Hey Everyone! Hope you've had a great week! Me ? Pretty good and it's getting hot in the south. Heat index over 100 degrees Fahrenheit today. Whew! Thats why I'm indoors writing this blog to stay cool. I know I've been all about film the last couple of months but today I want to talk about some digital adjustments I'm making to my digital kit. I am updating my mid-range zoom.  There are a few reasons that I'm updating my mid-range zoom. First let me say that the zoom that I replaced the 24-105mm f/4 G is an excellent lens and had great optical quality and built like a tank.  It had a great focal range but its biggest draw back was that it is heavy. It was heavy enough that I wouldn't take it with me if I was going on a walk or photo walk around town. It was just too big and heavy weighing in at 663 grams compared to the 488 grams of the 20-70mm. No matter what camera I put this on the Sony A7III or my Sony A7C it was very lens heavy. The length was 4.5 inches before being extended for the longer focal lengths compared to the 3.9 inches of the 20-70mm. So it was bigger and heaver. And if you know me I like compact camera kits and lenses for a walk  around photowalks that I love so much.  Ever since this lens came out in 2023 I've had an eye out for it but just haven't pulled the trigger.  Until last week. Now you know that I really don't buy very much new equipment and I found one at MPB and traded my 24-105mm and a beloved 28mm lens for the 20-70mm. I hated getting rid of the 28mm but I knew that I wouldn't use it with the new lens on.  If I need a 28mm lens to play with I have two other manual ones that I can adapt to my Sony digitals. So let me go over some of the specs of this Sony 20-70mm lens.

-Sony 20-70mm f/4 G. As the model name says its a 20-70mm focal range . Most mid-range are 24-70mm even though its only 4mm wider than standard mid ranges it does make a difference. Great for street and a travel walk around lens. This may be the only lens with this range and the 20mm focal length is great for folks that Vlog. Works great for arm distance selfies and videos.

-Sony 20-70mm f/4 G- The f/4 is the constant widest aperture for this lens. Now there are many lenses with f/2.8 widest aperture and they are great and expensive. Almost twice the price and weight of this lens. That is only one stop of light difference and unless you really need that one stop you can't tell the difference.  I have been using f/4 lenses for quite a while and don't miss the one stop of light if I really need to shoot in super low light I either use a tripod or put on a prime with one or two stops faster than the f/4 like a f/2.8 or a f/1.8.

-Sony 20-70mm f/4 G The G moniker on this lens means its of high quality. Sony makes standard lenses with no moniker, G lenses like this one and G Master lenses highest quality. This is a very sturdy build lens and feels good in the hand.  It is moisture and dust resistant with rubber gaskets that seal everything and one between camera and lens. 

-Lens features- This lens sports an aperture ring which I love on my lenses. It has two programable buttons that you can program all sorts of stuff on from eye focus , to almost anything else in the camera. It has a manual/ auto focus switch. It has a click/de-click button for the aperture ring. and an iris lock switch. It uses 72mm filters which are the same as its sister lens the 16-35mm f/4 G which I also have. So I don't have to buy new filters.

-Focusing Motors- Its has dual XD linear focusing motors. Which means there are two rails with motors on either side of the lens and the focusing is super quick and really beats the older type of motors and focusing systems found on the older 24-105mm. It is very quick. The 20-70 has a minimum focusing distance of .25 meter or 9.8 inches compared to the .31 meter or  14.9 inches on the 24-105mm. This makes it very good for close up detail shots within 12 inches.  Does very good on close up stuff.

-Stabilization- This lens is not stabilized unlike the 24-105mm. But almost all of Sony's camera have IBIS (in body image stabilization ) which will work just fine for me and probably saves some on the weight of the lens which I'd rather have a lighter lens than the stabilization .

Is this the perfect lens? I don't think that a perfect lens exists. With every one there are compromises that have to be made if you want all the bells and whistles the lens will be heavy and bulky. If you get a stripped down model well you won't get what you want either. For now this tool seems just right for me now and will fit the way I shoot now.  What I do know that this lens will probably be on the my Sony A7C almost all of the time because it seems to be a great fit and will also work for my Sony A7III if I need it.  I have been shooting this lens for a few weeks now and love the images that I get out of it. The weight and handling of this lens is great! My over all feelings of this lens is that it's another great lens from Sony in my Kit.  Well that's enough about this lens. Until next week make sure you Get out and Shoot!
 

Max Stansell Photography Hey Everyone! Hope your week has been as good as mine.  This weeks topic is about making memories with your camera. When we take a photograph we freeze time. You can go back to old photographs and you can see everything as it was back then. Going through your mom's shoebox that is full of old photo's you can see how life was way back when. You can see the clothes , cars and how people lived when the photo was taken. This is very cool. But if you didn't take the photo or if you were not there you don't have the memories. But if you look at a photo that you took years ago you can remember everything about it. The smells, the weather, the sounds the things that you can't see on the photo. This is one of the things that I love about photography.  The hobby of photography offers things that other hobbies don't, Memories. When you look at one of your old photo's the memories flood in . 

How do we preserve the memories? Well back in the film days it was easy we sent our film to be processed and got back prints and negatives. But now a days everything is on a disc of some sort. My advice is to print some way some fashion. I print books usually at the end of the year or for film projects. This year I'm doing a film project and I'm actually having 4x6 prints made of the keepers of each roll. So that takes care of my photography themed stuff but what about family and friends that you take with your smart phone. What about the memories that you have on Facebook? I answered that and went with a company that goes onto your facebook and puts into a book all of your photo's . You can cull out the bad ones and rearrange them the way you want but its a great way to save all of the family photo's that we have now on Facebook or social media.

My camera gets me out and about. I heard that your camera is a passport to life. Meaning that without the excuse of taking some photo's we would just stay at home and not explore the world around us. That was certainly the case for me. When I got back into photography at the dawn of the digital age I took a lot of photo's at home and in my back yard. Still lifes, Macros and the such. But after a while that gets old so I started venturing out to the state parks. There was one only 10 mile from my house that I had never visited before and now I'm there 3 or 4 times a week. Actually it got to all of the state parks in North Carolina. I started hiking and visiting all of the state parks , camping and exploring all along the way. I then joined the camera club in our town that even got me out and exploring even more.  Now I travel up and down the eastern sea board and even took a trip to Utah a couple of years ago. Great memories made one every thrip. None that would have been possible without Photography. When someone names a place that I have gone before the memories flood in of the times when I was there . I can go back and see the photo's of trips I have made, the clothes I was wearing, my weight, what job I was working at the time. All of these memories flood in like it was yesterday. So to me Photography isn't just about the images we make but the memories that we take with us along the way. Well that's it for this week until next. Get out and Shoot! And make some memories.

Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great day today! Me ? Pretty good. I'm excited about this week's blog. I have been out of commission for a couple of weeks and was itching to get out and shoot. My photography wingman Robert had never shot film before. So this Sunday we planned a film only photowalk. I set up two cameras that would be pretty equal. Both were 35mm and both had working meters in them to make shooting easier for Robert. I supplied both with 50mm lenses and 28mm lenses.  I also supplied the film one roll of Kodak Gold 200 film (Color) and a roll of Ilford HP5+ (B/W film) . Both at 36 exposures so 72 shots each. Robert was thinking that 72 wasn't very many shots to shoot but he later found out that shooting film is a lot different than shooting digital. I told him that this experience would make him appreciate the fancy Fujifilm camera that he shoots daily.  We were going to shoot everything in manual to include focusing. So there is lots to do. Find the scene, pick the shutter speed and aperture while using the meter to make sure it's going to be the right exposure then there is the focusing. Once you have all of that done then and only then you can push the shutter button! But you're not done you still have to advance the film so you are ready to start again. Sounds simple right? 

We made it to the first town that we were going to shoot. We sat in the car and I went over the controls of the camera he was going to be using. Showing how to Focus, read the meter , Aperture , ISO setting and changing lens. I made sure he understood everything about the camera. We loaded the first roll of film . He was using the Canon AE-1 Program. This is the same camera that he had gifted me a few weeks prior. As a matter of fact after the day was over he had more film though it than I have. I was using my trusty Pentax MX that I have had and used since the early eighties a manual only camera. And off we went. It was very fun to watch Robert work this old camera. I did catch him trying to "Chimp" a couple of times . (looking at the back of the camera) and many times he had forgot to advance the film and went to push the shutter button after composing focusing and getting the exposure right and nothing because he had not advanced the film. I asked him if he could imagine having to learn how to shoot the camera back in the day and having to wait for a week or so to see your photo's came out and then trying to figure out what you did right or wrong without the immediate conformation of what you just shot like with digital. I asked him what was what he missed the most and he told me the flip screen for really low shots because now you have to get really low. But I have to give it to Robert he was committed to doing a good job and it seemed like he really got into the process and took his time shooting. I told him about how much higher a percentage of good shots you get when you have to take your time to get everything right in the shot instead of just shooting away with a digital camera. I told him that if he took some of what he was doing today and applied it to his digital camera just think how good some of the photo's would be.

It was a great day we went to 3 small towns to walk the streets and shoot the interesting things of these towns. It took Robert all day to get through 72 photographs and this was a great exercise . I don't expect Robert to start shooting film but it was a good exercise for him to do and maybe slow down his shooting to get the great shots that I know he always gets. So this is a good exercise for you to do also. Even if you don't shoot film take your camera and shoot manual and limit yourself to 36 shots for a walk around town. Take time to compose and make sure everything is perfect before you pull the trigger. Slowing down will help your Photography. I took all the film at the end of the day. I had 2 rolls of color and 3 rolls of Black and white. I shot a little faster than Robert did and shot an extra roll which was to be expected I was very comfortable with the camera I was using.  

The next day I developed all of the film and Scanned into the computer. We had some really good shots and Robert did a great job. Only one or so were out of focus. And all were exposed correctly. I sent him his shots for him to go over and see what he has done. He was surprised by what he got. 

I enjoyed this experiment with Robert and hope he did too. Trying something new in your photography can make you a better photographer. If you're stuck doing the same thing all the time you don't grow.  Until next week! Get out and Shoot!