New Camera Gear

I'm going to be traveling to Europe before long and will be taking some new camera gear. I have a Canon 40D, but find that lugging the camera body, plus three lenses and the bag I carry it all in, to be pretty cumbersome after two or so weeks of traveling. The last two years, I downsized to the opposite degree with a Canon S100, but missed some of the flexibility of the interchangeable lenses you get with something like a DSLR. The S100 takes great pictures, but I wanted more, without the weight and without spending as much as I would for a newer DSLR or a full frame format camera. The S100 is a great camera, and now that it costs about half of what I paid two years ago, an even better value in a point an shoot format, but with a lot of options.

I've been eyeing the mirrorless cameras for the last year or so. Typical for me, vacation is coming up, so now is when I decide I have to at least look at a new camera. I hoped that the mirrorless format would give me the lower weight, combined with the increased flexibility I'd get with interchangeable lenses. It's unfortunate than Canon hasn't yet produced a mirrorless camera, as I have been very happy with the Canon line. I bought a Sony Alpha a6000. Since I have at least one good "non-kit" Canon lens, I wanted to see if I could find a way to use the Canon format lens mount with the Sony 4/3 format e-mount. There are some adapters, but never having used one of these, I had to explore what the impact on the resulting image was, their compatibility with the lenses I might use, and the cost. Metabones seems to be the Cadillac of the category (at least in price), but I didn't want to spend as much on the adaptor as I spent on the existing lens, or I might as well buy a new lens. I make a lot of use of the reviews on Amazon as well as product review forums when it comes to camera gear. DPReview is one I use. But reading the reviews on Amazon left me with some doubts about my particular lens' compatibility. When looking at the Signstek Electronic Auto Focus EF-NEX EF-EMOUNT FX Lens Mount Adapter for Canon EF EF-S Lens to Sony E Mount adaptor(25% of the price of a Metabones), I asked a question about whether it should work with my Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens.The answer was Yes! So I bought it. That, and another battery, since the Sony isn't getting great marks for battery life.

I took a few test shots and didn't notice any vignetting, which I rather expected from changing the lens mount system. Time will tell, once I take more shots and view them on my monitor. Though it certainly weighs down the otherwise much lighter camera, it potentially gives me a much better opportunity to take big landscape photos. Since I'll be traveling in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, hopefully I'll be able to take better advantage of the lens. I'll create a separate album on Flickr to isolate the photos using this camera, lens and adaptor vs. my trusty S100, which I'm also taking. I tried the lens mount adaptor with my Canon f1.4 50mm lens, but it doesn't seem to do anything special for me beyond changing the focal length, and adding some more weight to my already too full camera/gear bag.

I updated the firmware in the Sony A6000 from version 1.0 to version 1.2, and bought an app in the Sony App store. Yes, there's an app store for my camera. The camera comes with a remote control app to control the camera for shooting, which is nice if you need to eliminate some camera shake. It also has Wi-Fi and NFC, but inexplicably, doesn't have GPS (as the S100, which is several years older) does.

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