Archives for 2015

You’ve probably read about this lens. 300mm f/4, and smaller and lighter than you can believe until you hold it in your hand. Credit a phase Fresnel — that’s what the PF in the alphabet-soup lens name stands for — element for the tiny size and feathery weight. Optical stabilization, of course. How good is… [Read More]

It was reported on DPR that the Sony alpha 7S (a7S) performs some processing when exposure is set to “Bulb” that is different from what is done when the same length exposure is set for the camera to time. We’ve seen before that the a7S performs some spatial filtering of raw files at ISO settings… [Read More]

Yesterday, although it was hard to tell for sure because of the noise associated with handheld testing, that a lighter lens did slightly better when handheld with IBIS on the Sony alpha 7 Mark II (a7II) at 135mm. For today’s test, I’m pairing the monstrous, heavy Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 Otus with the svelte, dimunitive Zeiss 85mm… [Read More]

I was asked how well the Zeiss 135mm f/2 Apo-Sonnar performed handheld on the Sony alpha 7 Mark II (a7II) with and without in-body image stabilization (IBIS) turned on. I did a run and the results were wonky. I did another run with the Leica 135/3.4 Apo-Telyt and the results were better, but still didn[‘t… [Read More]

I tested the performance of the in-body image stabilization (IBIS; Sony calls it Steadyshot) on the Sony alpha 7 Mark II (a7II) with 16mm, 28mm, 55 mm, and 180mm lenses. The improvements over handholding without the IBIS turned on were impressive, both in reduction of the average amount of blur, and the tightening of the… [Read More]