The very serious business of making portraits.

I love to make portraits. I love that not all of my subjects are required to smile. I love that we can spend time talking about life while we're making portraits. I love to work in black and white but I don't fear color. I love light that can be both dramatic and flattering. I love the contrast of dark shirts against light skin. I love longish lenses and continuous lights. I love going back and looking at old contact sheets to look at the "paths" not taken and then re-scanning and reprinting to see if my tastes have grown or changed since we last peeked into the contact sheets and made our choices.

I love feeling the day slip away outside my windows while the slow and comfortable process of making a portrait unfolds. I love to hear the snap (with miniature Mercedes Benz door closing sound added in) of the shutter and feel the waft of photons fly through the room.

But the part of the portrait experience I like best is what I did half an hour ago. I sat down with a stack of contact sheets and went slowly through them, looking at every frame. And then I found something I'd never really seen or paid attention to before and I zero'd in on it and scanned the negative and worked the file.  And now, regardless of whoever else likes the image I have made a little gem of art for myself. Something special and intimate and non-repeatable.

The same day never happens again.

I count myself lucky that I can still make a living doing the work that I love. Not every client wants to step outside of tradition and popular taste and embrace a distinct style, and that's okay because I can switch gears and become a traditionalist for at least the duration of a shoot. But there are enough people out in the brave big world who like new, different and bette and they are the bread and butter of what we do.

While I guess it helps to learn  how we did it in the bad old days I think we should embrace our own vision and press it forcefully into the world of commerce. How else will the paradigms change?

More thoughts about the a99.

It's hard sometimes to write stuff for the web and to also show meaningful photographic examples. No matter how you upload stuff for mass consumption on the internet it will be crunched, compressed and artifacts will occur. So when I write about a camera and then show images from the camera it's frustrating. The qualities in the samples is never what I see on my office monitor.  In many ways the real litmus test for image quality is still the act of making large prints and looking at them under controlled conditions, but we can't really do that every day for thousands of readers. The best thing I can suggest is to read the words and also look at the images but-----if you are looking at the images on an old laptop or the screen of your phone you might just trust the words over the images that you see in front of you.

When I looked at the image, above, on my screen I was looking at Sony's extra fine, full size jpeg which (I can tell by the original file size) doesn't get radically compressed in camera. So I was seeing some good tonal range and a high degree of sharpness and detail. Having slain all dangerous business dragons in the early hours of 6 am to 10 am today I gave into temptation and profiled a version of the above for a print out at Costco, on glossy paper. The image was printed at 12 by 18 inches. When I picked up the print (and some batteries, and 50 rolls of toilet paper and a shrink-wrapped package of 12 jumbo sized cans of tuna...kidding...) I glanced at it under the store's florescent lights, thought they'd done a decent job staying on top of their paper profiles and drove home.

Once I got back to the studio I pulled the print back out, flicked on my big OTT light for print viewing, grabbed my most authentic pair of reading glasses and took a better look. Absent was any hint of noise or file grittiness. The detail was pretty amazing and the colors looked rich and believable. It was a totally different evaluation experience than the one I usually do out of laziness, which is to toss the file into an Apple computer and then pop the file up to 100% in Lightroom or Photoshop and looking at it on a 27 inch, calibrated monitor. No matter which files we're looking into at 100% there's always something we don't like about them.

In printed form the file from the a99 Jpeg was about as good as a print gets. How would I know? I've been making prints and ordering prints for large commercial clients and magazines for about a quarter of a century now. It gives me some perspective.

Today I used the a99 to do a holiday card image for a very creative advertising agency. I'd show you the image but it's top secret until it goes out in the mail. I used the a99 with the 85mm f2.8 at f 5.6 until we all (two creative directors and an art director) looked at a few test files together and all agreed that the lens was too good, the files too detailed and the look too clinical. I pulled a Minolta 24-85mm f3.5 to f4.5 (long since discontinued and forgotten) out of the bag and we shot with that instead. It had a different look; a bit less clinical, and the agency liked that. We banged out 125 shots against a white background and here's how we did out post processing:  I sat down at the art director's desk and downloaded the files into her MacBook Pro via the SD card slot. We put the jpeg files into a folder on her desktop.  Then she picked up her computer and everyone followed her into the agency's conference room where she hooked up her computer to the 50 inch HD TV and hit "slideshow" in Preview.

The images popped up onto the screen and we all laughed at the funniest ones and made the intern mark down the frame numbers. I packed up my few lights, the backdrop and the camera and left. That was the extent of my post production on the job. 

I did have the images on my SD card when I came back into the studio and I was curious what ISO 125 looked like so I put them into my computer and started blowing things up. And blowing them up.  And blowing them up. Now I can say a few things about the Sony a99's low ISO Jpegs.  1. Zero Noise. 2. Perfect color (thank you, custom white balance). 3. Some of the best files I've seen for technical goodness.

It's been a busy couple of days here and I'm doing a lot of pre-production for another spa shoot on Saturday and then a three day marathon for a giant computer company that starts next Tues. (warning, probably a very sparse time for blogs from the 11th to the 13th....) but I do have the whole day to myself tomorrow and I'm going to be doing the next critical camera test. I'm going to shoot and process some raw files and I'm going to break out the weird shoe to normal hot shoe adapter that comes with the a99 and see if it does a better job with  shoe mount electronic flash than the a77.

If the tests go well I will share them with you. If they go poorly I'll just sit on the floor and pout.

One of the challenges for any camera is radically mixed light. The kind I hate is sunlight on one side of a person's face and florescent or tungsten on the other. You can see in the image above that the people outside the spot light are lit mostly by coolish tungsten balanced light (approx. 3660K in this example) while the people seated at the table are in a pool of cool daylight (6200K, approx.).  Since the main action is the interplay between the lead actors at the table I quick set the color temperature for their position and let the chorus actors go blue. Very blue.  No camera in the world will make the color any more uniform since that's not the role of stage light. I do find it interesting that the color balance of a scene is intimately tied to the final exposure of a scene. Many times I'll correct for color and find a scene going much lighter or darker than it had been, either in camera or on the monitor.

The biggest example is in warming up an image that's too cold, light-wise. The exposure can change by up to a stop in some situations. I guess my point would be to color correct first, then set exposure, then fine tune the color balance a little bit more. I mention it here because I shot several frames in mixed light before I decided what I would emphasize and I watched again this morning as the exposure rocked around during color corrections. The Sony a99 will store three or four custom WB presets. The way to make theater photography easier is to come in early and have someone go through the major light cues while you set up custom white balances for the two or three predominant ones. If you know the lighting on the stages you normally shoot on you could keep those balances locked in.

An example might be daylight in preset one, 4400K in preset two and 3300K in preset three. With an a99 or a77 or OMD you'll be able to make the changes while keeping your eye on the viewfinder and you'll be able to pre-chimp the effect of each WB setting. Since the presets are all right next to each other in the menu you won't waste precious time scrolling through the menu.

My nemesis are the big optical spotlights that the theater is using as follow spots. They seem to have an almost cyan/green cast to them that doesn't seem to bother the lighting designer or anyone else in the theater but, when juxtaposed with the tungsten stage lights, they have a distinct color cast that drives me nuts. The correction in Lightroom is the addition of 24 pts of magenta and a bit higher than 5800K temperature correction. It's actually the one compelling reason I've come across to use raw files when shooting in the new theater. Let's me do tightly constrained color correction with the adjustment brush before I make the final conversions. 

Breaking in a new camera can be like learning to drive a new car. Everything is not where you expect it to be. But drive it to work everyday and you figure out all the important stuff pretty quickly. And really, most cars and cameras are more the same than they are different.

Final note. Battery life with a well used (but not too old) battery was much better than the battery life I experienced with the camera and it's brand new battery.

Thanks for reading. 

Be sure to order some books for Christmas.  Or get yourself one of those really nice a99's....

A first peek at my Sony a99. White Christmas?

I'll admit it right off the bat; I had the Sony a99 for three days before I really pulled it out of the box and played with it in earnest. I was too busy enjoying the heck out of the swell files I was getting from the new, little Nex 6. But I figured I'd spent the money on the bigger machine so I might as well de-box it and give it a go. I'm excited by the concept of the a99 but truthfully it looks so much like my a77's that it's hard to get worked up over the physical actuality of the camera. 

I always buy tons of extra batteries when I buy into a system and I'm happy that all three of my DSLT cameras from Sony use the same battery. I popped a fully charged battery into the a99 and when through the menus, preset the camera and immediately went off to shoot a job with it. (No, I did not go all in. I carried along an a77 and the Nex 6-------just in case).

Yesterday evening's job was to photograph the dress rehearsal of Irving Berlin's, White Christmas, at the new Topfer Theater at the Zachary Scott Theatre Complex. The bulk of the images I shot were done with the Sony 70-200mm f2.8 G lens. It's big, fat, heavy and bulky. A real, all American lens aesthetic. But it's very sharp and handles well in spite of its bulk. I figured I bought the camera for its image quality and it's ability to shoot under low light conditions so I didn't mess around. I set the ISO to 3200, the noise reduction to low, and over the course of the evening shot around 979 big, fat, x.fine Jpegs.

If you think I write too much I'll just cut to the chase and tell you what I think. Look at the image above, shot all the way out at 200mm, handheld. Now look at the image just below which is an approximate 1:1 enlargement of the center guy in the frame. Now click on it so you can see it bigger in a separate window. And remember that it's been resized down and compressed for the web. That's really all I needed to know about the camera. It just works and works well.

100% Crop.

Since most of the AF points are closer to the center of the frame than in the a77 I changed some of the ways I work with the cameras. I chose to use the center grouping of focusing points and to use C-AF instead of S-AF. The camera focuses quickly in low light and nearly instantaneously in good light.

During the shoot I kept an a77 in the chair next to me with a 16-50mm 2.8 lens mounted on it and I would pick it up and shoot wide stage shots from time to time. When I compare files I was pleasantly surprise to see that the a77 was not that far behind the a99 in overall quality (of course I kept the a77 at ISO 800....). In fact, it made me re-appreciate the a77 because that camera handles very well, has the same fast focus and the EVF is also really good.

None of these files has been hit with post processing noise reduction and I included quite a few that transition to black or heavy shadow so that the compulsive among us can peer into the low end of the Zone System scale and look for outrageous noise. If you are looking at the green uniform in the image above please be aware that the weave of cloth material is a different thing from noise...

a77 image.

In sober retrospect I'm asking myself this morning if I really needed to go ahead and buy an a99. While the camera is fun and solid, and I'm liking the files so far, I was very happy with the work I had been doing with the a77 and feel as though I could have continued along with those cameras for some time. But there are a few things I'm looking forward to with the a99.  One of those is the look of a high speed 50mm image with the full frame camera. Another is working with an 85mm in its ultimate visual comfort zone.

 a77

Like everyone else I fall into the habits I've been developing.  I had the Sony a77 and a57 menus pretty well figured out so I didn't stray much (or have to re-learn much) with the a99 but since I haven't practiced with the potentially cool front silent control dial I didn't mess around with it while on the job. Having done some more experimenting over the last month with the electronic shutter curtain I found that shots done with relatively fast lenses, used wide open and at fast shutter speeds, could potentially show edge blurring in shots with high lighting contrast. Especially scenes with light against dark. And it's an effect that can be accentuated in theater phtotography with deeply saturated, colored lighting.

Very few of my shots have been affected but it did happen from time to time and the effect is different from either flare or potential mirror reflections. Last night I made a point of setting both cameras in the mechanical shutter mode and I was happy to see that every frame was free of any sort of shutter induced aberration.  If you use electronic first curtain in any of your cameras you might experiment to find situations in which that is a non-optimal setting.  Not every tool works for every job in the same way.

a77.

When I opened up the frames I shot with the a99/70-200mm combination I was happy to see that they were crisp, not blocked up in the highlights or the shadows (beyond what would be natural in dramatic theater lighting) and that they blew up very well. I tried to help the jpeg engine along by setting the creative mode to "standard" and setting a minus one for contrast. Most of my exposures were in the range of 1/160th to 1/250th which helped freeze action while the constant ISO 3200 allowed me to stop down the lens to a more optimum f4.5 to f5.6.  The 70-200 Sony G is as sharp wide open as any of the competitors but they all look better one or two stops down, if you have the leeway to get there.

The a99 camera felt natural in my hands. I've been using the a77 for almost a year and the feel of the cameras is pretty close, if not identical. The finder seems more neutral and less contrasty than the a77 finder and the only thing that's really different is the size and distribution of the green AF squares. I am hard pressed to tell the difference between the EVF and an OVF in most lighting situations. Just for fun I took an older Nikon F4 out of a drawer and compared the cameras in the studio. I much prefer the Sony finder. Your mileage may different. Just be sure it's not all emotional mileage before you start to argue about it.

Did the files knock me off my seat with their breathtaking quality?  Hey, it's just another camera. It did what it was supposed to do and it did it well. It's possibly that there are other cameras (Canon 1DX or Nikon D4 corrected a day later...) that have a bit better high ISO performance but not enough to justify the massive difference in price. I took a few shots of Belinda this morning at ISO 100 and in that instance I was very much impressed. As much as we (as a collective) like to use performance at high ISO's as a metric of overall quality I think that every improvement in technology in these machines also give us the ability not just to be flexible but to create files that are the BEST that files can be. That always means: using the native ISO of your shooting camera to get the lowest electronic noise, the highest dynamic range and the best color purity. But to do that right your basic technique has to be good.

Unlike some of the competitors Sony visibly rewards you for shooting at the camera's optimum settings. The flesh tones on the images of Belinda, taken with soft window light and accurately white balanced, are among the best I've ever seen from a digital camera and that includes D800s and several medium format digital cameras. I need to do a lot more controlled studio shooting with the camera but I'm close to declaring it the ultimate studio portrait camera----where tonality and color are concerned.

Love the indulgent poke at 1950's modern dance. Love the tones.

Be sure to click on this one because I absolutely love it. Can't believe how good the 70-200 2.8 G is at its longest extension.

The camera is far less cumbersome, in terms of size and weight, than it's direct competitors, the Nikon D800 and the Canon 5Dmk3. It's far smaller and lighter than the Canon 1 series or the Nikon D(single digit) series. The battery life is nothing to write home about. I shot 979 images during a two hour show with this camera and the battery read 23% remaining when I checked it at the end. That's okay but not quite in the territory of it's competitors.

Like most semi-pro and pro cameras these days it has two card slots, both for SD cards, and the interplay between slots is highly flexible. Raw on one, jpegs on the other.  Movies on one, stills on the other. And my favorite: Images on one and the same images backed up on the other. Good to have should you be in a shoot where you absolutely have to get the images to the client with no excuses.

So, my bottom line, after one two hour shooting session is: The camera is quite good, the files are outstanding, and, I want to shoot more with it. I have a studio shoot for an ad agency this afternoon and we'll be working differently that we di for the show last night. I'll be metering with a hand held meter and working in raw. I'll be shooting at medium apertures and at low ISOs. This the way to really test a camera or a camera system; by shooting real jobs in real life for real clients and then evaluating the results in comparison with the tools you were using yesterday.

And now the question you've all been waiting to have answered--------How was the show?

It was fun, nostalgic, spirited, musical, funny and in parts a feel good tear jerker. The stage craft was exemplary and the actors uniformly wonderful. I've gone, over the decades, from being a regular guy who likes movies where things blow up to a person who really enjoys live theater and musical theater. I blame Zachary Scott Theater for that. I'm not pushing the play too much because it's largely sold out right up until Christmas Day.  That's how good it is.  Grab a ticket if you are in town and you can get one. It's a great way to usher in Christmas and get your holiday spirit going.

Almost as much fun as buying a new camera...

A quick visual report of the use of an Alpha Lens on the Nex 6. Part of the episodic review of the Nex 6

When I did my first test of my new Nex 6 I was very pleased with the color, contrast and resolution of the 16 megapixel sensor. I think Sony does a lot of things just right and the balance of the colors and tonality, even in jpegs files seems very well balanced to me.

The one gaping blank spot in my lens inventory for the Nex cameras is in the realm of long telephotos and I'm not anxious to run out and spend more money if I can make due on my seasonal and lightly used focal lengths by using simple adapters and scavenging from the drawer of Alpha DSLT mount lenses. While it would seem churlish to buy a small body like the Nex 6 and then bolt on a hernia enducing 70-200mm 2.8 there's another lens in the drawer that makes a lot more sense. It's the 55-200 f4-5.6 Sony DT. It's made to match the smaller sensor and it's very light weight and (compared to the fast glass) well sized for a carry around lens choice.

I used the LA-EA1 lens adapter to attach the lens to the Nex 6 because I wanted to maintain as much automation as possible. The downfall of the Nex-to-LA-EA1 match up is the excruciatingly slow autofocusing (and often non-focusing) of lenses that were designed for a much different AF design philosophy: Phase detection as opposed to Contrast detection. I don't consider it a problem as I default, without a second thought, to using manual focus with all non-system lenses on the Nex cameras. Having focus peaking makes it so easy.

I will say that any unsharpness in these images stems from my inability to successfully handhold the lens at the long end. Most of these images are shot at near wide open or wide open and I consider the performance to be really good. Some credit I give to the camera and an equal measure I give to the lens. The new, cheap lenses from Sony are surprisingly good. 

It was a quick walk so, by extension, a quick test. To my eye the combination from the two Sony systems seems to work very well, with good exposure, color and sharpness. Nice to keep it all in the family. It gives me some extra flexibility while downsizing the argument that there aren't enough choice optics available for the Nex system.

Request:  Anyone out there read my book about LED Lighting?  I'd love some more reviews on Amazon if you have the time and energy to write something.

Here's where to book lives: http://www.amazon.com/LED-Lighting-Professional-Techniques-Photographers/dp/1608954471/ref=la_B002ECIS24_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354567751&sr=1-1

Thanks!  Kirk

Let the Nex 6 episodic review begin !!!

disclaimer time. This is the start of a series of blogs about my impressions of the Nex-6 camera and some of the lenses you can use with it. I paid full price for the camera body at Precision Camera in Austin, Texas. I was not offered any financial or product consideration or quid pro quo from either the retailer or from Sony or any party related to Sony. I am answerable for my purchase only to God and my wife. If you don't like my opinions about the camera or the review, go write your own.

Let's get the critical stuff out of the way first and that would be: Why did I buy a Nex 6 when I already own a Nex 7, and how do I like the way it feels and handles?

Many years ago, in a moment of extreme photographic hubris, I took a trip to Paris with Belinda and brought along with me only one camera. It was a Leica M3. I'd bought it a couple weeks earlier from a well known camera technician and Leica specialist who told me he'd stripped the camera all the way down, and restored it to "like new" condition before thoroughly testing it. I also brought along one 50mm Summicron lens and a freezer baggie full of film.  On our first night in Paris a screw came loose somewhere inside the camera and got itself wedged into the film advance gears and that was the end of that Leica's usefulness for the trip. Since we would be there for two weeks and one of the main reasons for our  trip was to take some fun and interesting photographs it seemed obvious to me that I had only two choices: Find a trustworthy camera repair person in Paris and convince him to repair a Leica overnight for someone he'd never met before and would probably never see again, or, go to the FNAC store and buy a suitable camera to use for the rest of the trip.

I chose the second path and bought a Contax Aria with a little Zeiss zoom lens. A nice camera but nothing special and soon divested of when I got back to Austin. (The Leica was repaired and returned to me within an hour of presenting it to the original seller with my critique. We are still friends and still do business together. Everyone deserves to be able to make one non-fatal mistake....).  The point of my long story is that it's never a good idea to leave home for a wonderful trip, excursion, event, job, etc. without a back-up camera. A redundant tool that can be instantly pressed into service should your primary tool become unresponsive.  No one likes an unresponsive tool.

As most of my readers know I bought a Sony Nex 7 earlier this year and have been thoroughly enjoying it. It's a great camera. But as I continued to accrue lenses for it I started to think it would be wise to have a good and very similar back-up for the original, just in case. And, as I'm planning some out of town trips in the next few months for the express purpose of photographing I figured I'd go ahead and commit to a second Nex body. Logic says that it's good to get two identical cameras and it makes perfect sense: afterall, you bought the first camera for a reason. I bought a second Nex 7 which developed a problem and I sent it back to the dealer. I had the choice of having them refund my money or having a new body shipped to me. At the time the idea of also buying an a99 was percolating in my head so I just had the seller credit my card for the camera.

I went out to buy the Sony a99 yesterday and, as I was waiting for everything to get sorted and written up I made the mistake of asking to play with the store's demo Nex 6. It was great. It's so much like the Nex 7 but it feels and generates files that seem a little crisper (but we'll get on to that...). The finder on the model I fondled was identical to the one on my Nex 7 and the menus, not counting silly stuff like wi-fi and apps, were nearly identical to the ones I've become accustomed to on the 7.  You only live once I thought and added both the Nex-6 and the Sigma 19mm lens for the Nex cameras to the total tally. I'd purchased the 30mm Sigma just the day before.

If the Nex 6 tested out to my satisfaction and the files were good and rich and sharp I would have satisfied my photographer paranoia and I would be ready to do some day trips and weekend trips for the sole reason of shooting images with the comforting thought that I was as prepared as any boy scout. If you are tired of reading I'll skip right now to the conclusion: Based on my half day of shooting and then looking carefully at a hundred or so files at 100% in Lightroom I would say that I am very, very pleased with the Nex 6 and am glad to make its acquaintance.  It complements the Nex 7 and they overlap each other in very complementary ways.  For more detail, please read on.

This image of the Nex 6 was taken with a Sony a99 camera and the Sigma 70mm Macro lens. It is a direct, out of camera Jpeg. It was shot in the studio at ISO 6400. I've included a 100% (unretouched) crop below for your  pixel peeping pleasure....

The 6 looks a lot like the 7 everywhere except in the material of the body covering and the switch of the Tri-Navi dials to more conventional mode and concentric control dial. I worked with both during the day and didn't have problems changing back and forth. Both cameras are more comfortable in my hands than any of the micro four thirds cameras I've used except for the the Olympus Pen EP 3 which is the prettiest and more ergonomic Pen camera that company has ever made.

Part of my newfound prejudice in favor of the Nex 6 is the fact that I coupled it with the 30mm Sigma lens. It's a lens that comes close to my all time favorite focal length of 50mm on a full frame camera and, I've come to find out, it is exquisitely sharp. It may be the best cheap lens I've ever purchased. I haven't had time to test the 19mm Sigma yet but if it has the same DNA as the 30mm lens I will be delighted. You can judge for yourself from the photos presented below but I will tell you that, looked at large (100%) it make the original 18-55mm Sony kit lens look a bit anemic.

While the system performance is important, and is the only set of parameters that can be objectively measured, I find it difficult to use a camera whose feel I don't enjoy. Here's where everyone is different. What I like in a camera others may not, and vice versa. I'm right eyed so the finder on the top left of the camera feels just right to me. I have small to medium sized hands and if you have large hands you may find the button placement too tight and the grip too small. But for me these cameras are functionally well imagined. The bigger DSLT's are a whole different ballgame and evoke a different way of holding and working that has its own feel and structure. Not better or worse, just different.

This is a 100% crop from the shot just above, included to show the performance of the a99 at ISO 6400 with no retouching or post process noise reduction.

What are the things I like about the Nex 6?  Well, first off the less dense sensor in this camera is better at doing files in low light and at higher ISOs than the Nex 7. How much better? How about a stop and a half. While I'm sure that some of the improvement comes from a newly redesigned 16 megapixel sensor I'm equally sure that Sony is catching up with Nikon on figuring out how to introduce in camera noise reduction that is less smeary than the last generation and also has more monochromatic noise and less chroma (color splotchy) noise. Both of these things give us files that appear less noisy and more detailed and, for the most part, that's a good thing. So why not just get rid of the Nex 7 and get another Nex 6? Good question but I have the suspicion that the Nex 7 files are better at the other end of the spectrum; at the lowest ISOs.  Both cameras are really great imaging machines. If I needed the most resolution and detail with the  widest dynamic range I think the Nex 7 will be the leader. I'll test them head to head someday just to see but for now I'm happy to own a low noise camera and an uber-detailed camera. As I said, they cross over each other nicely.

I came into the kitchen last night and one small halogen can light was on at low intensity over the work table. I hand held the camera with the 19mm lens on  it (no image stabilization) and shot a few frames using the auto-ISO function. The white balance is very, very good for a low intensity halogen source while the  exposure, using manual metering, is both right on the money and exactly as I saw it (pre-chimped) in the electronic viewfinder. See the image below for a 100% crop.

100% crop of the frame at ISO 2000. Nex 6 and 19mm Sigma.

While this generation of Sony Nex cameras (the Nex5R has the same basic sensor) is not going to kick sand in the face of something like a Nikon D4 it certainly is as good as the Nikon D7000 or any of the other Sony chip toting APS-C cameras and perhaps better than a number of them. I'll say right up front that I found the files to be relatively noise free up to 800. Very good up to 3200 and usable even at 6400 (albeit at smaller sizes when in the nose bleed territory). But as a general, all around town camera, working at sane ISO's like 100, 200, and 400 it is the IQ equal of any APS-C camera on the market today at just about any price. That's pretty darn good.  So, good noise handling and good hand handling. Let's go on.

It was a lovely day in Austin. A bit overcast but not too warm and not too cold. Belinda joined me for a Sunday walk around downtown. I carried the 6, equipped with the 30mm Sigma and old a spare battery in one pocket.  Here's what I observed as we walked and I stopped from time to time to shoot a few images:

The camera seems to wake up slower than the 7. Some have conjectured the slow start may be lens dependent, and since I bought the camera without the new kit lens and have only use the Sigma I can't be sure. But I know that from the time I flip the "on" switch till the time the camera is ready to shoot can take four or five seconds. With this in mind I rarely turned the camera totally off but preferred to let ut fall asleep. When the camera was awake it focused very quickly. A bit quicker than my 7 and not much slower than a typical mid-level, conventional DSLR. 

In many daylight scenes the camera seems to like to underexpose by 1/3 to 2/3s of a stop in order, I suppose, to protect the highlights. I liked most of my daylight scenes best with a +1/3 stop adjustment. Of course, when I'm shooting in manual I mostly judge the exposure by the look of the image in the EVF and what I'm seeing in the live histogram.

A few reviews have nicked the 6 for not being perfectly white balanced under artificial light conditions but I think this is mostly ramped up criticism coming from writers who feel hell bent to be "balanced."  And by that I mean they feel that they have to come up with some negatives in a camera review to balance out any analysis of a camera that's overwhelmingly good. My experience with the camera, both under florescent light and tungsten light is that it is exceedingly good at coming to a convincing white balance. Probably better than a number of regular DSLRs, with the added benefit that you can see what the camera is choosing for a white balance in the EVF as you are analyzing the scene, even before you shoot it. It's a simple matter to dial in a more accurate WB in real time. But hardly necessary. All of the images in this report were done with AWB in Jpeg and they are as accurate as I can remember.

While I know that most advanced photographers like to shoot raw I tend to shoot my casual photographs in Jpeg. I usually set the camera to the largest file size and the lowest compression (highest quality) and rarely am I unhappy that I have foregone the ritual RAW dance. I am beginning to think of RAW files as something that only needs to be done on very critical shoots and by owners of OVF cameras who don't have the luxury of both pre-chimping their shots and having a good, reliable review/preview image to view. The screen on the backs of most cameras is rarely reliable because of all the ambient light falling on it. Rear screens are really only usable for reliable file review if you both to carry along and use something like a Zacuto or Hoodman loupe. With an EVF your view of the image is sheltered from the ambient light and different light color temperatures giving you a much more accurate rendition of how the scene will look on your monitor back in the studio.

I've been using the Nex system since mid Summer and I have two real complaints, one which is solved by spending more money and the other time will be solved by time and the building success of the system. The first is the meager number of exposures you get per charged battery.  With batteries that have been charged three or four times I'm getting around 500-600 exposures. I'd like to get more because I'm a pretty promiscuous shooter. That problem is solvable by buying more batteries. I have six between my two Nex cameras and that more than enough for a comfortable weekend of shooting or a long commercial job.

I take off Sony points for making 6 owners charge their batteries in camera with one of those silly-ass USB chargers. But my work around was to buy two aftermarket batteries, complete with their own charger so now I can charge two batteries at a and still be able to shoot. Yes, the batteries seem to all perform exactly the same.  

The second problem really is a paucity of fun lenses with which to shoot. But those seem to be dribbling and drabbling onto the market at a quickening pace. The new wide angle Sony zoom is a great addition which I'm sure I'll buy at some point but what I really want are more fast, long lenses. I'd love to see a 70mm 1.8 and maybe a 90mm f2.0.  In the meantime I am very happy with the 50mm 1.8 OSS and I am happy with my brief experiences with the Sigma lenses.  Additionally, I've had mixed success with Olympus manual Pen FT lenses and Fotodiox lens adapters. All the longer lenses work well at wide open to middling apertures but the shorter lenses (20 and 25 mm) seem to have magenta patches that start around f8 and get worse and worse as I stop down. It probably has to do with the angle at which the light strikes the sensor lenses. I don't really know.

My recommendation to anyone buy one of the Sony Nex cameras is to pick up the primes.  Pick up the primes. I don't have first hand experience with the 16mm, but that's mostly because I've heard so many complaints about it. I can vouch for the two Sigmas, the 19 and the 30mm and I've heard great things about the Zeiss 24mm.  Again, if the system proves to be a marketing success I'm sure that the third party lenses will begin to arrive, en mass, in a short amount of time.

In the meantime I'm also having good success with the Nex 7 and regular series Alpha DSLT lenses, via a Sony adapter.  I use the 35mm DT, the 50mm DT, the 85mm 2.8 and even the longer zooms on the Nex 7 (and soon on the Nex 6) without any fringing or discoloration. I like using the LAEA-1 adapter since it adds no mirror or glass between the camera and the lens but I do find that particular adapter might as well give up the pretention of providing AF because it's slower than third world mail and hunts more than Cajuns. I take advantage of Sony's well implemented focus peaking and focus all of the adapted lenses manually. It works very, very well. In cases where I'm making important shots I use the focusing magnifier to fine focus at much greater magnifications and this makes the process dead accurate. 

Using auto-ISO in Aperture preferred priority the 6 does a good job of matching up ISO with shutter speeds that I can handhold with great sharpness and I like that. On the Nex 6 the auto-ISO goes all the way up to ISO 3200 and even there the camera makes really good files. What good is capping the ISO at a lower ISO if unsharpness from handholding the camera ruins the image anyway?

 The image above and the three images just below were shot at the W Hotel this afternoon. Most of the images are from the conference and event spaces on the second floor and are in low light. The camera was set to f4 and, via auto ISO, set shutter speeds of around 1/60th and ISO of anywhere from 1600 to 3200. All of the images were perfectly exposed by the camera. Pretty cool. I'm not so thrilled with all the white furniture in the space or the really forced modernesque paintings, loaded with lots of sharp angles and diagonals. Seems like a blend of 1999 and high school art class at the Star Fleet academy but I can't blame the W's bad taste on a little Sony camera...

So the real question that seems always implied when people get carried away and start buying these little cameras is--------Why would you buy these when you already have camera bags full of real cameras that can already make amazing images? Why buy a slower, less featured camera?

It's not just fashion. Really. These cameras do some things that we used to value in the days of yore. They are small and light which makes them easy to pack and carry around. A significant value is that they don't look like big professional cameras so no one really pays any more attention to them than they do to a cellphone camera. Advantage? I spent a half hour rummaging around the W Hotel and was never stopped or questioned by the staff. They saw the small camera and just assumed, "tourist/guest." That in itself is extremely valuable. I'm betting I could get into places which would be off limits for "pro cameras" and still be able to make convincing and technically good images.

The cameras a visually and aurally quiet. There's still some shutter noise but it's a fraction of the noise that conventional moving mirror camera make.

But it's mostly because, when used properly, there's no difference in the files between these small, easy to use cameras and their best lenses and the images that come squirting out of the slamming noisy V8 "professional" cameras----just a lot less drama and chaos. 

Absolutely freaking good automatic color balance under an avalanche of mixed lights. And darn nice candy.

The bottom line is that cameras and photography are changing faster than we ever imagined. All the things we thought were prerequisites to good photographs are dissolving in the proof of new technologies. The sensors in the Nex 6 and Nex 7 may be the very best on offer in ANY APS-C camera on the market today. The EVF finder is a powerful tool for both still photographers and (even moreso) for video makers. And I haven't even touched on the glitzy stuff like the built in HDR or Multi-Frame Noise Reduction or the ten frames per second mode, or the 60 fps full HD video modes, and the wonderful color rendering from these cameras.  We'll do that on another blog. 

For now I give the Nex 6 my highest award:  I bought one for myself. Yes, I could run an imaging business with it.  Optimally? Maybe not. Successfully? Better than with the tools we had for ten times the money just five years ago, and we made a lot of people happy with those.

Oh look. Out of coffee. I'm off to see a dress rehearsal. A different kind of scouting.

More to come.

Amazon current has the Sigma 19mm and 30mm lenses for Sony on sale for $149 !!!