When Traveling.....

We always want to travel as light as possible.  Recently, I attended a wedding just outside of Kaunas, Lithuania and while I was that far away I decided to take a quick half-day trip into Poland.  The only camera I traveled with was my Sony A7RII and two lenses, the 85mm 1.4 GMaster and the Carl Zeiss 35mm 2.8, both full frame of course.  I think the pictures came out rather well if I may say so myself but a few things to think about....

DSC03671 First off, I made a mistake.  Unfortunately I don't have a 24-70 lens for my Sony like I do my with my full Nikon collection and that made a difference.  Although I am in love with my 85mm 1.4 prime, the versatility of a 24-70 lens can't be beat.  The widest lens I had was a 35mm which caused me to miss a few opportunities when i couldn't back up far enough.  Something I need to change up a bit.

DSC03692-Edit I love the Sony cameras for traveling as they are generally light depending on what lens you have.  Many of the G-Master primes are actually quite heavy due to their outstanding build quality but the smaller mirrorless body helps to cut down on all that bulk.  If you compare it to a typical DSLR, whether full frame or not, the Sony body is generally smaller.

DSC03832 Instead of bringing a full size tripod I took advantage of Sony's great low light performance and in body image stabilization (IBIS) to shoot more comfortably at lower shutter speeds.  I did, however bring a smaller "mini" tripod that fit right inside my small camera bag which allowed me to do long shutter speed shots like the one above.  One thing is for sure, I was certainly happy with the quality of the photos and higher ISO, low light capability of my Sony A7RII.

DSC03963 Back to my problem, however I really wish I had a wide angle lens with me such as the Sony 16-35mm f4 for more versatility.  A wide and fast prime still eludes the Sony E-mount full frame cameras as of the writing of this blog post.  Nevertheless, 16mm is not too bad even though you are sacrificing a full stop from the 2.8 G Master series of cameras.

DSC03773

If there was one thing that I wish was better with my A7RII, it's the autofocus in lower light.  Unlike Canon's dual pixel autofocus, Sony has some ground to make up.  I understand that this is an inherent problem with all mirrorless cameras and the new Sony A9 has made great improvements but Canon still has the edge with this one.  I am not sure many can compete with Canon's 1DX Mark II when it comes time for autofocus.

DSC03898 In addition to taking photographs, I did some video work with my easy to travel DJI Mavic Pro.  You can see the video embedded below along with a link to look at all of the photos that I have edited so far from this eastern European trip.  Thank you for stopping by and happy shooting!

To see the Lithuania and Poland gallery, click here.

To watch the video, click on this link.