Sony NEX-7 on Ebay, How much will it go for?

It looks like someone had the right idea for making a quick profit, an NEX-7 has shown up on ebay and only has a few hours to go now! The price is already over $2100!! How much will it finish for? I don't even want to guess, some people have a lot of money and not a lot of patience! Click here to view the auction! UPDATE: Found another one, also pricey! Click here.

Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8

 

I've been updating more frequently but it's been a while since there has been a lens review so without further ado here is a review of the Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8. In my last entry I was somewhat critical of the SLRmagic 28mm lens which costs £100 so let's see how this legacy lens does bearing in mind that if you're lucky you can drop a zero off the price of the SLRmagic lens!

 

Build quality and finish:

Perfect pretty much, it's not a Leica but it's solid, well damped and feels like it will never break, you can't really ask for more from a lens in this class. Tokina have always had a reputation for build quality which persists today with their modern AF lenses.

 

Image Quality:

The lens puts in a very decent performance with great central sharpness at F/2.8 which does fall off somewhat at the boarders but not too much. Once the lens is stopped down to F.5.6-F/8 there is impressive sharpness across the image frame. The lens gives very nice saturated colours and contrast is good and punchy as well. Bokeh whilst not the first thing on people's minds with such a lens is commendably smooth for such a lens and certainly doesn't spoil a picture when it rears it's head!

Conclusion?:

This is a great inexpensive lens that is well made and gives nice punchy images. If you shop around you can get it for very little money although they are starting to creep up in price. If you have trouble finding one then look out for rebranded versions of the same lens, the Mitsuki 28mm F/2.8 for example is the exact same lens except it has an auto/manual switch!

 

That's more like it!

 

 

It seems I have had a change of luck! Today in the mail I got the following items:

1x replacement Canon EF-S 17-55mm IS

1x replacement Hoya Pro1D CPL

1x Samyang 8mm Fisheye

1x Transcend 16gb SDHC

I also received an email from ebay informing me I have been refunded in full for the Canon 70-300mm L that I was having trouble with!

Even more amazingly the Canon lens is the best copy out of the 5 I have had so far, focus still isn't perfect but it's the best I've tried, it gets it right a lot of the time and when it doesn't, recomposing the shot normally does the trick. At the very least it's better than no lens at all! Hopefully at least one day at Bristol balloon fiesta will result in some sunshine so I can really put the lens through it's paces!

The Samyang 8mm is quite remarkable, it's very sharp at f/5.6 and has excellent edge to edge consistency despite the incredible 180 degree angle of view! It's such a cheap lens in the scheme of things especially considering the ambitious optical design so I am very impressed that the quality control appears to be so good! It's not going to be a lens I can use every day and the novelty would quickly wear off but I get the feeling it will be well suited to taking photos of hot air balloons.

The Transcend is a great memory card and I already have one which has worked flawlessly for the past 8 months, they may be affordable but in my experience they are rock solid unlike Patriot and several other cheaper brands!

I'm still waiting for a spare battery but I will have access to mains electricity so I could probably cope in a worst case scenario, on the whole I am much better equipped for the trip to Bristol.

 

Now it just remains for either the weather or riots to ruin everything!

Losing the will to live!

 

 

It really starting to look like I won't have a decent lens to put on my 60D for the Bristol balloon fiesta at this rate! In my previous post I explained that I was having trouble with trying to buy a few high quality lenses.

My fourth copy of the Canon EF-S 17-55mm got sent back last week as it had a front focusing issue, I have just been informed the lens is out of stock and I will have to wait for a replacement to arrive which means only a 50/50 chance of it arriving on time and even then there's no guarantee it will be a good copy but anything at all would be better than nothing, I could use contrast detect AF in liveview if necessary I just need the lens to turn up in the first place!

The second lens is an even worse story, I purchased the new 70-300mm L lens from a supposedly UK based ebay seller who appeared to have a good track record but it turned out the lens was in HONG KONG! But that turned out to be the least of my worries, the lens arrived and was faulty, the zoom ring was almost seized solid and the image noticeably soft. I informed the seller who provided me with a UK return address. I paid a high price for express delivery with insurance however the next day the tracking informed me the delivery had failed as the recipient was not at the address! I messaged the seller again and they replied saying their UK agent was "in the process of relocating" !!!! What a complete joke! They seller than asked me to WAIT until the lens was returned back to me and then pay to send the lens back to HONG KONG!!!! I just cannot believe the absolute incompetence! It's also worth noting that the seller paid for the original import duty themselves but deliberately under-declared the value of the lens by some £700 to reduce the costs! I also discovered that the sellers ebay name is just a facade and that the supplier is actually one of ebays largest Hong Kong based sellers! They have no actual presence in the UK apart from someone to accept returned items but they are in the process of moving house! The worst part is that they charged what would have been a competitive price for a UK product but I ended up with a Hong Kong sourced item at a price that was much greater than any of the legitimate sellers in Hong Kong who are up front about where the item is!

Needless to say I had run out of patience so I escalated the ebay case I had already opened, it was obvious trying to settle the matter directly with the seller was completely futile. I now have to wait 48 hours for ebay to make a decision, fortunately if the seller provides the UK return address I can already prove I have tried to send it back, if the seller provides a Hong Kong address I am under no obligation to return the item because the seller misrepresented it's location in the first place! I get the feeling the seller was fully aware of this and that they were trying to stall for time until they had a genuine UK address for me to send the lens to so they could avoid a situation where I was not obligated to return the item.

It has been nearly three weeks since I first purchased the lens and there is no way on earth I will have a replacement in time for Bristol next week and even if I get refunded I would probably not have sufficient time to buy a lens from a different seller and receive it in time! I will have to use the trusty 55-250mm which has great image quality but the focus isn't quite perfect especially with fast moving targets, this was less of an issue with the 350D where a slight misfocus was not as noticeable but with the 60D and all it's pixels hungry for high MTF levels it's a lot more noticeable, I took the lens to an airshow last month and the shots that were in focus were fantastic, the lens delivers simply amazing sharpness for it's price but more often than not the images were just slightly misfocused, this was the main reason for purchasing the 70-300mm L!

Those two were just the main hair pulling frustrations of the month! In addition I bought the excellent Samyang 8mm fisheye, I thought it would be a great lens to use with hot air balloons and the price is very reasonable so I went for it only to be told "we apologise but this lens is currently out of stock and will be dispatched direct from the supplier in Poland" and guess what? That's right it's now due to arrive AFTER I leave for Bristol!

I was also optimistic enough to buy a CPL filter for the as of yet non existent 17-55mm, a relatively expensive Hoya Pro1D to be exact, that arrived the day after I paid and you can't go wrong with filters can you? Well you can if they arrive sealed but once opened have dust, smudges and a scratch on them! I can't even image how that happened unless the filter was a retuned item they tried to palm off as a new one! Needless to say it was another return case with the replacement due to arrive the day BEFORE I leave for Bristol, I wonder if it will arrive? I wonder if I will even have a lens to put it on?

I'm starting to get the feeling I might just take my NEX-5 and kit lens at this rate, it's not a prefect lens but it always focuses accurately so I would at least be able to concentrate on taking photos and not worrying about technical problems!

I will update you on my situation as soon as I have anything new to add!

 

Super Paragon 28mm F/2.8 (about £10 from ebay)

 

I apologise for the lack of updates recently! This is for several reasons, firstly the news that I am to be a father for the first time has taken up a lot of my concentration recently but the main reason is simply that I haven't gotten around to it, I've started to write a new entry several times but as I always have about 25 browser windows open I have just haven't managed to finish it. It's not even that writing an entry is a hugely time consuming job, I'm just a disorganised person as much as I hate to admit it!

Anyway!

The Super Paragon 28mm is a wide angle prime lens manufactured by Cima Kogaku and was available under various names as well as Cima selling it under their own Cimko label. Paragon was a brand name that the British photographic importer Photax put on the lenses they sold, much in the same vein as Vivitar and Soligor and so on...

 

Build quality and finish:

 

This is a well built and sturdy feeling lens with a well damped focus action, the macro scale on the front barrel is a welcome little feature and the only other wide angle I have seen with the same feature is the Sigma mini-wide although the Sigma can only manage a 1:4.5 reproduction ratio vs the Paragon's 1:4

Image Quality:

 

The image quality is great for what must have been a relatively inexpensive lens at the time of it's release. Starting from wide open the centre sharpness is strong with the edges being less impressive but not terrible. From F/5.6 onwards sharpness is very good across the frame and I found that between F/5.6 and F/11 this lens is a match for the Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8 and the Tamron adaptall 28mm F/2.5 which is pretty good going for a lens that can be had so cheaply. I found bokeh was quite smooth for a wide angle so using this lens as a standard lens on a four thirds camera works quite well. Colour and contrast left no room for complaint, the images always seemed to have plenty of punch and nice colours. I didn't notice any significant issues with regards to either lateral or longitudinal chromatic aberrations. Overall the lens gives nice punchy images, it's not going to embarrass a Zeiss or Canon L but considering how much it can be had for it's a pretty impressive little optic.

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

 

 

Conclusion?:

 

I found this lens to be a great little performer which delivered very solid results and as is often the case I think it's an absolute steal considering it often sells for £15 or much less on ebay. If you see one going cheap then snap it up!

 

More from the Optomax 200mm F/3.5

 

 

Here are some more shots taken with the Optomax 200mm F/3.5 that I reviewed here

 

Tokina SZ-X SD 28-105mm F/4-5.3 F4-5.3

 

 

Because I was impressed by the overall performance of it's smaller brother I decided to try out the Tokina SZ-X SD 28-105mm F/4-5.3 to see if it could deliver a similar performance over a more versatile focal range (albeit with slightly slower maximum apertures)

 

Build quality and finish:

A similar story to the 28-70mm, this lens has a lot of metal and an overall solid feel. This lens is a push/pull design as opposed to the traditional 2 touch design of the smaller 28-70mm but otherwise has a very similar finish.

Image Quality:

And once again a similar story, very similar!. Wide open we have decent central resolution at the wide end and decent resolution across the frame at the long end. Stopped down to F8 produces razor sharp results ideal for landscapes. Because of the relatively slow maximum apertures bokeh is not a consideration all too often but when coaxed into producing it the lens shows a relatively smooth performance for an older zoom lens, one benefit of the slow apertures is that axial chromatic aberrations (sometimes referred to as bokeh CA) is extremely well controlled. That just leaves colour and contrast, both excellent across the aperture range!

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

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Conclusion?:

It has to be another recommendation, apart from low light work where the slow maximum apertures would be a disadvantage this is a great all rounder and puts in a  decent optical performance, best of all people are practically giving them away, go and buy one!

 

Tokina 28-70mm f/3.5-4.5 SZ-X270 SD

 

 

Build quality and finish:

There is nothing lacking here, the lens is mostly metal and has smooth focus and zoom rings. Overall construction is very good considering this was not a top of the line lens, the only possible criticism is that there is no internal focus mechanism so using a polarizer filter can be tricky as the front element rotates during focusing but this is not unusual for an older zoom, especially one that was modestly priced.

Image Quality:

In short; great! The lens has superb colours, almost too saturated sometimes! In terms of sharpness the centre of the frame is pretty good at 28mm wide open and stopped down to F/8 is sharp across the frame, just as sharp as most of my 28mm primes! Wide open at 70mm sharpness is already very decent across the frame and is superb at F/5.6. Contrast never seems to be lacking and even the bokeh is smooth in most situations although at 28mm with close backgrounds it can be understandably busy. Overall I was impressed by the results from this lens, it's best stopped down at the wide end which I tend to do with most lenses as I usually do landscape work at wide angles and at 70mm it's really very good wide open so can be useful for portraits. The lens has a macro mode and while it doesn't allow for a huge magnification it's worth noting that sharpness remains decent even at or near the minimum focusing distance.

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

 

Conclusion?:

It's well made, light, has great image quality and a decent macro mode, the only thing I found lacking was a non rotating front element, this is another bargain lens that you can buy for a ridiculously small price and get great results from, I recommend it!

 

RE: Cheap polariser filters

An update about cheap polarizer filters!

 

A while ago I wrote about some Sakar CPL filters that were bought cheaply from ebay and how well they performed however after some research I have discovered an issue that is worth mentioning.

It turns out these filters work perfectly well on lenses up till about 70mm in focal length, after that they will degrade picture quality because they are not uniformly flat enough and when placed in front of a lens will create a prism effect and distort light rays. The effect worsens with longer focal lengths and larger physical apertures (ie the actual size of the lens opening and not the aperture setting)

At first I thought it was just an issue related to the cheapness of the lenses and that by buying a more expensive filter I would be safe to use it on lenses with a longer focal length but after some research I discovered that even expensive filters can have very negative effects on long lenses, that is why a lot of super tele lenses have dedicated drop in filters at the rear of the lens, this smaller filter is a lot easier to make totally flat so it does not impact on image quality.

The problem is discussed in greater depth here:

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/evaluating_filter_quality/index.html

There is also a discussion here on the red movie making forum where a user has used VERY expensive Schneider filters and still experiences severe image degradation which he likens to smearing Vaseline over the lens:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39893&page=2
 

So to conclude this short entry, the cheapy ebay filters still work incredibly well for their price but I would advise not using them on lenses over 50mm to be safe, I have tried a Tian Ya CPL that was much better and worked till about 150mm so it really depends on which filter you get but I would say 50mm to be safe and anything more is a bonus, we are talking about £3 filters here! If you want to use a CPL on a longer lens then be prepared to dig deep into your pockets because it's not just the cheapy ebay ones that spoil the party on Tele lenses, no wonder there is such split opinion over filters and their effect on image quality!

On a side note, I have also used Green.L brand UV filters and have noticed no problem with these even on a 500mm lens so in my experience it's the polarizing filters that can be tricky!

 

Southerndown sunset, shot with an EOS 350D, a Sigma EX 18-50mm and a Sakar CPL!

Ebay nightmares: Canon EOS 350D and robsonic-fm

 

My 350d gave up the ghost recently so I decided to buy another body.

This seller had a tidy one listed, "perfect working order with no issues" and so on so I bought it.

The camera turned up without a dust cap on the body, the lens mount stuffed full of bubble wrap, the viewfinder was caked in dust and dead bugs etc.

Worst of all the focus confirm lights were all misaligned so far that they didn't even hit the boxes in the viewfinder, they were all too far to the right. As a consequence the lights do not hit the little reflectors/etched areas and the lights are so dim you could hardly see them unless you turned the lights off!

I emailed the seller and he claimed this was normal for ANY used camera.

He said it was a regular issue with this particular model, even though he said "no issues" in the description.

When I demanded a refund he told me he had found another body that "works correctly" at which point I said if this is the case then you were lying by claiming the first body isn't faulty.

I sent the camera back but he did not refund my original postage, on top of the postage to send it back I was £18 down.

I left him negative feedback and he sent me a ridiculous threat about taking me to court (he must have heard that silly story in the news a few years back) he then sent me a request to change my feedback which I denied!

Then he sent a request to cancel the transaction, that option is supposed to be for when an item gets lost or damaged and cannot be sent, he stated to ebay that I had "changed my mind" he was obviously trying to get his selling fees back but seeing as he ripped me off I immediately cancelled his request. He then accused me of being a scam artist, I pointed out that to scam someone you need to make money from them, not buy faulty goods and not get all your money back.

He has now sold the camera to someone else even though he still possesses money I paid towards it. The new owner left positive feedback but I emailed them and told them the situation, they said they had not fully checked the camera over but now it seems they have realised it is faulty too!

In the meantime, someone else has bought a camera from this guy that was faulty and he has accused the buyer of damaging it himself and is refusing to refund him!

Basically this guy is dishonest, arrogant, hostile, unprofessional and very poorly informed in terms of legal matters and distance selling rules etc.

He tries to pass off physical damage and malfunction as "normal wear and tear"

AVOID THIS SELLER!

robsonic-fm

Named and shamed!

Kodak gear 78-215mm F/4.5-5.6

 

In my last update I mentioned I had bought a Kodak Gear 78-215mm F/4.5-5.6 in Canon EOS mount for peanuts and that I was quite optimistic about it's capabilities considering it's price and I'm pleased to say I was right. This lens is essentially a re-badged Tamron that was also available under the Tiffen name. The true focal length is 80-210mm and the Kodak version can be had with both 80-210 and 78-215 written on the side but they both report as a 80-210 in EXIF information.

Build quality and finish:

The lens has a lot of plastic in it's build but is certainly well put together and even the manual focus ring, while small compared to days of old is still superior to most of Canon's own efforts in this price range and benefits from a rubber grip. The lens is very compact and light which makes it ideal for when you don't want to be weighed down by too much equipment. The lens even comes with a custom Kodak bag that has room for the lens plus one more and a few filters, a really nice touch and along with the lens hood exhibits how stingy Canon et all are with their lower end products, often making you pay extra for such accessories. The focus motor is a bit noisy but not too bad, you can't expect a silent motor in this price range. The focus action is acceptably swift but accuracy appears to become worse the further towards the long end of the zoom you go.

Image Quality:

This is where the lens shines for me, the colours it produces are very vivid and eye catching and contrast was strong regardless of aperture of focal length. The sharpness was good wide open up till about 135-150mm where it began to tail off slightly but by stopping down to F/8 bought the sharpness right back. You can actually get fairly sharp images wide open at full tele but the autofocus seems to be inaccurate enough to miss slightly most of the time, this may well be partly thanks to my 350D too but I found it safer to just stop down when at the long end. With a camera that has a better AF system the lens may perform better in terms of focusing at 210mm and if you had live view you could obviously tweak the focus manually.

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

 

Conclusion?:

Overall this is another one of those bargain autofocus lenses that can be picked up for next to nothing and delivers surprisingly good results, I have better lenses but they cost many times as much and are also much heavier. These lenses crop up on eBay a few times a month and if you need a telephoto zoom on a budget or like me you just like a bargain I recommend giving it a try!

 

Sakar Circular Polarizer Filter CPL (£6.50 for 3 on eBay)

This is just a mini review of the Sakar CPL filters I got on ebay recently, I got 3 different sizes for about £6.50 all in, very cheap in other words!

Build quality and finish

Totally fine, they came supplied with sturdy plastic cases, the frames are metal and the rotating action is smooth.

Image quality

The image quality is great! When the cost is put into consideration the results are even more impressive. To put it simply they do all that you could ask of a polarizer, blues are deeper, reflections are reduced and foliage and vegetation appears less shiny and colour saturation in general is improved. There was no apparent colour cast and no noticeable loss of sharpness or contrast. I could find no fault in these filters that is worth mentioning, especially at this price point.

Here's a simple before and after:

Conclusion:

At this price point there is really nothing to lose, these filters are great value for money and deliver more than satisfactory results!

UPDATE: I have recently noticed strange behaviour with these filters when using lenses with longer focal lengths, for some reason where a filter will give perfect results on a wider lens the image will turn mushy on telephoto lenses, I am investigating the matter further and for now I can only recommend these filters for use on lenses 50mm or lower in focal length where they have performed and still are still performing perfectly well.