First off let’s say curiosity got my interest with mirrorless bodies. How could such a small body deliver a big punch? I’m a Canon shooter and people ask me why do I shoot Canon. My reply is because when I bought my first DSLR Canon it was the one that was on sale between them and Nikon. If Nikon would have had the best sale price that day, I’d probably be a Nikon shooter. That being said, I do enjoy my Canon and love what I have been able to produce with it.
I’m a person that likes change and trying different things. Sony first peaked my interest at the Cleveland air show this summer where The Pixel Connection of Avon had a booth set up. Both Sigma and Sony reps were on site for the air show. I was amazed when they could put a Sony mirrorless body on a Sigma 150-600 lens, and I could not believe how light it was in my hand. I didn’t shoot it that day but the interest was put in the back of my head. I ran across a pro Sony shooter on Youtube and watched what he was able to produce on these small body cameras. I decided to do a weekend of test shooting to put the Sony a6500 through different types of shots that interest me.
My biggest passion of photography is sports photography. I get so excited capturing a great action shot at a sporting event. In portrait photography, you can reproduce the same shot over and over but you only get one chance to get that great shot in the end zone. I decided to put the Sony a6500 to the test at a boy’s basketball game using my Sigma 70-200 with the MC-11 Sigma mount adaptor. That is also the biggest thing that peaked my interest is because Sony allows me to use all my glass with their camera using a mount adaptor. Whenever you use an adaptor or converter of any sort your always scared that you will lose quality and precision. It seemed at first it took a little time for the converter to speak to the camera to recognize my Sigma lens. Once it acknowledged the lens it started tracking nicely. I made sure to shoot in RAW to see how it buffered with its 11fps. It was very comparable to my Canon 7DMII if not better. I pushed the ISO to 10000 at 1/1000 to see how it handled the noise, and again, very similar to my Canon 7DMII. The live view was cool when the action was close to me under the basket to track the movement of the ball. Being a crop sensor APS-C making my 70-200 more like a 105-300 made it very tight in the eye piece. It allowed me to put the camera on the floor and shoot looking through the live view to try and capture a different perspective without laying on the floor. Just something fun to try and be creative. As photographers, I think we all try to be a little different as to make shots our own. Next I took my Sigma 150-600 out to do some bird photography and shoot the lighthouse in Lorain, OH. Putting the MC-11 Sigma convertor to the test would be with bird photography. When birds are flying overhead without much contrast in the sky it gets hard sometimes to track them in your camera. Again, with the convertor it did very well tracking the Broad-winged Hawk I was shooting. Did it miss at times? Yes, it did, but so does my DSLR with the same lens. I was able to capture the lighthouse and being along the lines of landscape photography it was flawless in tracking and allowed my lens to be tack sharp. I put the Sigma 85mm on which is my favorite lens and again it worked flawless which was very exciting to finalize my decision to add this camera to my bag. For my sports photography, this gives me a nice small body camera as a second body that gives me big body production. Mind you I have my Canon 1DX which I will never part with for my sports photography but again excited to add something else to learn with and expand my knowledge in photography. I think change is good - it doesn’t allow you to be complacent but to give you another understanding how things work from a different perspective.
Review and images courtesy of Joe Colón. To see more of Joe's work, head on over to his website Eyes of Joe Photography!