Sikorsky S-76B @ Duxford - 23Jun12

[Pen Pusher]

G-BOYF had two pit stops to take on fuel at Duxford on Saturday, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. These shots are from the afternoon and I was experimenting with the ‘Clear Image Zoom’ on the Sony Alpha A-57.

It’s a form of digital zoom and uses what’s called ‘By Pixel Super Resolution’ to enlarge a crop of the sensor to full size, and then a clever bit of software and pattern matching techniques fill in or add missing pixels to return the cropped image back to the original resolution. I think. There are two settings, 1.4x and 2.0x zoom and these are at 1.4x. I was using a Sony 70-300mm G SSM Lens so with the sensor crop of 1.5x, that gives a 35mm equivalent of 450mm, add in the zoom crop of 1.4x to give you 630mm. Sony claim the image quality is ‘Near Equivalent’ to that shot with an optical zoom of an equivalent focal length.

@300mm/630mm equivalent.

@300mm/630mm equivalent.

@300mm/630mm equivalent.

@150mm/315mm equivalent.

@250mm/525mm equivalent.

@230mm/483mm equivalent.

@300mm/630mm equivalent.


Brian

[ikarus]

Nice and sharp images

[RoverDriver]

.

[pbeardmore]

Nice shots.
Is it me or does it look like its on castors rather than wheels?

[MerlinJon]

A nice set of images, how do you find the EVF on the A57?

Jon

[Pen Pusher]

Jon

I used Konica-Minolta cameras with EVF's before I moved onto the Sony so this isn't a new feature for me.

The only down side so far has been using the EVF in bright sunlight as it can be difficult to see any of the settings at times. I wear a peaked baseball hat which helps a lot to cut out the sunlight. Mind you how much sunshine do we get any way. You can alter the brightness of the LCD screen and the EVF separately.

The plus points are what you see in the EVF is what is photographed. If you make any adjustments to settings, ISO/AV/Shutter speed etc you can see it instantly in the EVF and whatever displays you have on the LCD screen you also see in the EVF. Handy for checking the histogram without having to keep looking at the LCD screen. The A57 also has a head up display of sorts for keeping the camera level. There is a horizontal bar across the screen. Tilt the camera sideways and the bar stays level and the ends turns red until level again when they turn green. I found it easy to keep the camera level when tracking aircraft.

Hope that helps

Brian

[MerlinJon]

Thanks Brian, been toying with the A77 but it is the EVF that has been putting me off so far. I will have to go and have a play with one and see if it suits me or not.

Cheers
Jon