Backyard portraits

One of our grand daughters visited today and I snapped these "portraits" with the NEX 3 and my Nikkor 50mm using "high key" sceen mode.

Shots with the 16mm lens

Not sure I have ever posted any shots made with the 16mm lens and it is not because I don't like it. I do! I guess using the Nikon adaptor and my old Nikkor lens is just more fun.

Anyway, the shot below were made with the 16mm lens.

Pop color v. Vivid color

I am exploring .v 4 firmware and today tried out "pop" color in the new Picture Effects menu. As you can see, pop color really does, well, "pop". For comparison I included the same picture shot in "p"(program) mode with "vivid" color selected. I can see a big difference!

Shooting portraits with the NEX

I had my NEX 3 and Nikkor 50mm 1.8 with me last week on a portrait session with this cute one year old. First I'll say that manual focus and a one year old is a challenge with ANY camera. Here's my best shot. I really love the soft natural "sony" colors. You can see more from the session here (but on a Nikon)

This is "toy camera"

Well, I have a Holga and these look much better than anything I have shot with it. The exposure and focus are just too good. But "toy camera" is free the the v.4 upgrade and makes for some fun snaps.

New v.4 firmware!

Sorry I have not blogged about the NEX 3 lately I seem to keep letting work interfere with my fun!

The pictures below were snapped using a Nikkor 50mm lens and the new "Picture effects" mode "Retro". I love the soft colors. Also, another great feature in v.4 is "focus peaking" making manual focus very easy. But more on that later.

Here's where the fun begins!

I've already mentioned that a key advantage to the NEX system is the use of legacy lens. These shots were captures with a Nikon 70-300 mm lens mounted on my NEX-3 (with adaptor). Several were at full zoom - on the NEX, that equals 450 mm! And, all were shot hand-held/JPEGS. Are you beginning to see that this is a very capable system and a FUN camera to use?

Night shots

A few week back I took my Sony NEX to the carnival and again, I was impressed. These are SOOC with the 16mm "kit" lens. Love the JPEG quality!

Sundown/low-light shots

In mid-January I had an opportunity to snap a few shot at the Birmingham Airport about sundown. The images below are SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) and I believe were shot in "program" mode and auto ISO.  I was very pleased!

First shots

The camera arrived on December 23rd. Battery charging took several hours and I'm sure I made several shots that night but I can't locate them.

The pictures below were made on Christmas day and shot in "P" mode. "Program AE" choose 1/30 sec. at f2.8, 400 ISO. I knew right away I was going to enjoy this camera!

A new toy for Christmas

Sometime last Fall, after "discovering" mirror-less cameras, I started reading everything I could find about them. The things that seemed to attract me most were the small size and promised image quality. Over the years I have used a number of Nikon DSLRs with some of their best lens. The Nikon image quality is excellent but all were heavy and bulky and most certainly not pocketable.  Good "working" cameras but not so good everyday walk-around use.

In the end and upon finding a great deal on an "open box" unit, I opted for the Sony NEX 3 with the 16 mm 2.8 "pancake" lens. It arrived December 23, 2010 just in times for some Christmas pictures!