The Potbelleez

I was reluctant to go to see the Potbelleez last night. Why? i'm not sure, most people would jump at the chance to go photograph a well known Australian band, but not me, I wasn't in the mood.

Luckily my friend Emily convinced me and I went - damn glad I did end up going. I was never a die hard Belleez fan but i'd definitely heard their stuff before, but man, their set - on fire. They rocked it. Probably one of the best live performances i've seen for a long long time.

The shoot was primarily for the paper so naturally I was packing the D4 w/ 24-70 - my workhorse. But, seeing how much I love my little NEX I brought that along too with the Mir24N, probably the first proper run i'd given it since picking it up.

I've thrown in a mix of b/w and colour because of the crazy coloured lights they had for the show. Personally I like the b/w but sometimes I feel that colour adds a bit more interest to the photo too. Each to their own.

The 5n certainly performed a lot better than I expected it to. I've used it to shoot shows before but for some reason it seemed to handle the images better this time, maybe it's the lens - could be imagining it.
One thing that mirrorless cameras still can't beat SLR's for is autofocus, switching from D4 - NEX you really appreciate how damn good the AF system on the D4 really is. The ability to snap focus within the blink of an eye in pretty crappy lighting is impressive.

Some people love the EVF but i'm still a bit of a traditionalist and love the OVF. There are times where I love the EVF more, weird angles, in bright daylight etc, but when it gets dark, I really love the OVF. Sometimes I get a little disorientated when looking through the EVF for too long, but I can peep through the OVF all day - or night rather - long.

Although EVF sometimes bugs me, it was ok last night. I find that if I stare at it for too long it does strain the eyes a little, like staring at a computer screen for too long. ANYWAY away from the EVF, this lens is sharp. All the photos I took that night were shot wide open at f2.

Like I mentioned last time, I love the focal length of 50mm equiv.

The lens let me down a few times due to the stiff focus, but nothing extreme to make me throw the lens in the bin.

I was pretty surprised/happy with the RAW files from the NEX considering the conditions I was shooting in. I rarely shoot JPEG with the NEX, mainly because I hate Sony colours. I don't know why, but the colours that usually come straight from the camera are weird. Really magenta and not pretty.

I know this is nothing new, but RAW files are pretty damn amazing. This photo, originally was completely blue. I mean, BLUE, just by sliding the colour balance it makes the photo look normal, I know it's nothing new but I find it amazing how far we've come in camera technology.

Anyway, i've blabbed on long enough, hope you enjoyed the photos, I certainly had a blast shooting it. Definitely impressed with this little camera and the Mir24n.

The little camera that could.

Firstly I apologize for going MIA for those who bother to read my ramblings. I've just been preoccupied and too busy to bother posting on my blog - my bad!

As some of you may know, i've had the Sony NEX 5n for a few months now and it's a little camera that i've slowly grown to love more and more every time I use it. Sure, there are times when the image quality isn't good enough, or the autofocusing isn't fast enough and sometimes, it just.. lacks that something to make it a truly amazing camera. Having said that, it is the size of an iPhone and a few hundred dollars as opposed to a few thousand!

So take this as a.. on going updated review of the NEX 5n, something that with all its flaws, limitations and quirks, I love to bits.

British India came to Gladstone last night and performed a one off performance in Central Queensland. I've never heard much of their music, so i wont turn this blog into a music review. I took the D4 (which i'll write about how that compares to the D3s soon) and took the 5n along just for laughs to see how it would perform in a live gig environment, and see how it compared to the beast that is the Nikon D4.

 The problem that I have with the NEX system - as a whole - is that it lacks any good fast lenses, the only fast lenses they have at the moment are the 50mm f1.8 and the Carl Zeiss 28mm f1.8 which costs an arm and a leg. The alternative? legacy lenses, using old school lenses that everyone forgets about, and chuck them onto the NEX. With its amazing peaking feature for manual focussing it's pretty easy to get used to shooting with full manual focus.

Maybe it's the hipster inside of me, but something about a manual focus lens makes me feel Henri-Cartier Bresson-esque, shooting and capturing images the old school way. (obviously it's not, but using a full manual lens just gives you that sense of pure photography that machine gunning with AF doesn't.)

The images turned out better than I thought and the noise performance is acceptable, clearly not Nikon D3s/4 quality but again, for its size and price it's nothing i'd complain about.

Having shot a few live gigs in the past year or so, there's one thing I hate and always will hate, the damn stage lighting. flickering reds, blues, oranges and clean whites, the lighting changes every few seconds and it's damn hard to try and catch a shot consistently with the same lighting. Makes people look like aliens if you get the wrong colour on their faces.

I stripped these images of all their colour partly for this reason but also because I feel that the really over saturated colours from the lights draw attention away from the main subject and by stripping the colours, there are less visual distractions for the viewers - my opinion of course.

Supporting act for British India were a Brisbane band named Young Griffo.

For those who are curious as to how the NEX looks like with legacy lenses, there you go. 55mm f1.4 which is effectively 80mm-ish at f1.4 with the smaller cropped sensor. As you can see by the photo, the lens is almost, if not, bigger than the whole camera, perfect for travelling and hiking - which is why I bought it in the first place. 

Can it/does it replace a DSLR? definitely not. It's a different style and type of shooting. The image quality is definitely better than a lot of DSLR's out there but to use it in a professional environment such as the news environment would be a bit touch and go for this little camera. Sure, there would be a way where you COULD use it for the work that I do, but it'd just be too much effort for little reward. 

Hopefully I can find more occasions to take this little camera out in the future and do a direct comparison to my workhorse, the D4.

Unti then,

Ciao.

p.s - a bit more colour to end this post.  (NEX 5n of course)