A recent change in my personal circumstances, being made redundant from a part time job, meant that A) I have a little more free time and B) I had a little free spending money! The first time I was made redundant from my main employment back in 2016, I spent a little of the payout on my first real digital camera, my trusty Samsung NX1000. Ten years on, its still a very reliable and useful workhorse, with immense adaptability and functionality and a sizeable 20 megapixel APS-C sensor. However, in the real world, technology had moved on at a rate of knots and even when I bought the Samsung, it was already obsolete compared to modern models. So it seemed fitting that I should use the second redundancy as an opportunity to buy a more up to date camera. Unfortunately, the payout this time around was meagre, so my options were somewhat limited. A colleague at work had recently bought a second hand Sony Alpha camera, with a full frame sensor and remarked on the amazing image quality he was achieving with it. I looked into the options of buying a Sony Alpha, but the price of the latest A9 models was way beyond my limited funds. The earlier models, despite having a much larger full frame sensor, were only 24-33 megapixels, so I felt the outlay might not be justified. However, the A7 IIIR had the option to record images at a whopping 45 mps, along with 4K video and a host of other advanced features. As the A7 had been superseded by later models, it was almost impossible to find a new one, so I looked at the second hand market. The body alone was coming in at £900 and a starter lens was £150, so even for a used model, it was not going to be cheap. After a bit of reasearch and general soulsearching, I happened upon a shop based in Portsmouth, that resold tech and other items via their store and website. As luck would have it, they had the camera model I wanted, together with an accessory cage and a large dual battery pack for well under the cost of the body alone. The store was really helpful with my enquiries and although it did not come with a lens, it did have all the original packaging, strap, charger and two batteries included. I bought the camera and selected a 50mm lens to go with it from another reseller and a few days later, xmas arrived early!
My friend had suggested that the difference in a full frame sensor would be dramatic on its own, as the sensor in the Samsung was around 23 x 15 mm as opposed to the Sony's 36 x 24mm. The camera is so much more sophisticated than my old Samsung too, so it will take some time to get used to the ton of different options, customisations and new control features. For now, I decided to take it for a test run in the farmlands around the house, just using my old standby Apeture Priority and ISO Auto. It was very much like stepping out of a pedal car and trying to drive a sports car at first, with lots of false starts and fumbling the controls, but eventually, I got my head around where everything was and went for a walk.
Without trying to do anything fancy with the composition or camera work, I took a few default snaps of things I had previously visited with the other camera, such as old farm machinery and the natural landscape near the canal. When I got home, I loaded the RAW files into Adobe Lightroom to check on them and was immediately taken aback by the image quality. The above shot of some weeds around an old farm soakaway was intended to get an idea of depth of field and how the bokeh might reproduce, when focussed on a foreground object. Standing about 4' away from the growth, I took the above snap.
Cropping out a portion in the centre, I processed it in Lightroom, adjusting colour, tonality and noise and was amazed to see the level of detail available. The actual processing time for the Denoise function on the new bigger RAW files jumped up to around four or five minutes, even on a powerful pc, but the results are amazing.
Further on, I found there was an abundance of butterflies in the evening air, and as I came upon a disused excavator, I spotted a dragonfly, resting on the sun warmed metal. Once more, the initial shot was from about 4' away, as I didn't want to disturb the insect. Taking it into Lightroom and fully processing the shot revealed a wealth of colour and detail.
I often enjoy taking photographs of the landscape and horizon immediately opposite my home. From the field where I was standing, I took a test shot of the Beacon Hill and distant Winter Hill on the far left, which is home to the BBC TV transmitter station. Once more, taking a crop and processing it in Lightroom, revealed a shot which easily rivalled anything I had been able to capture with my earlier equipment, even using a telephoto lens.
My next task would be to begin to master the controls in advance of a photoshoot in the Yorkshire Dales!
