My Choice for Travel Landscape Photography - Sony A6000 with 10-18mm F4 OSS

It must be really a long time since my last update (actually, more than a year!). i’ve been very busy with work schedule so the site didn’t get very maintained with updates.

I didn’t have much time for photography, neither. So I was pretty much satisfied with Sony RX1’s performance for my daily use despite the temptation of the later generation of A7 series. However, I just got something new last weekend. As you can tell, instead of getting the trendy A7 mark II or A7S. I got myself a Sony A6000 body and an ultra wide angle lens, 10-18mm F4 OSS.

The reason that I need a new camera is simple - I am travelling! The destination this time is Turkey - a fantastic place combining west and east, european and asian. It’s famous for its cultural heritage and one of its most important highlights is the architecture. The churches and mosques are so grand and one of a kind. I certainly want to capture the best of them when I am there. An UWA lens will definitely help serve this purpose.

I am an advocate for travel light. Any extra weight to carry will kill the appetite of shooting pictures. So DSLR for sure, is out of my options. For smaller compact cameras, we’ve got recently launched Panasonic LX100, and Sony’s best-selling RX100 Mark III. They both received many positive responses and do have small bodies. However, both cameras have lens integrated and its widest is at 24mm (35mm equivalent). That is not wide enough for the landscape or buildings in Turkey, as I read through some travel blogs. Sony A7 Mark II and its latest 16-35mm FE mount look like the perfect fit. However, it costs a small fortune and out of my budget range (both camera and lens are SGD 2,000 plus each so it ends up being more than SGD 4,000 in total). That’s why I settled at my final choice - A6000 with lens 10-18mm F4 OSS.

I’ve reviewed the lens 10-18mm before. I was impressed with its performance even back then. And 10mm is probably the widest for APS-C cameras (9mm will be fish eyes) I have seen. A6000 receives quite good reviews from many users. No doubt, it was designed and built based on Sony's abundant experience and knowledge of its predecessors - NEX series. This camera was approaching the end of product cycle so I managed to get some good bargain as well.

Here are some usual unboxing photos..

 

As always, the orange colour for Sony alpha series.

Sony A6000 body, kind of a shame not having the hot shoe cover.. How much does that cost?

The rear side. I like the built-in electronic viewfinder. It’s pretty bright and clear, and doesn’t have any lag issues.

 

The dials are well made, which reminds of previous NEX-7. The second dial is also customisable. 

The screen can be tilted 90 degree upwards. Too bad it can’t flip 180 degrees for selfies. But you probably expected that since there is a viewfinder in the way.

And here is the 10-18mm F4 lens.. Relatively large size compared to its E-mount peers.

It has built-in OSS, somewhat compensating the lack of large aperture. 

The body and lens assembled. It’s not very compact, but likely the smallest I can get for such wide angle.

The top view, indeed the 10-18mm is a bulk head.

 

I haven’t really got much chance of taking pictures with the new gears yet. Below is just a picture to show how wide the lens is at 10mm.. (I took the photo right in front of the table). I shall give more hands-on experience when I’m on the road.

 

 

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NEX-3N First Impression

While I am still waiting to have a more in-depth review on Sony's latest camera, RX100II, I can't just let my vacation pass without something new! So I got this new member from Sony's NEX family, NEX-3N!

I've got many friends asking me before, "How do you think about the NEX-3N?" My answer is always neutral: only get it if you need it. To be honest, I wasn't particularly excited about this camera. As compared to my NEX-5N, which is an older model in the NEX 5 series, it has less control, not better image quality (although it is still far better than most point-and-shoot cameras). The advantage of NEX-3N is that it has a flip screen, that makes self-portrait much easier. Apparently, the target market is young ladies with passion about taking self-portraits and also want superior image quality. It is also smaller in size that makes this camera suitable for daily uses.

Below are some unboxing photos of NEX-3N. I am bringing it to Japan for vacation and more photos will be uploaded soon!

  

The front view. My unit is a white body made of plastic. The camera comes with lens 20mm F2.8 pancake lens. It suits NEX-3N great in terms of portability.

Top view. The playback button now is place at the top panel, which takes me a little while to adjust to that. The shutter, zoom and power button are integrated together.

The control wheel is similar to those on other NEX bodies.

The built-in flash light that NEX-5N doesn't have! The trade off is that NEX-3N doesn't have hot shoe.. But I believe most NEX-3N users won't need that anyway.

Flipped screen makes self-portraiting fairly easy. However, that's the only way you can flip the screen. It can be flipped in the other direction.

The 20mm F2.8 pancake lens is somewhat similar to the previous 16mm F2.8, a fast and wide prime lens. The 16mm F2.8 has been criticised on its image quality. Let's see how the new 20mm F2.8 performs!

The lens also comes with a lens cap/hood that is used on E30mm 3.5.

The SD card slot is now put together with other output port, different from NEX-5N where battery and card slot are placed next to each other.

A side-by-side comparison with my Sony NEX-5N. NEX-3N is slightly taller but narrower. The most noticeable difference is the size of the grip. Clearly, NEX-3N's grip is much smaller. I guess that's also because the target group is young ladies?

From the top, the NEX-3N body is thicker than 5N, which offsets the slimmer E20 2.8 lens and makes two cameras almost identical in thickness.

I just landed Tokyo a while ago. Please check the blog regularly for more photos taken by NEX-3N!

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My First Full Frame, and It's Compact

I have to say Sony still has some innovation power in its products, at least in digital camera space (not a fan of its smartphones though). Its release of the first full frame compact camera, RX1 really tempts me. It took me quite some struggling to choose between a normal full frame (e.g. Nikon D600, Canon 6D, etc.) and this one. But considering about that I'll use the camera mainly for travel and casual outings, I finally settled with my decision on this small camera.  

Stock has been really limited with this camera due to low supply and short period of release. I was lucky enough to grab one on this very Friday night as I am going on trip tomorrow. So it is just in time to capture some great moments and also good time to test out the camera's capability. In this post, there are mostly some unboxing photos and my first impression on this tiny camera.

I would say the package design is rather normal. Nothing much stunning is seen from the exterior of it. And I believe Sony should be able to do better with a camera selling at such a premium price (I was expecting something like NEX-7's package).

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Sound and Look Cool - Beats Solo HD

To be honest, I am not a huge fan of earphones, headphones or any audio equipment. To me, it doesn't seem too attractive to spend a few hundred bucks just to feel that the sound is more pleasing or detailed or whatever. As long as I could wear them comfortably and the sound quality isn't terribly bad, I wouldn't want to upgrade my audio gears. 

Besides the iPhone original earphones (many audio fans may give a sarcastic smile here) and ATH FC700, I don't have much experience and say in this category. so this post is really mainly about my very personal thoughts and experience with the Beats Solo HD. 

Why do I get this in the first place? Reason could be three:

1. The look itself. Probably this is too shallow, but yeah. Beats' marketing is just too good. You could see celebrities wear them on the newspapers, magazines and websites. It's fashionablly unique and iconic. A few brands were trying to imitate that but didn't seem very successful. 

2. It meets my need well. There are indeed, in terms of sound quality, better beats headphones such as Beats Studio. However, it is just too bulky for me and I don't really find it comfortable when wearing that, especially for long time. The noise cancelling is a great feature on Beats Studio. But it also brings the trouble that when it's running out of battery, you have to replace the batteries before you can enjoy your music again, which is kind of stupid. So I opted down for better simplicity and I suppose the sound quality is good enough for me.

3. Cheaper price in UK! Beats headphones are not cheap at all. At the same price, you may find better alternatives from other competitors such as ATH, Sennheiser and Bose. But let's just consider ourselves are paying the premium for the look. Remember after all we are living in a world of attention. In Singapore, the beats headphones are even more insanely priced. That's why I bought them when I was in London. I just couldn't resist it.

Enough talk on my decision-making process, let's check out the headphones!

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Sony NEX E50 1.8 First Impression

It has been hell long time since my last update. I was back in China for the last four months and had no access to the blogger..Anyway, it's always good to be back in Singapore and this blog too! Today I am bringing some fresh content here!

I just got a Sony E-mount lens 50mm F1.8 a few days ago. The reason that I bought this is that I need a good lens for taking the portrait. The large aperture makes the subject more outstanding and also allows faster shutter speed in the low light without increasing the ISO. 

Here are some of my thoughts on this lens. 

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Shoot Your Photo Wide! - Sony VCL-ECU1 Ultra-Wide Converter

My previous blog (Sony NEX-5N First Impression) has given an introduction on this lens converter - Sony VCL-ECU1. Here is a more detailed post on this lens converter show what this converter is capable of. 

First, this converter is suitable only for E-mount 16mm F2.8. There are reviews on other websites saying that it is also compatible with Panasonic M4/3 lens 14mm F2.5. I can't test this out since I don't have the lens around. The converter has a multiply factor 0.75x, that is, focal length of 16mm will be converted to 12mm after mounting. 

Some may not know how much wider 12mm is compared to 16mm, and 18mm end of the kit lens 18-55mm. I have taken two examples so you may see the difference. 

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