Amazon is doing a lightning deal on this lens for only a few hours more. If you’ve been waiting for a fisheye for your ned system, don’t miss this deal. Here’s the link

Let’s say you have a Nex-5n or a Nex-5r and you are used to utilizing an Arca Swiss style tripod head. I use an Induro Tripod, Gorrillapod BallHead-X, and a Sirui Tripod. All of these use the same compatible mounting plates. I have the Really Right Stuff L-Bracket on my Nex-7. Recently I got a Nex-5r, naturally I wanted to be able to put this camera on my usual tripods. I did a search for Nex-5r L-Bracket. I found this one. It’s the slimmest, best fitting L-bracket I’ve seen. I absolutely love this little bracket. I’ve seen pictures of the one they make for the Nex-7, I’d love to see one in person and compare it to the one I have on my Nex-7. If you use a tripod and the Arca Swiss system, you need one of these.
rPix

Well folks, The next Nex is here! Some wonderful updates. Apps are a reality and autofocus looks to be great! You all know I’m already a fan of the Nex-5n. There have been just a few things I’d have liked to have in this little camera.

Top Updates (according to me)

AutoFocus
AF has been updated and looks to be on par with the best AF systems out there. This camera is now able to do more than it used to because of this. Catching running toddlers and fast moving objects with the Auto Focus looks to be similar to it’s larger ancestors the SLR cameras. My wife will be very happy about this, as she doesn’t enjoy the challenge of Manual Focus like I do. You also can shoot 10 frames per second while tracking focus. I very much welcome this addition. It cancels out most of the issues people have had with the Nex cameras. I think lens manufactures will take note. I’m thinking 2013 is the year of the Nex.

Apps
We’ve (as in me and my buddies) have been wishing they’d make some kind of add ons available for years. Poloroid has Android and now Nikon does. No one but Sony has apps on a camera with changeable lenses. Granted, it’s not open like Android. But welcome nonetheless. I’m looking forward to the remote control. I want to perch my camera in various places, such as up on a 30ft pole to get a different angle on a building. You’ll be able to both see what your shooting and trigger the shutter with your iPhone or Droid. Next, they mentioned a pro-bracketing app. Sony has been putting in the most pathetic bracketing options in their cameras for a while. We’ve been wishing we could do some real bracketing with our Sonys, It’s here.

Wifi
I’m a big user of Eye-fi cards. I love having my images jump wirelessly to my phone, iPad, or computer. The downside is that this functionality is limited to the specific card. That means limited space and the cards are slow. (Only Class 6) So with wifi I’ll be able to use any of my big fast cards and I don’t have to choose between my big fast cards or my ability to upload. Along with the connectivity to devices and directly to the web. This will make it nice.

Interface
I’ve not had any trouble with the interface of the Nex-5n. But I welcome the added function button and dial on top of the camera. I think this is a wonderful addition.

Overall, I’m excited to see what the Nex-6 and Nex-8? or Nex-9? is going to be like. I really like the idea of having a very high resolution Nex for landscapes or whatever you might need a huge file for. And a nice little 16 megapixel camera with good low light abilities for the times when you need that. If I were you, I’d start saving my pennies now. The gear lust is coming. I hope to get my hands on one of these to try out. I hope you do too.
rPix

If you’re interested in pre-ordering the Nex-5r from Amazon, Here is a link
Sony Nex-5r Preorder

Just a quick link to an awesome idea very well excecuted.
I’ve been having a little bit of flashing pain with the Nex-7 and flashes. The Nex-7 just doesn’t have hardly any control for TTL flashes. I use the Pixel King remotes, the TTL works great but you have abseloutly no control of output. The in camera flash compensation does nothing. So something like this would save money on flashes, not having to buy the expensive Sony HVL-58AM or HVL-43. (I already have one of each) they are nice and I’m not planning on getting rid of them, I just wish I could control the power of the flash from my camera. This little mod will do just that. I’m going to get one and give it a try. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Here are the links to the different pieces on Amazon.

How many pixels do you want?

I’ve been looking at the new little RX-100 camera. So far nothing but rave reviews. You can get one here if you like. Amazon RX-100 It seems to me like Sony has done something amazing here with this little 1″ sensor. It’s a 20 megapixel or 13.2×8.8mm sensor and APS=C sensor is right around 23×15.2 or so. Now the RX-100 does a pretty good job at higher ISO levels especially considering how small the pixels physically are. So here’s my thought. Why not take this sensor and scale it up to be the Nex-9 Sensor. They could even use pixel binning (Combining Pixels into one) to help with higher ISO levels giving us cleaner smaller resolution images. So what happens if we take the specs of the RX-100 and scale it up?

Here’s the math part.

RX-100 is 5472×3648 or 5472 pixels on the 13.2mm side of the sensor about 414 pixels per millimeter. If we take an APS-C Sensor and do the math 23.5mm times 414 is 9729 on the long side and 414 times 15.2 is 6292 on the short side. making for a grand total of just over 61 megapixels. Would it be a low light genius? Not likely although pixel binning is showing great possibilities to help with this. It would be fantastic as a landscape, or advertising camera. Even a high end portrait camera. For me, I’d love it. I keep the ISO as low as possible. With the success of the ultra resolution of the D800 I think something like this would sell. I know I’d buy one.

Note: I know you’re curious a full frame 24x36mm sensor would work out to be 14904×9936 or 148 Megapixels. I know resolution isn’t by an means what makes an image or a camera. I tend to print very large prints and I would certainly have fun with such a camera as the one described here.

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rPix

Ghosts?

Sometimes when you are out in the forest at night, strange sights and sounds come creeping through. Or running and yelling, a lot like kids with something that glows. What is it about things that glow that captivates kids. (and some others of us who haven’t grown up yet) Many photographers live for the golden hours of dusk and dawn. It seems counterintuitive to keep your camera out after the last gleams of sunshine have gone cold into the night. There is a ton of fun to be had with the dark black canvas of night.

Master Time
With the sun out of the picture, you can hold open the shutter of your camera for a long time and not worry about overexposure. This absence of light lets the photographer compress time. A child moving through the trees and spinning something glowing for thirty seconds can be captured in one frame.

How To
Stability is paramount for shooting things like this, You’ll want whatever is motionless in the scene to be sharp. A sturdy tripod is the key. A cable release or remote control is also a good idea. If you don’t have a remote or cable release, use the built in timer, I set mine to 2 seconds so the shutter opens when nothing is touching the camera or tripod. Experiment for a moment with Shutter speeds, ISO and F-stop to find a setting that gives you what you want. Sometimes you’ll want to allow more of the scene to burn into the final image, other times you’ll want everything to go dark in the environment around your shot. So simply lock down your camera so it can’t move and open up the shutter for an extended period of time. The shots in this blog were all from ten to thirty seconds. Nothing fancy is required here.

Final Note
The following image was from an earlier shoot I did. While driving up this mountain road I saw these three trees. Behind them, of course was more trees and mountains etc. I thought I’d really like to isolate these trees. I could have gone for shallow depth of field causing the background to go to blurry color bliss. But I wanted more isolation, maybe against a solid blackness. So I came back well into the night with a spotlight and a maglight to paint in the color against a solid black canvas. Stunning isolation is what resulted. Then in post I found out I really liked the inverse of what I shot so I turned the background white and the trees black. This image is available to order from my gallery site. It’s quite stunning as a canvas wrap on the wall. I have one in my home and really enjoy looking at it. Here’s the link.

I’d like to thank your for joining me today in this post. As the days now start getting shorter, start planning and practicing your night photo options. Please check out the rest of reflectedpixel.com and my youtube channel

Check out this gear from Amazon. All Products I use.

Hello Everyone,
You’re wonderful people! In this video I attempt to show you about Virtual Copies in Lightroom. Virtual Copies can really be your friend. What if you want to compare two effects side by side on the same image. Maybe you are making some prints for your 8×10 frames and need to crop one down to that ratio but don’t want to alter the original. Maybe a square crop for the website. The list goes on and on. Virtual copies aren’t real copies in the fact that they don’t take up all the space a real copy does, in every other way (as far as Lightroom goes) they are full fledged copies. Also in this video we will look at how to turn those virtual copies into real copies if your heart so desires.
Thanks for watching!
rPix

We recently had an opportunity to visit the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii. My wife and I spent our honeymoon there ten years ago. What a treat it was to get to go back to this magical island. This was my first “real” air travel trip with my Sony Nex-7 camera system. We were traveling very light trying to get a weeks worth of stuff in a regulation carry on bag. We did it! mostly. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to carry on with my previous 35mm format gear. I was able to carry lenses ranging from 8mm to 200mm a tripod and all the filters and chargers etc that I wanted, along with my clothes, and iPad into a small roller case.

How did it do?
Short answer, Amazing. This little camera was easy to carry with me just about anywhere I wanted to take it. Along for the ride on some steep hikes, out to the memorials and museums. Down to the beach to capture the surf. My back never ached. Image quality is just fantastic with this little guy. I utilized my variable ND filters for some nice wave painting. Shot Panos and made huge files out of those. Here are a few of the images that I’ve looked at so far It seems like it’s very difficult to get time to get through all the images you make on a trip. I still have some really nice images to edit, I’ll post more of those at a later date.
Get out there and shoot!
rPix

Here are some Amazon Links you might like

The camera to rule them.
Recently the super portable yet amazing Sony RX100 Digital Camera climbed to the very top of all camera sales on Amazon US. Truly this is a camera people want. Tiny footprint, Big sensor, Nice Fast 1.8 glass, Amazing image quality, Huge Megapixel Count, Full 1080p Video, and a good price. I’m somewhat smitten by the little beauty myself.

You can find the technical details anywhere, Here’s my take on what’s hot with this camera

It’s like a Nex camera. It seems like camera manufacturers hold back when putting out the camera. I know I feel this way with my Nex-7 often. Why is the bracketing so dumb? anyway, This camera does more than nearly all the other cameras in it’s category.

True Full Manual and pro Modes P,S,A,M – The most amazing hardware in the world becomes useless if you don’t have control.

Fast lens – 1.8 when zoomed out shortens depth of field and opens up the world of indoor shooting.

ISO 6400 – Did I mention people want to use their cameras indoors at parties and other events

1080p 60 Video – Don’t settle for less, the video looks great from what I’ve seen.

Megapixels to spare or to crop – Having plenty of room to crop in can make a short lens long

RAW Files – Must have for any serious shooter

Speed – Fast AF and up to 10 Frames Per Second. You don’t always need the speed but when you do, it’s sure nice to have

Steady Shot – Sony’s rendition of stabilization works very well and helps get you sharp shots.

Metal Body – I love the feel of a good solid camera, big or small.

If you’re looking for a very portable camera with professional features, this is for you. These will be hard to come by for a while yet with the demand being off the charts.

rPix

Pocket Wizard for Sony Nex-7
I’ve been wanting a pocket wizard TTL for my Nex-7 for a while now. Well, still waiting for the Wizards. There is an alternative and for me, they work just as good. They are much less expensive too. They’re made by a company called Pixel. They are the King wireless transmitters. They make them for Sony, Nikon, and Canon. At first I though the high speed sync didn’t work on the Nex-7, but now, thanks to one of my readers, I know that high speed sync does work if everything is setup right. With my Nikon and Wizards it pretty much always worked assuming the camera was in auto FP mode. With the Sony you have to have the flash head forward and you cannot have your camera in rear curtain sync mode. I have always just left my cameras in rear curtain sync mode in case I wanted to slow down the shutter speed. With these you’ll have to make the choice, do I want rear sync or fast sync. It does work in slow sync mode which seems maybe a little funny, But I’ll have to test this particular camera to see when the flash fires in it’s slow mode, front, rear, or in the middle somewhere. If slow fires at the end of the exposure, I’ll put my camera in that mode most of the time.

The King transmitters and receivers seem to be built very well, they feel about the same as the wizards. Both transmitter and receiver take AA batteries, a plus in my opinion. The receiver has a 1/4-20 metal thread in it for easy mounting to stands and monopods. They also come with a small tether, very useful if you’re firing non hotshoe strobes. They each have a PC port included for this purpose. You can select channels and groups right on the unit itself. I had to do a firmware update for these to work with the Nex-7, it’s a windows only program. I ran it through parallels desktop and didn’t have any issues at all. I’m hoping to get one more flash unit soon, we’ll see how the groups work.

Overall I’m impressed with the capabilities, build quality, and price of these units. Very much a Pocket Wizard alternative and if you’re a Sony shooter, there are no wizards. So a great little product for a good price.