Articles

I carry two camera bodies and I have narrowed it down to the Canon 5D MK3 and the 7D MK 2 WITHOUT the vertical battery grips. I mainly carry the Canon 28-70mm 2.8 Mk 2, Canon 70-200mm F4 is and the Canon 500mm f4 is Mk2 or the 100-400mm is Mk2 lenses. If I carry the 500mm F4 is Mk2 lens, which I think is the best lens for wild life photography, and airline travel  (combined) I now use the Manfrotto Pro light backpack 120 which can easily accommodate this lens without the lens hood. The weight of the backpack is 1.8kg and the total weight of the lenses and cameras excluding the 100-400mm lens would be 9kg which could be passed by the airline staff with a little bit of luck.   Tripods and monopods   The tripod and monopod I frequently use are the Sirui T2204X carbon fiber tripod, which weighs about 1.2 kg and the monopod being the P 326 carbon fiber six section piece. The ball head on the tripod is the K 20X and the tilt head on the monopod is the L10. This set can carry loads up to 10-15kg, which makes them Sturdy […] Read more
After a long period of hibernation I finally had time to write a review and this being an important issue as my main workhorse and landscape lens would be in the 24-70mm range. For a long period of time I had wanted to get a reasonably sharp lens for this range and I owned two copies of the 24-70mm f 2.8 MK 2, unfortunately both these lenses were not outstandingly better than the f4 lenses. Rather than flood the page with cropped photos, my impression is given below. Impression Price performance, the 24-105mm f4 IS comes on top as it has the best range (24-105mm) best price (around $800 AUD) and is not far behind the other two in image quality. In fact the best all rounder I think.   The 24-70mm is f4 is the most compact out of the three lenses and has the best corner sharpness out of the three lenses at the lower end (24-35mm) as shown in fig 4,5,6. (below).  Although it has a phenomenon called lens creep the price has come down from AU$ 1,500  to AUD 1,000  and has macro capabilities as well.  This makes it a good contender as it has the […] Read more
image
Sharpness   I believe the A7r has a slight edge over A7r MkII. The sharpness of jpg and raw files are almost the same in the A7r but the jpg files in the A7r Mk II are quite sharper in comparison to the raw files in the same camera.   Image detail obviously there is greater detail in the photos produced by the A7r MkII as it has 42 mega pixels compared to the A7r which has 35 mega pixels as seen in the photo comparison where there is greater detail in the photo on the left.   Build quality and specification In this department the Sony A7r MkII with its slightly better weather sealed body and a well placed shutter button and a robust body comes well in front of the A7r.   Auto focus capability is far better in the A7r MkII and performs well with third party adapters such as the Metabones which takes Canon lenses   Image stabilization   I am not that impressed by the inbuilt camera image stabilization of the A7r and I think it only gains about one stop if at all.   Battery Life: One of the most important downsides is the battery life […] Read more