First Images with the new gear

I made some changes to my camera gear (an updates ‘what’s in my bag"‘ will happen soon). If you’re curious about why, I talk about it in the new issue of my 6FPS newsletter, I’m not in love. With the new gear in hand, I did a quick visit to the Bainbridge Island eagle’s nest to check up on it (today: no eagles seen), and it gave me a chance to take the first couple of images with the Sony A6700 and the Sigma 20-200 lens.

This is an image of the nest, shot at 200mmn and not cropped. I did some minor processing of it, mostly raising shadows and blacks and adding a bit of contrast to compensate for the nest being backlit in the bright and grey sky, and this looks a lot like it did to me by eye. it was shot at 1/200 at ISO 200, and there’s zero noise reduction to the image and basic sharpening.

This is a screen grab of the shot at 100%. It’s very crisp and detailed. I don’t see any noise in the image (the day was fairly dark, very grey and yes, more rain is coming in later today). There might be some very very minor fringing in a few places, but nothing you’ll see without pixel peeping, so overall I’m quite happy with this image technically.

While I was there, I did a quick shot of one of the picnic shelters at the park.

Again, fairly basic processing although I did reduce the saturation in the greens. I like the color rendition, and the details, even in the shadows, are good and crisp, and again, no noise or other lens issues.

This is just a first quick look at the new gear, but I’m quite happy with the results. My first take on the A6700 is that where I like the A7rIV and the images it takes but don’t particularly love working with it, the A6700 fits my hand well and while I still have some practice time to go to really learn how to set it up the way I want it, I enjoy using it in a way I don’t it’s big brother. It reminds me a lot of my old Fuji rigs — this one seems to be bringing the fun back into pushing the shutter again — although it’s not one I’d use for bird photography except in an emergency.

More on this later, but as a first take, I think I’ve found a combo that much better fits my interests today than the gear I had.

Taking the new Macro lens out for a test is still pending, mostly because the weather has been very dark and wet, and will be for the next week as well. But we do need the water, although parts of the state are struggling with it (we’re fine, in a rain shadow of Mt. Olympus and much of the worst of the last storm went northn of us)