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UltravioletPhotography

Got a D750 in for possible conversion


Andrea B.

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I just got a very clean D750 from LensRentals for a good price for possible full spectrum conversion to replace my oil splattering D600. In spite of the constant battle with sticky sensor blobs, that D600 has been the best UV cam I've ever used. It had such nice dynamic range and high ISO capability.

 

First thing I noticed with the D750 is that it has a rather clanging shutter compared to the D810. (It reminded me of how my old clanging D2X/D2XS sounded.) So I'm going to have to look carefully at that to make sure there is not any shutter shock thing going on. Although in UV I typically use the shutter-up, pause and release method of shooting which should handle any clanging vibration.

 

Second thing I noticed was that the D750 Live View did not seem as good as the D810 version, but I need to confirm that impression by looking at both cams' Live View side by side in good light. A good Live View has been very important to the way I've been working these last couple of years in UV. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates good Live View.

 

It is never easy moving to a new UV camera. New UV, Vis and IR profiles and presets are needed for the converter. New noise and sharpening routines have to be worked out. Nothing too taxing, just time consuming.

 

It looks like my ancient and creaking Lumic GH1 is also about due for replacement. It has also been a sweet little cam. But the mount seems be acting a little warpy-wobbly from the effects over time of extra weight from lenses combined with helicoids and adapters. Micro 4/3 is so great for making use of all those cool lenses we find on Ebay, so I can't be without a working Lumix!!

 

Only two months to go before spring shooting season is here again! So I need to get going on the next round of conversions. Time flies like an arrow, eh?

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The SLR (with its pentaprism, bulky mirror box, and mechanical shutter) seems clearly to be on its way out, a last legacy of the film era. I don't know about Nikon, but I notice that Sony has committed itself totally to the new mirrorless/shutterless paradigm from now on. I hang on to what I have because of my investment in A-mount lenses (inherited by Sony from Minolta in the dying days of film cameras;) but when I finally change over, I think it will be to the new paradigm.
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I don't really care whether the camera has a mirror or not. Both types receive light through a lens and make a photo. :D As long as we still have to use lenses, we have to stick them on some kind of box or other.

 

It's like 6 of one and a half-dozen of the other when it comes to pros & cons between dSLR & mirrorless. When actually shooting there seems to be no differences except that dSLRs seem to still focus better/faster. But then fast focusing is not a necessity in UV work anyway because we are using manual lenses and Live View.

 

For UV, I simply try to pick the best sensor - looking for dynamic range and good high ISO capabilities. Currently that would be in either some Nikon or Sony body with possibly Pentax close behind. Sony currently loses out with me because they have horrible menus & ergonomics and have had some bad glitches with the shutter shock thing and the inaccurate autofocus (as mentioned, not needed for UV, but still).

 

I do love the Lumix G cameras and I wish they would put a good sensor in one of those. They make very sweet little full spectrum cameras.

 

Mirrorless was a reasonable advance in some aspects (EVF possible if you like that kind of thing), but maybe not in others (autofocus, fast motion captures).

 

However, what I am looking for in a digital camera is software configurability and not physical bells & whistles. And we could have software configurability tomorrow because there is absolutely no reason why the software couldn't be written to support us loading our own curves, sharpeners, colour profiles and other settings directly into the camera so that we could shoot a photo that does not need so much editing (or "post processing"). Nikon has come nicely close to that with its Picture Controls and in-camera ADL (both of which most shooters ignore for unfathomable reasons). But we really need more and better and configurable Picture Controls.

 

Were I approximately 30 years younger (making me a very youthful 15, of course), I would start writing that software myself and attempt to persuade some digicam manufacturer to let me load it into their cam and test it out. It would be soooooooo cool !!!!

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Clark, you can use those A-mount lenses with adapters on Sony or other bodies, yes?

Minolta made some lovely lenses. I have a friend who has held onto some of his.

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At the moment, I have 5 Minolta lenses, 1 official Zeiss/Sony lens, and a few aftermarket optics for my main camera outfit. I also have one Minolta 9000 film body which I use for occasional specialty work as well as a backup (I once arrived in the North Dakota badlands and realized that I had left my battery charger behind, and the nearest place I could order a new one was 1000 miles away. Fortunately, I had a couple of rolls of film, which saved my bacon on this occasion.) One thing I do like about the older SLRs is a viewfinder that actually works with the power off (I guess I show my age saying this, but I still find myself trying to look through my SLT-A99V before turning it on, with the inevitable "oops" moment.)

 

The A-mount lenses can be used on E-mount cameras (which I do not have) with one of two adapters: one is just an empty tube (which enables only contrast-detect autofocus;) the other has an interposed pellicle mirror and sensors below (which enables the old-fashioned SLT/SLR phase-detect autofocus.) Some of the old Minolta A-mount lenses are quite good--and reasonably priced in the used market. The new E-mount lenses (a very incomplete line, as of yet) can support only contrast-detect autofocus, which is said to be the slower of the two, but such things rarely matter in my kind of shooting. I guess that CDAF has become good enough that the manufacturers are no longer bothering to preserve PDAF as a long-term option. Third-party support for the E mount is not really there yet--only a handful of lens makers are offering products.

 

A funny thing about the friendliness of software--the manufacturers can really seem perverse about that, I agree. With the Canon Powershot p&s series, it got so bad that a group of hackers banded together to write new software (called CHDK) which unlock all sorts of capability (such as ultrafast or ultralong exposures, flash-detect triggering, raw shooting, lossless image saving, and intervalometry) which were crippled out of existence by the cameras' stock firmware. It would be nice if such persons would turn their attention to other camera types, but I am unaware of any such efforts beyond the CHDK team.

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A funny thing about the friendliness of software--the manufacturers can really seem perverse about that, I agree. With the Canon Powershot p&s series, it got so bad that a group of hackers banded together to write new software (called CHDK) which unlock all sorts of capability (such as ultrafast or ultralong exposures, flash-detect triggering, raw shooting, lossless image saving, and intervalometry) which were crippled out of existence by the cameras' stock firmware. It would be nice if such persons would turn their attention to other camera types, but I am unaware of any such efforts beyond the CHDK team.

 

http://www.magiclantern.fm/

 

http://www.gh1-hack.info/

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