Think Tank Mirrorless Mover 10 review →

If you aren't already familiar with my reviews, here's the deal- I only review items that I've chosen to purchase. What that means is that I did a bunch of research before I pulled the trigger and knew that this particular choice was probably the best for my purposes. These are the types of reviews that I like to read when I'm considering a new piece of gear.

The company

Think Tank is certainly no new-comer to the world of camera bags, although this particular bag and the mirrorless mover line are both new. You can go check out their reviews and other products to get a feel for the quality of work they do. This line is specifically designed to complement the smaller Mirrorless cameras that are gaining popularity. There is a smaller model and a couple of larger models.

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Features

The model I chose, is the Mirrorless Mover 10. It's designed for a camera and 1 to 2 lenses depending on size. This bag has a Magnetic flap that swings over the top of the two way zipper of the main compartment. Insided the main compartment is a cell phone holder/divider partition that has slots for a couple of SD cards on one side. On the underside of the lid is a transluscent mesh pocket that's a great fit for a filter or an SD card. There's a zippered pocket on the front that has a retainer strap to make sure you don't lose the included rain cover. There are pockets on both sides of the bag. One side is a stretchy lycra that can hold a filter in a case. The other side is a pleated, but non-stretchy pocket.

Theres a plain nylon shoulder strap included and a woven fabric grab handle across the top of the case. In addition, there is a loop on the back of the bag for attaching to other bags or your belt.

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Build Quality

The first thing you'll notice is the high quality of the hardware on this bag. I've used a handful of other bags in this size and price range and they all use cheaper plastic parts and less-solid zippers. If I have one complaint it would be that the strap is a little too narrow. As a result, I'm using a wider and heavier strap that came with a Waterfield Sleeve Case for one of my old Macbooks. The strap is nice quality, just too narrow for my tastes.

The seams are all really nice with an obvious attention to detail that is missing on a lot of other bags of this type. The materials are really nice. The fabrics are heavy duty and well engineered for their purposes.

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Size (AKA what fits inside?)

I was using a competitor's bag and had to look for something else when I upgraded camera bodies from the Sony NEX 5N, to the NEX 7. The body is taller, and the lens is shifted just a little toward the right hand side (when looking at it from the front). The other bag was a perfect fit for the 5N with one extra lens, but just a little too small for the same setup with the new body. Here are some images that show the orientation that I use.

I place an extra lens in the bottom of the bag from front-to-rear and then place the camera in grip first on top of that. I can also still fit a cleaning cloth and a battery in the bottom below the grip, but there's plenty of space in the front pocket for those items. I usually have a Gordy's leather wrist strap on my camera and that fits in the case just fine. The stock Sony strap is pretty small and fits just fine too, but larger straps with neoprene pads and quick releases are tricky to fit inside.

I use the stretchy side pocket for a Neutral Density Filter in a case and the pocket under the lid for an SD card and a UV filter or lens cap. An extra battery and a remote fit in the front pocket.

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You may notice that there's another divider in my photos. I borrowed that one from a Lowepro bag that I already owned to act as a buffer between my camera and the spare lens. I wish Think Tank included something like this, but hey, you work with what you've got.

Price

You can buy it directly fromThink Tank's site or from Amazon .It's $44.75 both places.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a well-made bag for your Mirrorless or compact camera, I recommend you check this one out. I'm a couple months in and so far I'm very pleased.

gotakepictures.net →

Today, I want to let you know about a new site which I started over the weekend, gotakepictures.net.

The basic idea for the new site is to talk about the proces of actually making photographs. As you already know if you are a regular visitor to this site, I talk about all kinds of stuff including gear. I won't be doing much of that at all over there as my goal is for you, the reader to be inspired to take more and better pictures and to not worry about the gear.

I likely won't be posting many photos there, at least for now. It's still in the very beginnings though and things might change. For now, it will be thoughts about photography.

Please stop by and let me know what you think. Feel free to give me suggestions if there are any topics that you'd like to see there.

Thanks for spending a few minutes of your day here and for coming back!

Sony NEX SEL3518 35mm f/1.8 Review →

I posted a preview of the Sony SEL3518 35mm f/1.8 E mount lens a couple months ago and it’s time to give you a little more from my day to day use. It has rarely left the body of my NEX 5Nand now the NEX -7 and has proved to be a great all-around lens.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my reviews are the type that I hope to read- What is it actually like to use this lens? Others have done a thorough job in showing zoomed in crops from the edges and comparisons from 6 different F stops with a critique of Chromatic Aberration and Bokeh artifacts. I’ll include technical details where I think they make a difference.

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Focal Length

35mm on the NEX system has a field of view that is equivalent to a 52mm lens on an old 35mm Film camera or a Full Frame DSLR. For years, SLRs came with a single 50mm lens as a kit. To give some perspective, many folks believe that human vision is about the equivalent of 47-53mm. Sure you can see more to the sides, but that part is out of focus and is what we generally refer to as peripheral vision. Forget the explanation. Here are some photos taken with different focal lengths so you can see.

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18mm ​

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​50mm

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​35mm

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​75mm

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​205mm

What I like about this length is the ease of composition. What you see on the screen or in the viewfinder when composing is pretty much what you see with your eyes. With wider or narrower focal lengths, there is often a distortion that happens in features, but that doesn’t happen as much with this lens.

Size

Since I bought this camera system, I’ve been hoping for a compact, middle length “regular” lens. At about that same time, the 24mm Zeiss became available, but it’s quite a bit larger and more expensive. I really love the compact nature of the NEX system as it fits easily in a small case that I can take with me daily. Whether I’m stowing it in my bike pannier or slinging it over my shoulder in a compact case, I can always have it with me without a lot of bulk. All of the native lenses for the NEX system are pretty small compared to the larger lenses you typically use with a full size DSLR, but this lens is just the right balance between weight and size. Here is a shot L-R of the Kit zoom 18-55 f/3.5-5.6, the 35mm f/1.8 and the 50mm f/1.8

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NEX Lenses

Focusing

Focusing is relatively quick and accurate when stopped down to f/4 up to around f/18. This is pretty normal with fast lenses. Below f.4, the narrow field of focus means that the chances of the exact part of the frame being in focus are smaller. When I’m shooting with these larger aperture settings, I always use the micro adjustment feature to fine tune before clicking the shutter. This is the same technique I use with other large aperture lenses including the Sony 50mm. When you are using a smaller aperture setting, the lower available light can slow down the focus speed.

In my experience, This lens focuses quicker than the 50mm and the 18-55 zoom, but just a little slower than the 16mm prime. I usually leave the focus assist light turned off, but turned it back on for a few days to see how much difference it makes. In low light situations, it makes a big difference, but I don’t think the pluses outweigh the con of a bright orange light shining on your subject and potentially ruining the moment you are trying to capture.

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Build quality.

This lens is really light. What that means is that there are metal parts combined with high density plastic pieces. After almost three months of daily use, I’ve seen no scratching or other issues and it seems to be holding up really well. I’m not worried about it at all. The focus ring is of the Focus-by-wire type which means that there aren’t hard stops on the extremes. For those who are used to manual focus rings, this can be a little weird, but the ring does have a nice damping and resistance that feels very linear and tactile.

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This lens uses the same bayonet mounting system for the hood and 49mm threads that are used on most all of the E mount lenses. This interchangability is nice if you use either. I recently picked up a Neutral Density Filter and it is nice to know that I can use it on all of my lenses. The two exceptions that I know of, the 18-200 and the 10-18 zooms have a larger 62mm thread size.

Metal Lens Hood

I posted a story a couple weeks ago about a metal lens hood that I picked up to go with this lens. Here are a couple before and after photos.

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​Sony Plastic Lens Hood

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​Metal Lens Hood

Image Quality

I'm not gonna talk about it. I'd prefer to just show you some images. This Link will show you every post of mine that I categorized as 35mm. All of these photos are made with this lens. (UPDATE: I am now shooting with the Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 on the Alpha A7...and I'm using that tag for these photos too.) Here are a few images if you don't want to click through.

Conclusion

Basically, this is a great lens. Image quality is fantastic both stopped down and wide open. It's compact, well built and looks great. If you are a NEX owner, you should seriously consider adding this one to your camera bag. In fact, it just might become the center of your kit.

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If you've found my review helpful and are considering purchasing this lens or another like it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd visit Amazon through one of the links in this review. If you make purchases through links on my site, Amazon gives me a small cut for sending you their direction and it doesn't cost you any more. Thanks for the support!

Metal Lens Hood for Sony NEX

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Sony Plastic Lens Hood

This week I ordered and received a metal thread mount lens hood from EZPhoto. I kept seeing photos of the Sony RX-1 and Fujifilm cameras with these classy, and short metal lens hoods and thought it seemed like a better idea than the fairly long, plastic hood included with the lens.

A lot of folks seem to snatching these up to use with their cameras as the official version from each manufacturer is pretty overpriced. There are some 3rd party optionsthat use the built in bayonet system, but even they are overpriced.

There are two advantages I've seen so far. First, this new hood is shorter, which makes it less obtrusive from a visual sense. Secondly, it's narrower which means that it does a better job of keeping objects and stray light away from the glass.

The one disadvantage I've seen thus far is that it mounts via filter threads which makes it a tiny bit more of a hassle to remove and prevents you from using a lens cap. I don't use a lens cap on the lens currently mounted to my camera, so no big deal.

Edit- Small warning- This hood causes a bit of Vignette on anything wider than 24mm. Stick with the Sony Stock hood on your kit lens.

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As always, when you make purchases through links on my site, Amazon gives me a small cut for sending you their direction and it doesn't cost you any more. Thanks for the support!

Publish Your Own Stuff

Love this post by CJ Chilvers over on his site- A Lesser Photographer

If you have an obsession, don't seek permission from others to publish your views. Own your content, stop sharecropping on someone else's platform and get your stories out there.

You might be thinking, "But Dan, you post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr and Twitter." That is certainly true and I value the communities and interaction on each, but make no mistake - this is the canonical home for my work.

13" Retina Macbook Pro

This past week I visited the Apple Store near my office and walked out with a 13" Retina MacBook Pro. No, it wasn’t an impulse buy, but something I’ve been considering for a long time. Things just finally came together. It really is an amazing machine in a lot of ways.

I have been using Macs and Apple products exclusively since 2006 when I bought a Black Macbook which I will likely be decommisioning. The trackpad has had problems for a couple of years and it can’t run anything newer than OSX Snow Leopard. We’ve had it set up as a desktop with a monitor, keyboard and mouse, but we haven’t really used it much. We replaced it with a 15” Macbook Pro in early 2011. So, I'm not really replacing anything with this new one as we are keeping that one. It really is a great machine too and will be used even more by my wife when she works from home.

She works in Excel quite a bit and one day last week I asked if she could save and close the individual pages when she is done as I'm always unsure if they need to be saved. Her reply without even looking up from her iPhone-

"You need your own computer."

As you can probably guess, I did a silent fist pump in my head and started planning. It's a good thing I asked about that doument too because the top page had already been updated and saved on her machine at work.

Why This Model?

When I was putting together my mental list, I had a few non-negotiables.

Size

First of all, I've owned both the 13" and the 15" form. I knew that this time around I wanted a smaller machine. The larger screen is nice, but I don't feel that it's worth the extra size and weight. I actually considered the 11” Air, but I’d need an external display and be stuck at a desk for photo editing.

Memory

Secondly, one of my most used applications is Lightroom. It uses a lot of RAM and I've found that 8gbs works well but 4 isn't enough.

Hard Drive

Third, I don't think that it makes sense to buy a computer with a spinning drive at this point. SSDs are faster, with less moving parts and Apple is clearly moving this way with every line they make.

After all of these items were considered, the only two machines left for consideration were the 13" MacBook Air and the 13" Retina.

The only real question left after these items are out there was this:

Retina Display?

I weighed out the pros and cons of each and decided that in 2013 it doesn't make sense to buy a computer I hope to use for the next few years without a Retina display. It is clearly the way of the future and I believe that all of Apple's computers will ship with them within the next year. I could have had a technically faster machine for the same price had I chosen the Air, but it didn’t feel right.

Isn’t this one less capable than the 15” model?

The 13" MacBook Pro (non Retina) is Apple's best selling Mac to date. It has also been knocked by folks in the tech community for being a less capable machine. The Retina model shares some of these and I’ll just tell you here that for what I do, these “limitations” don’t matter.

The criticisms I’ve seen are: Screen size, integrated graphics card and limited RAM options.

There are plenty of reviews out there on this machine, but it feels to me like most of them are written from the perspective of a hypothetical power user. I’m not that guy. I use mine for editing and handling photos in Lightroom, writing in Byword, and Website management in Chrome or Safari. Of course, I use many other great apps, but they all pretty much serve these three purposes.

I think the average consumer assumes that the only difference between different size Macbooks is the size. That isn't true however as the larger machines almost always come with superior features, parts and specs. The 15” model is more powerful and that premium you pay isn’t just for the larger size.

Here are a few examples: The 13" Retina comes standard with 8gb of RAM with no option to upgrade to more. The 15" can be ordered with 16gb. The 13” uses a dual core processer while the 15 gets a quad core. That is going to make a difference with tasks that are CPU intensive. Another difference is that the 13" has no discreet video card and all processing for the display is handled by the primary chipset. The 15" has a discreet, stand-alone graphics card which frees up the CPU for other tasks. More drive space is included with the larger machines too. Pretty much across the board, when you choose a physically larger machine, the base model will come with more storage capacity.

Here’s the official Apple comparison spec page if you want all the details.

Conclusion

If you are doing video editing, code compiling, heavy Photo shop or gaming, perhaps you should consider the 15. The quad-core processor and discreet video card will make a noticeable difference. In addition, if the 2560 x 1600 isn’t enough and you truly do need 2880 x 1800 maybe go for the bigger model. If you love the idea of a fast, light weight and agile machine with a smaller footprint, you should seriously consider this one.

Here’s what it really comes down to- This computer is only about a half pound heavier than the 13” Macbook Air which has gained a reputation for being so lightweight and well designed that it spawned the Ultrabook name and race. Truly, this machine has more in common with the Macbook Air than with the 15” Retina model. As I’m typing this out on this svelte aluminum body with backlit keys, the display is perhaps the one thing that feels like it’s unmistakeably from the future.

Sony NEX 35mm F/1.8 Preview

Quick Note: If you are looking for more information about custom controls, Lenses and tips for the Sony NEX series, take a look here for my guides, reviews and links.

In addition, I've posted my full review after using this lens for 4 months.

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This week I picked up a lens for my Sony NEX 5N. It's the 35mm F/1.8. This is a Prime, Fixed focal length lens with in-lens Optical Stabilization. I've been thinking about this lens for a few months now and am hoping that it fills a large spot in my day-to-day photography. These are just some initial thoughts and I plan to post a more detailed review after I spent more dedicated time putting it through its paces.

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As I outlined in a previous post, this lens has a 35mm focal length, but my camera has a smaller APS-C format sensor so the field of view it offers is very similar to the classic 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

I've been using it out and about this week and so far I'm very impressed. It is a bit smaller in actual size than the kit 18-55mm Zoom Lens or the 50mm Prime (they are roughly the same length). I'm able to fit it in my compact bag with the lens hood on, which I can't do with any other lens that I own. I like this as I prefer to keep the hood on. Partially for stray light blockage, and partly to protect the lens. I used a filter for awhile, but I've found that I like the images without it a bit more.

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The field of view is close enough to the 50 that portraits are easily within reach, but it's also wide enough that I can just leave it on my camera and not feel too constrained. Anyway, most of the photos from this week were made with this lens. I can't wait to see its capabilities.

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Sony NEX deal at Amazon

If you are considering a Sony NEX there's a great deal out there right now on the F3 in a kit.

Amazon is offering the camera with the zoom kit lens, a bag and a 32gb memory card for a great price.