Continuing on from my post the other day, I’ve done some more shooting with my borrowed Sony A7II using some of my Canon lenses. This time, I was back out in the city of Dublin. I wanted to do something a little different, and so I used my 17-40f4L Canon lens to get some cityscape shots.

It was a reasonably good day, so I had some nice light. It’s tricky enough this time of year because with strong sunshine, and the ver lowering sun the light can be quite harsh, however it also has a nice quality to it. I did a mix of shots, and I got some interesting results. Nothing earth shattering, but it was more of an experiment than anything. I did get some really nice shots of the Liffey and Dublin’s famous Ha’Penny bridge, however, due to a weird problem, they have a bit of a flaw, so I’m not sure Ill be able to use them for anything other than demonstration purposes.

For some reason, when shooting at 17mm one side of the image shows pretty severe optical distortion. It’s only on one side, and it’s on all images shot at 17mm. It decreases a little if you stop down, but not completely. I don’t think it’s a problem with the lens, as I’ve used this on my Canon bodies lots f times and I’ve never seen this before. It’s not out of focus either, it’s a different kind of optical distortion. Clearly there’s something wrong.

I did some searching online to see if others have had this problem using this combination of lens, adaptor and camera but I can’t seem to find anything. Maybe there’s a problem with my Metabones adaptor. It’s fine at 40mm, and the problem only seems to occur when shooting wide. The funny thing is, I’ve seen a similar issue with using a ultra wide Nikon out Sigma lens on my A6000. But that’s a different lens on a different camera using a different adaptor.

I always thought that it was a problem with the lens, but maybe it’s something else. If anyone’s come across this before, please let me know, especially if you have a solution.

Other than that problem, there’s nothing to complain about. It focuses pretty quickly and focus seems to be pretty accurate. Images from the A7II with this lens are nice, although, I was kind of expecting a little better. Also, Lightroom seems to have a few issues with A7 files. As with the A6000, colour seems to be a little off with the colour profiles. It’s like there’s too much green in it. The settings and techniques that I use for the A6000 seem to work though.

Another odd thing that popped up: the last update for Lightroom seems to have some kind of conflict with the A72 when using uncompressed files. Before the update everything was fine, but now the performance with these images is abysmal. I checked files from other cameras and everything is fine. It only seems to be A7 files, and only if they’re uncompressed. Chalk it up to another quality Lightroom update. I guess that proxy mode males sense now.

Here’s a small selecting of images from the shoot. I’ll post some more soon, and stay tuned to my Flickr and 500px accounts as I’ll post finished images there too.

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