URBAN EXPRESSION AND DEPRESSION
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This Site Is Dedicated To Street Photography.
Street photography does, in general, focus on people and their behavior in public, thereby also recording people’s history. This motivation entails having also to navigate or negotiate changing expectations and laws of privacy, security and property. I am slightly different to normal street photographers in that I concentrate on the built environment but despite this many of my photographs capture people and property visible within or from public places but I avoid identifying such people.
Back in 2005 I purchased my first DSLR camera and it was a Sigma SD9 and a year later I started using Flickr.
The Sigma SD9 was a digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) produced by the Sigma Corporation of Japan. The camera was launched at the Photo Marketing Association Annual Show on February 18, 2002. It was Sigma’s first digital camera, and was the first production camera to use the unique Foveon X3 image sensor, which reads full colour at each pixel site. Other sensors detect only one colour at each site and interpolate to produce a full-colour image.
The SD9 had two separate power systems; one set of CR-123A lithium batteries in the handgrip powered the camera functions, while another pair of CR-V3 batteries or four AA size rechargeable batteries in a battery tray in the base powered the digital functions. This split power system showed that the camera functions (inherited from Sigma’s SA-9 film SLR) were not integrated at all with the digital half.
Another unusual feature of the SD9 was its “dust cover” filter right behind the lens mount, to prevent dust getting into the chamber and onto the sensor when changing lenses.
Reviewers and users, including myself, reported good results in good lighting, but poorer ones in low light using either high ISO sensitivity or longer exposures.
Soon after I got the camera I decided to spend a week in Cork City and Cobh and the trip proved to be a disaster. It rained every minute of my visit and the camera proved not to be very dependable and when I returned home I had only a few usable images the best of which was a photograph of a white cat.
I immediately decided to get a Canon 5D which proved to be an amazing camera and then I spent about Euro 20, 000 on lenses. I got a large bonus at the end of 2007 so I decided to invest in a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III.
The EOS-1Ds Mark III was a digital SLR camera body designed for professional photographers. It featured a full-frame 21.1 megapixel CMOS sensor with 14-bit analog/digital converters for a total colour depth of 16,384 tones per pixel. It featured a three-inch (76 mm) LCD screen, capable of “Live View,” and dual DIGIC III processors allowing it to shoot at up to five frames per second. It was discontinued in mid-2012 with the introduction of the Canon EOS-1D X, which replaced both the EOS-1Ds Mk III and the EOS-1D Mk.
To be honest, I was very disappointed with the IDs after a number of years I discovered that the auto-focus had been faulty from the day it left the factory.
As the Canon was not really suitable for street photography I needed something else and began seeking a solution as early as early as 2009 but did not find anything that I liked until I discovered the Sony NEX-5 late in 2010 when I borrowed one from a friend who purchased one in Japan.
The Sony NEX-5 was launched on 11 May 2010. It is a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera with the body size of a larger model fairly compact point-and-shoot camera with a larger sensor size (APS-C) comparable to that of some digital single-lens reflex cameras. The NEX-5 shoots 14.2 megapixel stills and has a 7 frame/s continuous shotmode. It has the capability to shoot 1920×1080i at 60 frame/s in AVCHD or 1440×1080p at 30 frame/s in MPEG4.
While the NEX-5 was not as good as my Canon cameras I discovered that it was the camera that I used the most.
The Sony NEX-7 was announced 24 August 2011 by Sony and I immediately ordered it but I had to wait many months for it to be delivered but as soon as I tried it I decided to switch from Canon DSLR to Sony mirrorless and this was a difficult and expensive process.
I had intended to keep my Canon lenses as they could be mounted on the NEX-7 using an adapter. I can report that this did not really work so eventually I lenses.
Being targeted at experienced users, enthusiasts and professionals, the Sony NEX-7 offers features relevant to them. It integrates a 24.3 megapixels APS-C sensor, videos 1920×1080p at 60 frame/s in AVCHD 2 and 10 fps stills shooting. It is housed in a robust magnesium alloy body and incorporates an XGA OLED electronic viewfinder with 2.4 million dots resolution. The camera’s specifications are as follows:
24 megapixel APS-C CMOS image sensor
ISO 100-16000
2.4 million dot OLED Electronic View Finder (EVF)
Electronic first-curtain shutter (for faster response time)
1080p 60 HD video recording with built-in mic (stereo)
Rear screen with tilt feature
Built-in flash and alpha hotshoe
remote control receiver (infra-red)
External mic input
Having been delayed for a many months because of 2011 Thai floods, the NEX-7 was very well received by critics and users. In regions like Hong Kong, NEX-7 was always running out of stock. DPreview.com and PhotographyBlog gave it their highest awards, with the highest score ever attained by an APS class camera. NEX-7 also won the best camera in Camera Grand Prix 2012 under professional catalog, which was voted by a professional community consisting of 57 council members from the professional press field of the Camera Journal Press Club.
The Sony α7, α7R and α7S (the α is sometimes spelled out as Alpha) are three closely related full-frame mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras. The first two were announced on 16 October 2013 and the third on 6 April 2014. Externally they are identical except for the model number. They are Sony’s first full-frame mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras and share the E-mount with the company’s smaller sensor NEX series.
I obtained an A7 within weeks of it been announced and it soon became my most used camera but because of wear and tear I had no option but to replace it at Christmas 2017. The replacement was a Sony A7RIII and it is the best camera that I have ever had and it justified spending lots of money on high quality lenses and I now have most of the GM lenses [of course I do not have the 600mm lens which retails at Euro 11,000 and I could not consider the new lens which is expected to retail at Euro 13,000].
I will be in the market for a new camera in 2020 and I am assuming that it will be a Sony A7RIV or an A9II.
In parallel to using Sony interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras I also us a Sony RXO and a Sony RX90V which has GPS.
Within the last few days I started using an Apple XR iPhone and have been more than impressed.
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