Category: Photos

ACL Festival Street Photography

I took my new Sony A7C II all around South Austin last night for its first street photography outing. I caught the crowds leaving the Austin City Limits music festival and bounced a few times between South Congress and 1st Street.

I only took my Sony/Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 lens instead of the 35mm length I’m so used to. These days I mentally compose photos in 35mm, and now I have the itch to practice more around 50mm and 85mm.

The crowds and pedicabs were moving fast. I love low-light photography, but don’t have much experience doing it with shutter speeds over 1/125 sec. And I hadn’t even tested the decade-old 55mm ZA’s autofocus capabilities in low light. I missed focus and exposure a lot.

Lesson learned: Don’t learn new techniques and new gear at the same time. 😛

It may have felt uncomfortable and frustrating, but in a constructive “growing pains” way. I think the next time I go out, I’ll think less and enjoy more. That probably means I should do it as soon as I can!

RAW File Support Workaround for Sony A7C II

Two Sony cameras sit on a computer desk: An RX1R II and an A7C II.
corner viewfinders 4 lyyyyyfe

I got the new Sony A7C II this weekend! It is likely to replace most/all of my interchangeable lens cameras. I just love the rangefinder shape, and people seem less guarded around cameras without a serious-looking pentaprism bump on top.

As of this writing, there isn’t much third party support for A7C II raw .ARW images yet. But the A7C II uses the same image sensor as the older, widely-supported A7 IV – so the raw files should be very similar.

I’ve figured out how to make them pretend to be from an A7 IV using ExifTool – it works for my workflows in Capture One and Apple-based raw editors on macOS. And be warned: it’s not entirely stable.

Continue reading RAW File Support Workaround for Sony A7C II

My Resolution for 2013 That Worked: Carrying a Real Camera Everywhere

2013 was the first year I made a New Year’s resolution: to carry a real camera around everywhere. It went great!

Photography has been a strictly casual hobby throughout my life. It’s always been something that lets me capture enjoyable things that happen in my life, but never something that itself became a focus of my life. So why make a New Year’s Resolution for it? Aren’t those things usually done with the intent of bettering our lives?

The answer lies in how most of us have changed our photography habits: anyone with a smartphone is carrying a camera with them everywhere. Before smartphones, I was carrying along more traditional cameras to events where I thought I’d want them: vacations, concerts, and the like. But smartphones were the ultimate popularization of the old photographer’s adage: “The best camera is the one you have with you.”

Now, blame my twentysomething lifestyle, but many of the best moments in my life happen in the shadows – exactly where tiny cell phone sensors struggle to perform. Concerts, restaurants, twilight walks, and the like. I started finding myself out with something great going on, taking out my camera, and getting results that made me feel like I wasted my time even bothering to take a picture. That was it, really – I guessed that I’d capture more good moments if I carried a “real camera” to it all. Continue reading My Resolution for 2013 That Worked: Carrying a Real Camera Everywhere

Photos: Mickey Hart Band, Winter 2013

I must admit having low expectations initially, but in the last year, I’ve now been to five Mickey Hart Band shows. Live music has been a big part of my life forever, but it’s rare that a current band excites me this much.

This week, I went to two MHB shows at the Fox Theatre in Boulder and the Oriental Theater in Denver. They were excellent as always; it was also the first time to a show with my new camera, a Sony NEX-6. Concerts are some of the only events for which I take lots of photos, and I have a long history of struggling to get the right settings to capture good photos in a terrible lighting situation. I used these shows as an opportunity to acquaint myself with the new camera, and see how much quality I get compared to my old point-and-shoot cameras. The results are decent, but perhaps the biggest thing this shoot taught me was that I need to get a lens with a much wider aperture so I can shoot at higher speeds.

After months of putting up with drab white walls at my new Denver apartment, I finally sucked it up and went to a crafts store. The reward: that store was having a giant clearance sale at the time, so I bought up a bunch of frames for my concert posters and photography from Spain and Prague. I haven’t decided where to put them all yet, but just having them ready to put up already makes me feel more at home.