I recently bought myself a new lens, a Sony 85mm f1.8 for my Sony A7iii. It's been described as a "budget" prime lens and whilst I agree the price I paid was an absolute bargain, the results I've been getting with this lens are far from budget! This thing is so sharp I have to wear thick gloves to avoid cuts!
So over the last few nights, I've ventured out in to the dark with my new "inexpensive" toy and shot only with the 85mm as a kind of one lens challenge.
We started off in a car park and headed to the top deck where I knew of an excellent point of view overlooking traffic. We didn't linger for long after a large group of drunken youths all with the same spherical hairstyle with black curly hair looking somewhat like a Robertson's Jam commercial. (That's me trying to be politically correct, maybe Google it and you will understand!) They were drunk and wanted to know if we would take their picture. The usual answer is a firm no but we didn't hang around for long afterwards because I'm not keen on ending up in a hospital with a stab wound. It was a reminder though that doing a photowalk around a city centre afterdark is maybe not the wisest thing to do.
Furnival Gate
Shot from a multi-storey car park on the top deck overlooking this view. On the left is another car park known locally as the "Borg Cube" because of it's resemblance to something out of Star Trek.
This is a 7 shot image stacked in Photoshop. I don't expect the Hive to load up this photo with the greatest of details but on my screen this lens is sharp.
I always have trouble choosing the final image format so this is the same view but in landscape format:
Sale, upto 50% off!
At the other side of the same car park, I stumbled upon this great PoV. I waited a while for this lone walker to cross the lower right hand third. It's handy having a camera that can shoot 10 frames per second and the image looked a whole lot more moodier in monochrome.
Tears of Our Enemies
This neon sign in a bathroom showroom caught my eye as we walked on by. Presumably the customer would take pleasure in bathing in the tears of their enemies. Or to maybe put it another way, the divorcee loves to bathe in her ex-husband's tears after the divorce settlement!
Sheffield Central Fire Station
I've never shot this PoV before but the compression provided by the 85mm focal length works great here. Also an added bonus is the Sony A7iii's high dynamic range meaning I can push the shadows in post-processing. Another image where viewed large would be better.
Pink for Sale
I like the idea of street photography in that it pushes me to think outside the box or to maybe live outside my comfort zone. A few minutes before this I missed a potentially amazing shot where this quite attractive woman stopped to look at her phone leaning against a window with loads of reflections only to find my camera was damn well switched off! By the time I switched back on again, the moment was gone forever! Lesson learned, don't switch off your camera!
Sheffield Skyline Panorama
And finally this is a test panorama image made up of about 8 shots all overlapping each other then stitched in Photoshop. The high dynamic range of the Sony A7iii means I can under-expose a little for the brighter parts and then bring up the shadows without much degradation in the image.
To fit this on to Hive I had to reduce the image size down from 19,839 x 3674 pixels (that's 72.8 megapixels). Another image best viewed large!
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.
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