PESO 2011 #38 - Graffiti

More does not necessarily mean better

Sony has just announced its new generation of APS-C cameras (Sony A77 - the flagship). The main part - brand new sensor that has 24 MPix. That's quite a handful. Well, probably it would be better to put it like this - that's quite a disk-full. I think that for my personal purposes 16 MP sensor (20-25 MB per RAW file) is just enough.

So, here you have it - in my opinion, for my photography 24 MPix is too many, 8 MPix too many to be precise.

Of course, beside the improvement of pixel count and sensor technology, new introductions have other interesting things. It would stand to reason that when other manufacturers including Pentax will show their new models they will have better metering, faster AF, etc. All of this will be available for a proper price, but if I would want a better AF (I still find AF of K-5 to be sub-optimal) I'd have to adopt this sensor with all its mega-pixels.

Suddenly Ricoh's modular systems looks quite brilliant. You want better algorithms - you get a new body. You want some special lens - you get this special lens module. Modular! Flexible!

Well, one can only dream and wish so much...

PESO 2011 #37 - Fresh amber

PESO 2011 #36 - Etude

PESO 2011 #35 - Etude

PESO 2011 #34 - Just before the moon disappeared

PESO 2011 #33 - Moon sunrise

Entilted

No, there is no misprint in the title of this post. It is indeed about the tilt. I've acquired Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 50/4 along with the tilt adapter. It is big and heavy but it is great fun to use and it shows some serious promise. Few points after spending few days shooting with this combo on my Pentax K-5.

• Operation is really easy. There is no automation of any kind - aperture is fully manual, so is focus and of course so are tilt and rotation. My K-5 in HyperP mode keeps the shutter speed at no slower than 1/60 sec after which it starts upping the ISO. No issues with metering.
• Focusing is tricky because one cannot focus by the center and recompose. If there is a tilt involved, one has to compose first and only then focus carefully. Fortunately K-5 has sufficiently good focusing screen while maximum aperture of f/4.0 helps as well. It would seem that my K-5's focusing screen is slightly out of alignment for precision manual focusing though.
• This lens has huge front element and although it is marked MC, it does catch flare, but that is to be expected. Other than that it is sharp with very pleasing OOF rendering and good color rendering as well.

Below are some examples (a bit of vignetting added in post):





All in all, given the lack of native tilt solutions in Pentax land, this one looks like a really good way to get started. More tilted shots to come along...

PESO 2011 #32 - Hills of Galilee

PESO 2011 #31 - The sun is rising

PESO 2011 #30 - Hills of Galilee

PESO 2011 #29 - Nocturne