Gregory Dearth on Fstoppers

Darkstar Studio Fredericksburg

I started back in the nineties on a Canon AE-1 Program, a wonderful 35mm camera. I transitioned through the ages and recently evolved from my Sony a6000 to a Sony a7rIIIa.

The Sony a7rIIIa is an outstanding full frame digital mirrorless camera. It strikes a wonderful balance of function and quality. It is pro-capable and yet approachable by amateurs due to the high level of automation it can handle.

Now that third party lenses are expanding for the Sony e-mount I should be staying on this platform for a while. Hardly anyone can afford Sony brand lenses so it is nice to see excellent quality coming from Yongnuo, Tamron, Viltrox, 7artisans and others.

My favorite lense so far is the 85mm prime lens from Yongnuo. It's fast and has a very high quality arrangement of top notch glass. A newer lens I am loving is the Tamron 70-300. That thing is ridiculously good for less than $500. With that range it handles a lot of my work. It is maybe just a hair less crisp than the Yongnuo, but that is the difference between prime and tele lenses in general.

I also shoot with antique lenses, often Canon FD mount lenses which adapt to the Sony quite well. One of my favorites is the Vivitar 75-210, a crisp zoom with a macro function. Another is a very old Russian mirror lens with 500mm at a reasonable 6.3. I don't mind manual lenses at all since they are what I started with decades ago and are way cheaper than AF lenses. I shoot birds, landscape, macro, street, and other genres.