Reviews on gear and software

Mini review Topaz Clarity

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A little while ago Topaz contacted me if I wanted to play with their soon to be released Clarity plugin. I have to be totally honest that I always had a weak spot for Topaz, they really have some cool filters and I know a lot of my friends also use Topaz.

 

Now one of the things I love about NIK/Google is tonal contrast and when I was told that if I loved that one I would LOVE Clarity I could not wait. By the way you also don’t have to wait anymore because Topaz has just released the plugin, if you follow this link you can get it (and you support the blog)

 

Well Topaz didn’t exaggerated, Clarity is like Tonal contrast on steroids, wow.
The layout of the plugin is very functional and when you start the plugin it won’t take you long to start playing with it and getting some awesome results, when diving more deeply in the possibilities I’m sure that you will be just as enthusiastic as me.

 

The first controls you will start to play with are the contrast sliders, with these sliders you can target certain areas and manipulate their appearance, but this is just the start, when you go further into the plugin you will very quickly see the HSL sliders, for people not familiar with this term it’s actually the Hue, Saturation and Luminance settings panel, meaning you can control colors not only by saturation but also by their hue and brightness (luminance), this is a very cool thing to have in a plugin like this because in fact it can prevent certain problems you could get on more extreme settings (which I did not encounter yet).
Topaz Clarity V1.0.0 (beta) 2 Read more

More Petri 50mm 1.7

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After the review of the Petri 50mm 1.7 a lot of people emailed me about how much they loved me doing these small reviews on very cheap lenses, so I promise there will be more but for today some more images with that super cheap 50mm 1.7 Petri lens.

 

These images were shot during a workshop with Marie, all natural light wide open.
As mentioned in the review it’s a mixed feeling I have with this lens, the images can be very sharp (even wide open) but the contrast is “weird” and the colors are “funky” but to be honest this is also why I love the lens so much. Do remember that I buy these lenses for their imperfections, if I want a perfect image I will mount the Zeiss 24-70 f2.8 or one of the modern Sony/Minolta lenses, these lenses however give you image “character”. Well at least I think so 😀

 

Marie Petri 1.7 Mei 15 (21 of 74)-Edit

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Sony A99 with sports

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PLEASE DO READ THE FIRST LINES OF THE REVIEW….
In short.
This was the FIRST outing with the Sony, I figured out the problem in the last 15 minutes of the game. They were just posted to show that the camera can keep up with the fast moving action, I mention clearly that the images are soft due to the e-front curtain, but posted them because a lot of people kept asking for them and I knew I did not have time for the next 6-7 weeks to do more sports. So please don’t blame the camera for not being a good sports cam, I was more than happy with it’s performance but the e-front curtain literely destroyed the image sharpness, as soon as I figured that out the images were great. I will do some more sports in the next 1-2 weeks.

 

 

Let me start out by saying that the images in this review should actually NOT be considered as “this is what the A99 can do” and in fact the only reason I post this on my blog is because a lot of people have been asking me about it and the next time I will be shooting sports will be at least 2-3 weeks away so I decided to post this small review anyway to let you know what I think of the A99 for sports.

SCE April 7 2013 -_-312

Now let me first clarify why I start the review like this.
I’ve been using the A99 for some time now and I have to say that I really fell in love with the camera and the system, the older Minolta lenses are great and the dynamic range and sharpness of the Sony A99 is just stunning, and as mentioned many times before, when you get used to the EVF it’s very hard to go back to the OVF, every time when I use a Canon/Nikon or my Medium format camera it’s a bit of a “Oh yeah, it’s an OVF story” instead of “Pffff, finally an OVF again” yeah you get used to the EVF very quickly and you will love it (well at least I do).

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Mini review Minolta 85mm 1.4

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Today a mini review of the Minolta 85mm 1.4 AF lens.

 

Lens : Minolta 85mm 1.4 AF
Year : around 2000 (?)
Price paid : app 650.00 US

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Now one could argue on why to buy a fast 85mm lens, I already own the Sony 70-200 f2.8 which is a very nice lens and is used in 80% of the sessions I do and the DOF on f2.8 with a 70-200 on 200mm gives you a very very nice portrait look, so why would one buy a 1.4 85mm lens?

 

Well there are different reasons, first of all for example street portraits. The 1.4 speed will give you a lot of “speed” for when the light situations are not perfect or when shooting inside, however the length of the lens makes it a bit of a limited lens, it’s a great portrait lens but if I would have only one lens on my body I would prefer the 24-70 f2.8 for street style shooting or the Minolta 35-200 if I don’t need the speed. So for me to be honest buying this lens new was not an option, with prices for the incredibly nice Sony 85mm 1.4 (which I shot the first few weeks when I got my A99 for review) in the 1300.00 Euro range, for me that is just a bit too much for a lens that I would just use on some occasions when I want to “play” with it…… But luckily we have internet where I found a “Like new” version for app. 650.00 US which I actually was willing to pay. So how does the lens perform.

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