This is one of those new fangled EVF cameras from Sony. It's 24 megapixels and seems to be pretty nice. Especially for studio work. Even more especially with LED lights. All it really needed to be really functional were some authentic, made in Germany, Zeiss optics for portraits and such. I decided to try it out with one of my favorite Hasselblad lenses, the 80mm Planar.
So I ordered a Fotodiox Hasselblad to Sony a (weird, squiggly "a") adapter.
And it came in today, right before we headed out the door to eat Indian food.
When I got back home I put the whole rig together so I could see if it worked.
If you want to do this you have to remember a couple of things. First, this lens doesn't autofocus on any body. It's surly enough to believe that if you want to be a photographer you can damn well figure out how to focus on your own. Practice on a view camera for a while. Then a 35mm style camera will seem as easy as pie. Secondly, you have to stop down the lens to the taking aperture.
So, why is a Sony a77 such a good choice for use with all of the Hasselblad lenses? Well...you can go into the control menu and enable "shoot without lens" so the camera will operate and shoot with then Hblad lenses attached. Cool. Second, on an OVF camera, once you start stopping down the f-stop the finder gets darker and it gets harder and harder to focus. But with an EVF, especially a bright and flawless one like the one in the a77, the camera stays bright and conversant even when you stop down. (I'd probably not focus at smaller f-stops than 5.6 for best accuracy...).
But it's still a manual focus lens. How do you know when it's really sharply focused?
Because your a77 has focus peaking. When stuff comes into focus you get red (you can select your own color) outlines of the areas that are in focus. How cool is that?
I tested the focus peaking. It works.
What does this really get me?
Well, it's a very geometrically neutral lens that works well for product.
It has a famously beautiful bokeh so it works really well for portraits.
And the long throw of the focus ring makes it pretty perfect for
serious video work. If it's a focal length you like.
A quick glance in the Hasselblad drawer tells me that we have two other lenses that will
give me fun effects with this camera. There's a 120mm Makro Planar and a 150mm Sonnar.
The three lenses, used with the APS-C sensor give me approximately (in old, 35mm speak)
a 120mm f2.8, a 180mm f4 that focuses pretty darn close, and a 225mm f4 that's all bokeh-y and chrome looking and wildly sharp and unsharp at the same time.
Crazy thing to do? Nope. The lenses already live here, they may as well earn their keep. And the adapter was a whopping $60.
I've been waiting for the lens adapter to arrive so I could try out some portraits with the rig.
I also have a bitchingly professional looking compendium lens shade for the Hblad lenses so clients will think I'm much more professional than I was when I shot for them yesterday.
The 80mm is already my favorite.
This is going to be fun.
If you only see the world thru wide angle lenses it's probably best that you ignore this post.
Nothing wide enough in medium format to even budge the needle on a crop frame...
An almost immediate edit: Now I have image stabilization for my Hasselblad optics. :-)
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