Tower Bridge with a Sony A7rII ~ 09Nov15

The clock’s have gone back, the nights are drawing in and time to go a Bimbling around London in the dark with my camera again. As an exercise to get my eye and hand back in I wanted to photograph something lit up with a lot of shape’s and colour and Tower Bridge fits that bill exactly. Weather was far from ideal with a very strong blustery wind blowing across the bridge at the time, which made standing still to hand hold a bit of a challenge, with low cloud rolling over and reflecting the city lights.

I would normally have dug out and dusted off my Sony A7s (the camera that shoots in the dark) but I wanted to try out the Sony A7rII which has a back-illuminated sensor, which increases the amount of light the sensor can capture improving low-light performance, and the 5-axis image stabilisation system to see how low a shutter speed I could achieve hand holding (with the help of a shoulder brace). A ‘BIG’ plus point is that the A7rII, like the A7s, has a silent shutter. ‘No One Can Hear You Taking Photographs In The Dark’.

Sony ILCE-A7rII + Sony FE 28mm f2 Lens with either a Sony 21mm Ultra Wide Converter or a Sony 16mm Fisheye Converter attached. Uncompressed RAW, manual settings, in the order they were taken.

1/6sec~f5~ISO1000 (Wide Angle)

1/6sec~f5~ISO1000 (Wide Angle)

1/8sec~f5~ISO1000 (Wide Angle)

1/5sec~f4.5~ISO800 (Wide Angle)

1/2sec~f5.6~ISO800 (Wide Angle)

1/6sec~f4.5~ISO800 (Wide Angle)

1/3sec~f5~ISO800 (Fisheye)

1/2sec~f5~ISO800 (Fisheye)

1/2sec~f5~ISO1000 (Fisheye)

1/5sec-f5-ISO1000 (Fisheye)

1/2sec~f6.3~ISO1000 (Fisheye)

Brian