the EVF zoom to jump straight to say 50% or maybe 75%. If I can't do this, I guess just more practice is needed with what the EVF can do.
I just finished posting some examples from the But... (
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