First outing with the Sony A7 II and the Zeiss 55 f/1.8

 
I traveled on a one-day trip to Alexandria with a few of my close friends, and it was the perfect chance to get familiar with the new A7 Mark II and the Zeiss FE 55 f/1.8.

You can consider this post as a quick hands-on post on the A7II + Zeiss 55 combo. A first in a series of posts to cover all my impressions on the A7II specifically, and a few lenses along the way.

Sony E 16 2.8 Review Part 2: fisheye and ultrawide converters

This is a continuation of our review of the Sony 16 f/2.8 for the E-mount (Part 1 here).  In this part, we will discuss the two converters for the 16 2.8: a fisheye converter (VCL-ECF1) and an ultrawide converter (VCL-ECU1). 

First, I will describe the two converters.  I will then discuss the rationale and performance of each converter, starting with the fisheye, then the ultrawide.

Before we go on to the review, I want to mention a couple of footnotes:

1. If you've tried cheap wide angle converters before, you may think that these converters are just gimmicks.  But these are entirely different and are very good quality converters.

2. When Sony announced their new lenses on March 4, 2015, they also announced "new" versions of the converters, the VCL-ECF2 fisheye and VCL-ECU2 ultrawide.  As far as I can tell, they are identical to the old converters, with the same specs and same optical formulae.  The only difference between the new converters and the old ones seems to be that the new versions are black (matching the finish of the 20 2.8) while the previous versions are silver (matching the finish of the 16 2.8).  The VCL-ECF2 and ECU2 are advertised as being compatible with the 20 2.8, but so are the ECF1 and ECU1.

Why I Love My Sigma 50-150

Here are a couple of shots that I took with the Sigma 50-150 that show why I love it.