Photos from and review of Sony a7ii

[tandaina]

OK, promised this to a few folks. If you are a grumpy old camera person like me (get off my lawn!) then you are probably lamenting the long lost days of *real* cameras. You know the ones, all metal, film, if you were *lucky* it had a light meter, but it probably *didn't*, and it was heavy enough that if you got mugged you could beat the attacker off with it. Those cameras. :pound:

So I learned to shoot in the heady days of the Minolta SRT-101. For those who don't know it's probably one of the best cameras ever produced. (Remember, I'm a grumpy old photography gal, don't argue, just nod.) Rugged, accurate, and most importantly didn't need power to operate. Sure if you put a battery in it you'd get a basic light meter, but back then we didn't *need* light meters darn it! And yes, you had to focus the shot yourself. And we didn't have zoom lenses either. We zoomed by walking. (Up hill, both ways!) I shot mostly black and white film (easy to develop and print, and when I lost dark room access, cheaper to have developed). That camera taught me to see. Partly because it was all manual and you had to slow down and *think* about your shot you really learned to see.

Well time passed and I dug in my heels for a loooong time but eventually I admitted that maybe a camera that wound the film for you between shots would be nice to have. So I made the biggest photographic mistake of my life and bought a Canon. Piece of junk. Seriously, it broke within a year and the cost to fix it was more than I'd paid for it new. I threw it away and went back to Minolta and have never left. Well eventually I lost access to a dark room, development costs were rising, and I hated the crappy development results I got from local labs. (No.... shot three needed pushing two stops you idiots.)

So when a friend told me that *digital* cameras meant your computer was your dark room... I jumped. I bought the Minolta 7D and a couple lenses and off I went. Eventually the worst thing to ever happen to photography happened, Minolta got out of the business. (I know this might cause a war but the best glass produced was made by Minolta. The color rendering, the detail. It was amazing, no one else comes close. Even Zeiss bought lens designs from Minolta in the 70s.) Eventually I moved to Sony's (who bought Minolta's photo business) professional body, the enormous a900. An amazing camera, but I think it weighs 20 pounds and it's easily as big as my head.

The whole time I lamented, often enough that my family got really sick of hearing it, that all I wanted was someone to make a digital back for the Minolta SRT-101. That's it, just a digital back to replace the film plate. Well no one ever did that, but Sony has been doing some pretty amazing things with mirrorless cameras (I swore I'd never go mirrorless early on). And recently they released the a7 (comes in a number of variations for different specialities) and then the a7ii (an upgrade/improvement.) I would have never bought it for myself, but my husband read online that with a simple adapter ring it would use my old Minolta lenses *the same as my SRT-101 did.* I think it took him 30 seconds to buy it, just to shut me up. ;) It was my Christmas present this year.

15667

Ignore the lenses one's a huge old Minolta 300mm prime and the other is I think 28mm, but here's the wonderful old SRT-101 next to its great-granddaughter the Sony a7ii. Look maybe a *little* similar? (The addition of the grip for the right hand is soooo welcome. An upgrade from the old camera that I can agree with.)

I honestly expected my fond memories of my old Minolta glass to be utterly ruined by this camera. You see digital cameras have gotten *so* good that many of them (the a900 is one) can render images more detailed than most *lenses* can produce. So you see all the lens' warts. Anything less than a $2k modern Sony/Minolta lens on the a900 looks like *crap.* The sensors are just that good.

My old Minolta glass was mid range for its day. I have the 50mm 1.7 (not the 50mm 1.4). I have the 28mm 2.8 (not the famed 24mm 2.8). You get the picture. They were solid pieces of glass for their time. The 50mm 1.7 sells for about $20 today. So let me say, when I put these lenses on this body I wasn't expecting much. I was totally blown away. The old Minolta color, all there, the detail rendering? Sharp as a tack no matter how I pixel peep. 40 year old glass that sells for well under $100 these days utterly decimated my good quality automatic Minolta/Sony glass. We haven't yet got an adapter for my husbands ultra top of the line Canon glass, but after looking at these photos he's pretty sure the Minolta glass will outperform his stuff as well. They don't make 'em like they used to. :)

Eye candy time!

The 24mm 2.8 dealing with some pretty intense sun (if it ever had a hood it has long ago been lost) and some huge dynamic range. I think we may finally have entered the era of digital matching film for dynamic range. This is not HDR.
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/photos/i-gMr2HKS/0/O/i-gMr2HKS.jpg

This is a 100mm Vivitar with a macro adapter.
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/photos/i-CWtfhZF/0/O/i-CWtfhZF.jpg

The 50mm (work horse lens). This is 6400 ISO. Unbelievable.
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/photos/i-FhRjFc4/0/O/i-FhRjFc4.jpg

Still the 50, rotten day. Raining, foggy. Just blech.
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/photos/i-k5dWFmh/0/O/i-k5dWFmh.jpg

50mm (apparently I really just need like one lens)
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/photos/i-C2jJ6Lq/0/O/i-C2jJ6Lq.jpg

28mm 2.8, really hard shot. The falls were running so high that all the way on the observation platform where this was taken it was *raining up.* Most of the time the lens was too covered with water spots, but I managed this...
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/Art/Black-White-Study/i-96wjKxz/0/XL/DSC00216-Edit-2-XL.jpg

These are a roughly 25 year old Minolta *auto-focus* 20mm lens. Another goodie.
http://tandaina.smugmug.com/Seasons/Winter/i-x8qhCpd/0/XL/DSC00628-XL.jpg

http://tandaina.smugmug.com/Seasons/Winter/i-R7DqxZq/0/XL/DSC00637-XL.jpg

http://tandaina.smugmug.com/Seasons/Winter/i-48WRZK9/0/XL/DSC00641-Edit-XL.jpg

[tandaina]

I should add that with the old MD/MC lenses mounted everything is manual only (obviously). Aperture control is the ring on the lens as always. You can use manual mode, or aperture priority mode (like on the SRT and other film bodies). You can't use shutter priority mode (obviously), or full auto. And focusing is done the old fashioned way as well. ;) But for those whose eyes are getting poor? Focus assist is a God send. I can press one button and the camera zooms in 10x or 100x so I can be sure to nail focus. I can also turn on focus highlights, red or yellow. What is in focus the camera will highlight in your chosen color making it easy to tell when you've got the focus plain in the right place, also simple welcome additions to a manual focus system that I appreciate.

[Cob]

Wonderful photography - the B&W of the trees is superb, the sort of thing I liked to try in old days with infra-red film.

Cob

[ainterne]

Wow....they are fantastic... I am not easily impressed with pics but these are right up the scale... I find them extremely motivational. I guess we all get different things from pictures like these, for me the quality is just superb. Thank you for sharing the pics but also the story behind them...

[Lady Onogaro]

Thanks for sharing those, Tandaina. They are so beautiful. What's the name of the cat?

[Bart Willems]

Aaaah! Back in the day I started my digital photography with a Minolta 5D. Less than six months later Minolta announced to pull out of the photography business. I ended up with Nikon, and still enjoy it, but Nikon fanboys can be worse than Apple fanboys. When Sony announced to take over the Minolta business and planned on becoming the #2 in the industry (they were 5th or 6th at that point) nobody of the Nikon shooters could believe them. They all had to laugh. Silly Sony!

My feeble attempts to point out that they had (a) Unlimited resources (at least by camera manufacturing standards), (b) Top notch marketing (a must if you're in consumer electronics) and (c) the entire technical staff of Minolta, known for technical innovations fell on deaf ears. To me that seemed a pretty potent combination and when Sony started introducing four, five cameras per year I didn't see that as "clueless" but rather as the good ole' "throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" method, and it certainly paid off.

Sony has grown immensely, and many of those Nikon shooters enjoy Sony's mirrorless cameras (their electronic viewfinders are simply amazing) much over what Nikon has to offer. And the fanboys are no longer laughing at Sony's claim to grow to a #2 market position--it's more nervous giggle now.

My favorite lens is still the Minolta 70-210/4 "Beercan" -- what it misses in sharpness (and that's not a lot) it certainly makes up in character! It really did pain to sell it off. I'm sure you'll enjoy your camera!

[tandaina]

I have never managed to get my hands on a beer can, but it is on my 'see it, buy it' list along with a couple other iconic lenses... :)

[tandaina]

Thanks for sharing those, Tandaina. They are so beautiful. What's the name of the cat?
The cat is Emma. :)

[Jeph]

You have given me flashbacks to the Pentax K1000 that I learned with. A solid hunk of metal and leather that was nothing special but it always worked perfectly. My pictures were never that good though.

[oldstoat]

Beautiful photographs!
I still have my old Olympuses (? Olympi) and their lenses were also sharp and fast. Maybe it's a very superficial judgement but picking a standard 50mm 1.8 lens from the 80s and feeling its weight compared to the lenses of today makes me think the glass was better then.

[phonelady61]

yes nice photos very nice in fact and love your cameras and your cat Emma .