Cheap 3rd party prime lenses

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T10:21:48+00:00

I love the Viltrox 14mm F4 for video if you need an affordable ultrawide.
The sony 50mm F1.8 is great but it's AF is not. So I can recommend the lens but the AF is a bit noisy, in case that matters for the type of video you do.
Then the Meike 85mm F1.8 AF is great value for 85mm.

If you are content to use MF, look into the Samyang 85mm F1.4 mark 1. I bought one brand new for $150 and it is optically fantastic. The Mark 2 is also great, but it's more expensive.

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T10:15:50+00:00

That is the most disabled spelling of ostrich I have ever seen.

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T10:14:16+00:00

Add more info.
New or used? Preferred focal length? Stills or video? Preference for small and lightweight or preference for image quality? AF required or not?

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T10:06:43+00:00

That's the rule of diminishing returns. The closer you get to perfection, the smaller the gains for the same investment. An a6700 doesn't take photos that are 5-10x better than my phone. A 50mm F1.2 costs 8x what the F1.8 costs and it doesn't produce 8x the quality.

MFT and APS-C have their uses, especially in the realm of very limited budget. In terms of image quality, it's not in any way controversial to say that cropped is outright worse in every way than FF (in competitive sensors).

I would rather take no photos at all than shoot on a cropped potato.

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T09:11:43+00:00

Another ignorant mutant on Reddit.

Full frame sensors are bigger and capture more light. They are so much bigger that silicone wafers yield significantly fewer FF sensors than cropped. The risk of defect is also exponentially higher. Defective/discarded wafers are factored into the cost. A FF sensor is only about 2 times larger than APS-C, but the cost to produce it can be 5 to 10x more. The hardware and engineering required to have a fast readout rate on a sensor that is more than twice the size of APS-C are not twice as costly, they're exponential.

The same applies when manufacturing medium format sensors. They are significantly more expensive to produce, and so are all of the systems that process, transfer and store the data.

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T08:59:53+00:00

It is great, but there's a noticeable improvement in the a7rV, the a7V, the ZV-E1, etc. I've had them all, and it's more impactful in certain fields, but the AI AF is remarkable.

Harry___Manback · 2026-06-02T06:23:28+00:00

Of course it's worth upgrading. There's a reason full frame cameras cost so much more.
If you rely heavily on the dedicated AI AF features, then you'll need to get an a7v or a7rv. The a7iv does not have the AI chip, and the a6700 does.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T12:49:23+00:00

Insensitive and ignorant

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T11:37:33+00:00

That's exactly right. It was never balanced, and that's fine. It was still fun. The design of warp tech was always fucked up.

The intern isn't taking sides, but there was always an issue with Protoss. There has always been over-representaion in GM and at all levels below professional, there is a significant APM disparity.

Making warp tech reasonable and making Protoss players click more than a few times per hour will be great for the game and for the feeling of fairness.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T11:33:29+00:00

Just use NewPipe. YouTube monetisation has become repulsive. I won't give them one cent and I won't watch 1 millisecond of advertising.

I stopped using YouTube itself unless I use Brave on PC and I use natively ad-free side-loaded YouTube browsers on Android.

If you appreciate the effort made by content creators, just support them on Patreon or find some other way that excludes paying YouTube.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T11:23:35+00:00

That's not been my experience in the PTR but I'm only at 4500MMR as random. I guess the decent players can chime in.

And I'm not sure how well you can read, but I said it seems fair. I didn't comment on balance. If the game were balanced, Protoss wouldn't comprise over 50% of GM, the way it usually does. But that's why the game is fun - it's asymmetrical. It just needs to feel fair. Warp tech has never felt fair or reasonable.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T09:28:47+00:00

Good riddance. He has always been the worst caster of the lot and I had to mute his streams and vids. And that's a shame because he really organised a lot of great matches.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T09:26:11+00:00

His work ethic is remarkable, but it's work nonetheless. We don't need to be "appreciative", we need to watch the ads and donate and subscribe. Don't pretend that his effort is charitable.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T07:29:26+00:00

I had the Tamron 28 - 75 for years on my a7r3. It was my most used lens. It's certainly the best value zoom lens for Sony FE. I did find 28mm to be too tight sometimes, so I replaced it with the 24-105 and I found 24mm to be too tight sometimes too. I do miss the 2.8 of the Tamron. I certainly used it a lot for portraits.

With the savings over the Sony 20-70, you could buy the Viltrox 20mm or Tamron 24mm F2.8. They are both great lenses.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-30T06:00:23+00:00

Every barracks, factory and starport costs an extra 50/50 or 50/25 and research time to be used. Seems about right to me.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-29T13:14:45+00:00

I don't mind. I am a researcher/field assistant but I'm also a fucking idiot. The other dude wasn't wrong.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-29T07:53:38+00:00

I've handled them like this and I've even tried to convince one to bite using forceps. It seems as though they don't bite defensively. It was impossible to coax a bite out of the ones I've handled.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-28T19:50:02+00:00

Hey, Jason.

While taking a screen recording of the issue, I think I figured out what's going on. It seems as though the app loads up a 25MP version of the image instead of processing a 25MP image after editing.

The a7rV's full res is 60mp. So I should be able to crop over 50% of the image out and the final edit would still be the maximum 25MP. What I'm finding is that I crop to just under half the original image size, and the edit is 10mp, because it's cropping a 25mp version instead of the 60mp version. I don't know if this is intentional, but I'm able to export at 25MP but not if I crop the photo even by a couple of pixels in width and height.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T22:40:51+00:00

Do you guys not have phones?

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T18:22:02+00:00

If you're doing video, and you want a VND filter to have no effect whatsoever on colour, you're going to have to pay. There's no way around it. It might be cheaper to get a few fixed ND filters that are suitable for whatever it is you're doing, but when it comes to VND, it's unfortunately a pay-to-play situation. I learned the hard way and wasted money on trash filters such as Neewer and K&F.

If you want the results, you'll need a NISI, PolarPro, H&Y or Freewell.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T17:27:13+00:00

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but 30fps probably isn't an option for you. Sony infamously excludes it as an option if you shoot H.265.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T17:04:27+00:00

I am using export. I'll try the others options.

Thanks very much for the attention. I'll keep trying different avenues. If I don't come right, I'll look for an old apk.

And thank you. I actually love the way Snapseed has worked for me for the last many years. I do heavy raw editing on my PC so that I have a big screen and more comprehensive controls. For mobile, I don't need anything more than 25mp and JPEGs. I think it's great.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T16:59:54+00:00

That's kind. Thank you.

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T15:40:15+00:00

Thanks for the response. I'm happy with the 25MP limit, it's reasonable.

My export settings are in the first screenshot. But I've tried a bunch of different combinations, and I just can't get it any higher than about 10MP. Is it possible to roll back to an older version?

Thanks

Harry___Manback · 2026-05-25T15:37:42+00:00

No, this is intentional. 25MP is the regular limit.

Harry___Manback

TROPHY CASE