ArtisticGlamour wrote:
Nice! LOVE my Sony's!

a350
a55
a77

My entire MM port is Sony. There's very few of us...

Sensual Magic  wrote:

My entire MM port is Sony. There's very few of us...

there are actually quite a few. but does it matter?

AVD AlphaDuctions wrote:
there are actually quite a few. but does it matter?

I guess not.

ArtisticGlamour wrote:
If I remember correctly this was the a350 with a cheap Minolta 50mm/f1.7

Un-retouched (obviously! LOL!)

Same lens (on an a700). It has its moments...

L U C I M A wrote:
How about a Sony NEX-7?

Yeah, I've often wondered how the NEx-7 woould work for glamour. This one looks underexposed. Got any more? Have you used it in the studio, triggering strobes?

Joseph Peffer wrote:
All my work is with the A850 and a Minolta 50 mm or 28-300 which are my newer shots. Just switched to Nikon though.

Also, don't use portrait professional. If your going to use any filter use imagenomic portraiture. It's much more realistic when faded out to about %30. Don't rely on filters. They over blur the skin. I made that mistake when I started last year. Than decided to actually watch some YouTube vids and experiment and viola! Much better results.

Yeah, I might of went overboard with the skin smoothing.  I rarely use the PP program. Just fooling around with it when I am in a hurry. It does some nice things but you have to use it very sparingly.

Vindictive Images wrote:
Half of my port including the avatar is shot with an a560. I had an a700 previously but it broke and I never looked back.

Thanks for your comment. I too have the a700. 85% of my port images are a700 (the rest Sony R1). It hasn't broke yet, but now that I see what the a580 can do I'm intrigued. They say the 580 may be the last true DSLR Sony ever issued.

The a700 delivers better skin tones straight out of the camera and it has a superior viewfinder. I find myself spending a lot of time adjusting skin tones from 580 images. The 16.2 megapixels of the 580 is a big plus though. More detail in the eyes and hair.

FKW Studio wrote:
Actually I think it looks nice, its a compressed tonality that was obviously done on purpose. I'm sure if we wanted to exploit the entire dynamic range of the nex 7 he could have.

A99 and A850 here. The A580 is a great camera, as is just about every single dSLR out there today.. glad you like it.

Spot on analysis, thank you FKW Studio

Sensual Magic  wrote:
Thanks for your comment. I too have the a700. 85% of my port images are a700 (the rest Sony R1). It hasn't broke yet, but now that I see what the a580 can do I'm intrigued. They say the 580 may be the last true DSLR Sony ever issued.

I bought the a700 for when it first came out at $1300. The shutter broke 2 years later and repair was $300. Then the stopdown pin broke 2 years after that and estimated repair was $200 so I gave up and bought my current camera for $500 as a stopgap for the eventual full frame.

I had always splurged on the best camera I could get at the time starting with the Maxxum 7D and then the A700. The A560 taught me I didn't really need the latest and greatest cause by the time things break, the cheaper options are adequate replacements and may even be improvements.

Some things I missed about the A700 were its shooting speed and manual flash settings (instead of TTL or ADI) which is crucial when using radio triggers and strobes. I notice my strobes firing twice per shot since switching over.

Maxximages wrote:
Nex 7 Canon 135 L @F2

Beautiful shot, the DOF Is perfect- I guess more like a 200 prime on that apsc sensor. Love it.

Vindictive Images wrote:
Some things I missed about the A700 were its shooting speed and manual flash settings (instead of TTL or ADI) which is crucial when using radio triggers and strobes. I notice my strobes firing twice per shot since switching over.

Can you run that by me again? What specific manual flash settings does the a700 have that the a580 does not (besides the kelvin setting)? I'm trying to understand this. I too noticed some kind of preflash on the a580 when in manual mode using the Sony wireless, off-camera flash system with a Sony flash. I have not yet had time to pursue that further. And I have not yet tested radio triggers such as Pocket Wizard for triggering strobes from the a580. What is going on? I was very surprised to see a pre flash in manual mode.

Sensual Magic  wrote:
Can you run that by me again? What specific manual flash settings does the a700 have that the a580 does not (besides the kelvin setting)? I'm trying to understand this. I too noticed some kind of preflash on the a580 when in manual mode using the Sony wireless, off-camera flash system with a Sony flash. I have not yet had time to pursue that further. And I have not yet tested radio triggers such as Pocket Wizard for triggering strobes from the a580. What is going on? I was very surprised to see a pre flash in manual mode.

Okay, so suppose you have a radio trigger like a pocket wizard on. Your camera will treat it as an ADI or TTI flash and give your strobe a preflash. This causes problems if you need to put your strobe at full blast.

Vindictive Images wrote:

Okay, so suppose you have a radio trigger like a pocket wizard on. Your camera will treat it as an ADI or TTI flash and give your strobe a preflash. This causes problems if you need to put your strobe at full blast.

Egads! That will NOT work for me in studio group shoot situations, which I attend frequently. I wonder why it does that.

Is there a workaround?

Sensual Magic  wrote:
Egads! That will NOT work for me in studio group shoot situations, which I attend frequently. I wonder why it does that.

Is there a workaround?

How I found out was in group shoot situations. There seems to be no workaround and of course anytime strobes were put at half or full power it would knock out one or two lights.

When I use my own alienbees, I didn't have problems since I set my power at 1/32 or 1/16 often. However my modeling light bulb blew out quicker.

Sensual Magic  wrote:

Yeah, I've often wondered how the NEx-7 woould work for glamour. This one looks underexposed. Got any more? Have you used it in the studio, triggering strobes?

It's not underexposed.

Vindictive Images wrote:
Okay, so suppose you have a radio trigger like a pocket wizard on. Your camera will treat it as an ADI or TTI flash and give your strobe a preflash. This causes problems if you need to put your strobe at full blast.

if you have a trigger on the hotshoe why would you have the popup flash raised in the first place on the 580?  you need to have it raised for the a55 but the workarounds for that are numerous and well known.  for the 580 just put the popup down out of the way.

EDIT a Sony camera will not treat a PW or other non-sony trigger as an ADI or TTL flash, even with the adapter. it will treat it as a dumb flash because it cant communicate with it.

Vindictive Images wrote:

Okay, so suppose you have a radio trigger like a pocket wizard on. Your camera will treat it as an ADI or TTI flash and give your strobe a preflash. This causes problems if you need to put your strobe at full blast.

eh, never had that happen. Without ttl, why would it?  Maybe if you were using a TT1 or a TT5, but even then, they're not wired for Sony, so I can't see any way you'd ever get a pre-flash unless your pop-up was up too.

Smedley Whiplash wrote:

eh, never had that happen. Without ttl, why would it?  Maybe if you were using a TT1 or a TT5, but even then, they're not wired for Sony, so I can't see any way you'd ever get a pre-flash unless your pop-up was up too.

pretty sure he meant TTL not TT1 with that TTI. but I agree, you cant have preflash without a popup (or a flash on the shoe)

AVD AlphaDuctions wrote:
EDIT a Sony camera will not treat a PW or other non-sony trigger as an ADI or TTL flash, even with the adapter. it will treat it as a dumb flash because it cant communicate with it.

No, for whatever reason my 560 does, it causes my alienbee to fire a preflash. In the menu option, I can only select ADI or Pre-flash TTL. No option for manual. Given the double flash, it treats that radio trigger as a pre-flash TTL flash.

The pop-up is not involved in any of this.

AVD AlphaDuctions wrote:
if you have a trigger on the hotshoe why would you have the popup flash raised in the first place on the 580?  you need to have it raised for the a55 but the workarounds for that are numerous and well known.  for the 580 just put the popup down out of the way.

EDIT a Sony camera will not treat a PW or other non-sony trigger as an ADI or TTL flash, even with the adapter. it will treat it as a dumb flash because it cant communicate with it.

You need to use the pop-up flash to trigger the Sony flashes wirelessly using their infrared system. So when I set the camera on Manual and the flash on Manual I still get a pre-flash. This is what I don't understand. It does not happen on my a700.

(I have not tested this yet using and adaptor w/PocketWizard to trigger strobes.)

Will Snizek wrote:
I prefer Sony cameras!

Cool. What do you like about them?

For myself, it's build quality and 'bang-for-the buck'. Also, most of them have a fantastic Auto mode when you need it. I mean, the camera won't let you take a bad picture in Auto. (Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration.)

Vindictive Images wrote:
Half of my port including the avatar is shot with an a560. I had an a700 previously but it broke and I never looked back.

Now updated to an a99. The EVF/LCD drives my OCD nuts. I keep turning my power button off and on between subjects that I didn't have to do before with an OVF.