All in Sony

Thoughts on the Sony A9

Thoughts on the Sony A9

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, News

Despite being widely rumoured, Sony still managed to make quite a splash when they announced the new A9 earlier this week. The new high end camera looks like it could be a genuine game changer for mirrorless cameras, and could cement Sony’s place at the number 2 spot, if not push it to number 1. I have been using Sony cameras on and off for the past few years, and I was eagerly waiting to see what this new high end alpha might entail. The camera is exciting in and of itself, but whats more exciting is Sony’s approach to the camera market. Let me explain.

Sony Lightroom Bug and a Possible Work Around. Sort of.

Sony Lightroom Bug and a Possible Work Around. Sort of.

Thomas Fitzgerald
Lightroom, Sony

The other day I posted a possible work around for an annoying Lightroom bug that had been frustrating me. When working with Sony ARW files, when you move from one image to another in the develop module, it can sometimes take seconds (sometimes 10 or more) before moving the sliders have any effect. The not really a solution, solution, that I offered was to wait till the Auto button enabled before trying to edit. Well, after a bit more research, I think I’ve found the source of this issue.

My Capture One Settings for Sony Files

My Capture One Settings for Sony Files

Thomas Fitzgerald
Capture One, Sony

I’ve talked a lot about using Capture One Pro for processing Fuji Files here on this blog, but I also use it when working with other cameras too. In particular, I find that it does a really nice job when working with files from Sony cameras. In the past I’ve used it with both a Sony A7II (Which I had borrowed), and my own Sony A6000. 

My Sony Wishlist

My Sony Wishlist

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Editorial

I was reading a blog post from Brian Smith the other day and he was asking people for what they wanted from Sony in terms of lenses. I thought it was an interesting post, and it got me thinking of other things that I would like to see from Sony to improve the company’s camera offerings. Sony has really pushed the envelope with their camera designs over the last few years, but in my opinion, there’s quite still a few areas that could do with some improvement. So, in no particular order, here’s my Sony wish list. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Action Ducks

Action Ducks

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Landscape & Nature, Ireland

I was walking through a nearby forested park the other day, and I caught an interesting sequence of images. There is a large lake in the middle of the park and there’s always lots of ducks and seagulls there. At this time of the year it’s especially beautiful, as the autumn colours on the leaves give the waters of the lake a patchwork of green and gold. 

Using Canon Lenses on a Sony A72 with Version 3 Firmware

Using Canon Lenses on a Sony A72 with Version 3 Firmware

Thomas Fitzgerald
Ireland, Landscape & Nature, Sony

I recently had the opportunity to borrow a friend’s Sony A7II and I was keen to try some Canon lenses on it via a Metabones adaptor. I had borrowed the camera off him before, but that was using an older firmware. Since then Sony has added the same autofocus update for adapted lenses via a firmware upgrade (v.2 I think) from the A7RII and A7SII, and I wanted to see how good it was. I had read lots of reports about the performance on the A7RII, but not many on the upgraded A7II, and I was really pleasantly surprised by the results.

White balance and its importance - An Excerpt from my Sony A6000 Guide

White balance and its importance - An Excerpt from my Sony A6000 Guide

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Lightroom

It may seem like a simple thing, but getting the correct white balance can have a significant impact on the overall look of an image. Often you may hear people complaining about the colours of a particular camera, and that they don’t like the colours that a specific brand of camera might produce. It is a common misconception that this has to do with the design of the sensor. In many cases much of what is perceived as differences in a camera’s ability to capture colours may be partly due to the way a camera’s white balance is calibrated. 

Sony A6000 Post Processing Guide for Lightroom Now Available

Sony A6000 Post Processing Guide for Lightroom Now Available

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Lightroom

I’m very pleased to announce, that after a very long time in production, my newest guide is now available. this e-book guide is called “Processing Sony A6000 Raw files in Lightroom: A Workflow and settings guide”. While that’s probably a bit of a mouthful, it pretty much sums up what this new guide is about. In the same way that I have previously written guides for Fuji X-Series shooters, this guide is designed specifically for Sony A6000 shooters who want to get the best from their camera when processing their images in Lightroom.

A Quick Second Look at the Sony 35mm F/1.8 OSS

A Quick Second Look at the Sony 35mm F/1.8 OSS

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Mirrorless

When I wrote my extended review of the A6000, I was pretty scathing about the Sony 35mm f/ 1.8 OSS lens. In the article I wrote that it was one of my least favourite lenses and that it had some terrible chromatic aberration. Recently, I was going through some older images in y library, including some I’d shot with the Sony 35mm and as I went through them I realised that I may have been a bit hard on it. So I started shooting some more images with it, and I now realise that I was possibly wrong in my assessment of it, so here’s a second look at the 35mm lens.

Where to get Sony A6300 Raw Files

Where to get Sony A6300 Raw Files

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Gear

If you're curious to see how the new Sony A6300 images look , you can now try them out for yourself. Both Lightroom and Capture One have added raw support for the new camera, and there are now a couple of places where you can download sample raw files. Here are the samples that I've found so far...

Sony, Customer Service and Professionalism

Sony, Customer Service and Professionalism

Thomas Fitzgerald
Editorial, Sony

Late last week there was something of a blog storm over a video photographer Matt Granger posted about his experiences with Sony’s customer service. If you haven’t seen it already check it out. Basically he had a terrible time getting customer service for his professional Sony cameras. After he posted the video, many of those in the photographic community who also use Sony products chimed in with their own similar stories of Sony’s poor customer service. While I haven’t had to deal with Sony’s customer service here on for any of their Photography products, I too have heard the stories, and have had to deal with the company for other issues.

An Improved Import and Calibration Preset for Sony A6000 Images in Lightroom

An Improved Import and Calibration Preset for Sony A6000 Images in Lightroom

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Lightroom

A while ago I wrote a blog post about my issues with A6000 images in Lightroom not being calibrated particularly well. I included some calibration settings in the form of a pair of Lightroom presets. Since then, I’ve been doing some more work on trying to get a starting point that I’m happy with. With that in mind, here is my latest version of my Sony A6000 calibration preset that I’m ow using on my A6000 images in Lightroom.

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