Get your shoes on NEX-5, this could be your chance to shine!

 

 

I explained earlier that it's starting to look like I may not have a decent lens to put on my 60D when I go to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta next week so I have been giving thought to the fact that I may have to rely on my NEX-5 instead so this morning with the sun blazing I decided to make sure it was in fighting shape by taking a few photos of this old art deco cinema that is currently being torn down in my town. The building did not have listed protection and the owner wanted to build something new so unfortunately this is the result. There is some controversy over the circumstances of this happening, it has been stated that the building was not legible for listed protection because it has undergone too many alterations inside over the years however once demolition had begun it was clear to see that most if not all of the original interior was intact and original. There is a long tradition of knocking down historic buildings in Bridgend with the case of the highly attractive town hall being flattened to make way for offices being a notable example!

As sad as all this is, the photographer in me was attracted to the complex shapes and textures and with a clear and sunny morning sky these were only enhanced by the long shadows. Another benefit of the clear sky is the fantastic contrast between yellow and blue!

For these photos I used the 18-55mm kit lens that comes with the NEX-5. It's not a perfect lens, it has soft boarders at 18mm, it has field curvature at 55mm and can suffer from (easily correctable) chromatic aberration at the image boarders but despite all that it's not a bad little tool, centre sharpness is excellent at all apertures, colours and contrast are first rate and the image stabilization is great. The lens is very well made with a metal finish and the front element does not rotate. I tend to set this lens to f/5.6 and put a circular polariser on the front and this normally delivers very punchy and usable images.

The second image was shot using the "sweep panorama" feature built in to the NEX-5 which I find to be a very useful addition, it doesn't give extremely large images but for web use or moderately sized prints it can save a lot of time and effort by removing the need to use computer software to stitch the images, it has done an excellent job here apart from the stunted car that the eagle eyed amoung you may notice but otherwise I never fail to be impressed by this feature!