GAS GAS: Please Share your Latest Acquisitions Big and Small

First impressions of the EF 50mm 1.4 vs. 50mm 1.8 STM. A mostly lateral move. Slightly larger aperture. Slightly faster AF. Slightly heavier and bigger. Both are decent wide open and excellent stopped down. It does share 58mm filters with the 24/85 so I guess that's a plus. I think it might just be worth the extra Benjamin.
Pictures or it didn't happen! :roflmao: ;)
Half crop, wide open.
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Saw this demo sample and snatched it up. I hope to use it for street photography, Sony lenses don't come much smaller than this. The 20mm field of view on APS-C format may be just right for busier streets (hope that's going to happen anytime soon :(). My first casual testing shows that I was right to not expect too much from it :).

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Nice lens hood, maintaining a small size overall.
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Which A7R is it?
 
Plus I like the Olympus JPEGs.
Another forum I hang out on has someone that's a very good photographer that posts both Olympus shot images and pictures from one of the Nikon Mirrorless cameras. The Olympus images look natural in their color and general image quality but the Nikon photos look overcooked and have all sorts of artifacts. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the Nikon engine or his post processing but I much prefer the Oly images almost every time.
 
Another forum I hang out on has someone that's a very good photographer that posts both Olympus shot images and pictures from one of the Nikon Mirrorless cameras. The Olympus images look natural in their color and general image quality but the Nikon photos look overcooked and have all sorts of artifacts. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the Nikon engine or his post processing but I much prefer the Oly images almost every time.

My vote is the post processing. I have Lightroom presets for both and they are different on how I handle them.

The color science between the 2 companies is different, so processing them the same will cause one to look more intense than the other.
 
That's right. I remember when you bought it early on. How's it been performing for you?
Quite happy with it, coming from an A7Rm2. Biggest improvement for me is the option to toggle peaking with a custom button. I was a bit afraid of the bigger 60 MP file sizes combined with stories about less favourable high ISO performance. The files are big indeed and I want to shoot uncompressed raw which gives you a whopping 120 MB file; these days I convert them to DNG to get to about 60 MB which is just about tolerable.

High ISO performance is a wash between the R4 and the R2 as far as I'm concerned; some reviewers moan about somewhat less dynamic range but we're talking differences of 0.5 stop or so which I feel is irrelevant. Jim Kasson says essentially the same, with more authority than I can do.

Autofocus performance is a big step up from the R2; just this afternoon I went out shooting about with the Sony 2.8/20 I acquired and I got comparatively few misses. Mind you, it's not an A9 but for me it's good enough.

Finder is great, as are the bigger battery, the joy-stick, My Menu and a number of other features added. Don't really care for the second card slot. Felt no need for a battery grip so far, even not for handling the FE 4/70-200. The R4 is advertised as fairly weather-resistant so that's comforting, I don't put away my camera when the first drops of rain are falling and not even when it's seriously wet but I make it a point to not make that last too long and dry the camera every now and then. Sony FF cameras are renowned dust magnets and the R4 is no exception. Before almost every outing I blow out the sensor chamber with a rocket blower, but I change lenses on the road as I see fit. However, the camera's throat is only open for a few seconds when doing so and I keep the rear of my lenses clean. After 7 months I haven't had to wet-clean the sensor yet, my shutter count is at 6881 now.

Would I rebuy it? Almost certainly yes. Main reasons to stick with Sony are that Zeiss Loxia and Batis lenses only come in E-mount and switching gear is expensive when you possess over 10 native lenses. While there may be nicer cameras around like the Nikon Z7 and Canon R5, I'm not really tempted to switch, the camera just works and lets me do what I want to do. I really want to have a do-it-all camera and the R4 comes pretty close in my book.
 
Quite happy with it, coming from an A7Rm2. Biggest improvement for me is the option to toggle peaking with a custom button. I was a bit afraid of the bigger 60 MP file sizes combined with stories about less favourable high ISO performance. The files are big indeed and I want to shoot uncompressed raw which gives you a whopping 120 MB file; these days I convert them to DNG to get to about 60 MB which is just about tolerable.

High ISO performance is a wash between the R4 and the R2 as far as I'm concerned; some reviewers moan about somewhat less dynamic range but we're talking differences of 0.5 stop or so which I feel is irrelevant. Jim Kasson says essentially the same, with more authority than I can do.

Autofocus performance is a big step up from the R2; just this afternoon I went out shooting about with the Sony 2.8/20 I acquired and I got comparatively few misses. Mind you, it's not an A9 but for me it's good enough.

Finder is great, as are the bigger battery, the joy-stick, My Menu and a number of other features added. Don't really care for the second card slot. Felt no need for a battery grip so far, even not for handling the FE 4/70-200. The R4 is advertised as fairly weather-resistant so that's comforting, I don't put away my camera when the first drops of rain are falling and not even when it's seriously wet but I make it a point to not make that last too long and dry the camera every now and then. Sony FF cameras are renowned dust magnets and the R4 is no exception. Before almost every outing I blow out the sensor chamber with a rocket blower, but I change lenses on the road as I see fit. However, the camera's throat is only open for a few seconds when doing so and I keep the rear of my lenses clean. After 7 months I haven't had to wet-clean the sensor yet, my shutter count is at 6881 now.

Would I rebuy it? Almost certainly yes. Main reasons to stick with Sony are that Zeiss Loxia and Batis lenses only come in E-mount and switching gear is expensive when you possess over 10 native lenses. While there may be nicer cameras around like the Nikon Z7 and Canon R5, I'm not really tempted to switch, the camera just works and lets me do what I want to do. I really want to have a do-it-all camera and the R4 comes pretty close in my book.
This is similar to how I feel about my A7RIII. I’ve never really had a problem with A7 ergs, the AF is good, and the RAW files are very flexible. A reasonable set of small primes is a necessity for the way i shoot
 
That was a pleasant surprise in all respects: seven (mostly) useful accessories for the price of four, at a 10 percent discount:

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I was after the two plates (and the accessory adapter support) in the first place; the hood comes in handy when the camera is mounted on a tripod. The smartphone holder, mirror and mini LED light were thrown in.

The really great news: The two plates work great - the "Vlogging Pro" plate improves the (already good!) handling of the Z 50 to an extend that I'm actually planning on leaving it on permanently (due to clever construction, this doesn't impede battery and card handling - though you have to transfer the door to the plate; I don't consider the Z 50 fully weatherproof anyway, but this certainly doesn't help in that). The L plate for the Z 6 is a bit of a beast, but the camera still feels great in the hand and balances well when mounted, though it's a tad too big to leave it on permanently (and I don't want to jeopardise the weather sealing on that body!). With the FTZ support, the whole camera sits flat even if the adapter is used, and everything is much more sturdy and stable.

Overall, this feels like a real treat; add to that that I ordered all this less than a week ago and got it today (from China!), this is really impressive.

M.

P.S. After tinkering a bit, I discovered that together with my Rode VideoMicro, the SmallRig mini LED and the Manfrotto Pixi (or Pixi Evo), I have, for the first time ever, a comfortably portable and apparently competent vlogging setup based around the Z 50 with its very solid face and eye detect AF-C (much better than the E-M5 III, and pretty much on par with, if not better than, the G1 X III with which I can't even use the mic ...). I really didn't dare hope it would work so well. But it does. Maybe, just maybe, I'll now finally try my hand on this.
 
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