NEX-6 Review, Day 2: Exposure and Flare

Sony NEX-6, Zeiss ZA Sonnar E 24mm ƒ/1.8

To begin with, apropos of nothing, here's Daisy. She belongs to a neighbor I encounter occasionally on walks around the neighborhood.

At the close of our chat (with the neighbor, I mean, not the dog), I turned around and saw I was near the shadow of a tree.

Now, when I try out lenses, I have a whole range of semi-standard "information-gathering" shots I take. Just to put the lens through its paces and see how it does. These don't rise to the level of "tests," really; I just want to see. I've been doing this for a long time now, and I can deconstruct a lens's basic performance pretty rapidly without trying too hard.

Then, when I see an area of weakness or strength, I do some more shooting to "provoke" those qualities, to further suss out what's going on. It's not rocket science.

I need to digress and mention that these days, you aren't testing just a lens when you try it out this way. You're testing a lens/sensor combination. There are ways to evaluate lenses without connecting them to sensors, but I'm not sure why you would; what you want to know is how the lens performs on a camera, not how it performs without a camera attached (i.e., on the optical bench). I mean, the latter might be interesting, in a detached sort of way, and it might be good for future reference, but it's not terribly practical. What you want to know is how the sensor performs with the lens and the lens with the sensor.

So, anyway, one trial I do is to put the sun behind a tree trunk and make a series of shots with more and more of the sun in the frame. It gives me a quick read on the rendering of ghosts and veiling glare (both are types of flare), and...damn, I can't remember the word for it—the "rays" that appear to come from a bright light source. [UPDATE: Sun stars. Thanks, Dave. —Ed.]

Then I'll do a few shots with the full sun up in the corner of the frame, because with some lenses that provokes ghosts more readily. (Ghosts are the localized anomalies created on the image by flare. These are ghosts.)

So anyway, yesterday I shot this:

Fig. 1. Flare trial, frame 1

Then a series of three more shots moving slightly to my left, each one showing a bit more sun peeking out from behind the tree trunk, the last of which had the sun fully visible and not obscured by the tree at all:

Fig. 2. Flare trial, frame 4

Here's the same file as in figure 2, but with the exposure cranked down so you can clearly see the exact position of the sun:

Fig. 3. Sun position

Now, if you look at those two shots, figure 1 and figure 2, you can clearly see the effect of flare: there's a distinct 14-point starburst, a distinct ghost (close to the sun at about 5 o'clock), and, if you'll let your eyes go back and forth from one frame to the other in the areas away from the sun, you'll distinctly see the effects of veiling glare (the overall, contrast-reducing type of flare).

SNAFU!
Then I though, "Oh, crap, I screwed up." I had left the camera on Program Mode as I made the four successive flare trial exposures.

Obviously, when you're doing a test like this, you don't want the exposure changing as you go from frame to frame. You want any visual differences to be the effect of flare, not exposure change. So I changed the camera to Manual Mode, set the exposure based on the blue sky away from the sun, and repeated the four exposures.

It wasn't until I got back to the computer that I discovered something very strange. Take a look at figures 1 and 2 again. Both of those exposures were made on Program Mode. Figure 1 is ƒ/11 at 1/160th and figure 2 is ƒ/11 at 1/200th.

Huh? Left to its own devices, the camera only adjusted a third of a stop between the exposure with the sun hidden behind the tree and the sun in full view? Normally that will change the AE reading pretty radically.

Then I noticed something else. In my second series, I deliberately metered the open blue sky looking East, that is, opposite the sun...and came up with ƒ/8 at 1/32oth. Exactly the same exposure as the camera set for itself in figure 1!

So I learned a little bit about flare, yes. But I also inadvertently got thumped on the noggin with a clue about how the camera meters and exposes.

So then I went over all the rest of my exposures from that walk. Granted, the sun was low in the sky, but we're under an intense high pressure system and the sunlight was still very bright. And sure enough, in frame after frame, left to its own devices on Program Mode with Auto ISO, I notice two very definite tendencies:

1. The camera seems to be exceptionally good at holding highlights; and
2. It seems to be exceptionally good at nailing the proper exposure, even with predominantly bright image-objects (e.g., mounds of snow) or predominantly darker image-objects (e.g., spruce trees)  dominating the frame.

That's just preliminary. Right now, with the sun high in the sky and the high pressure system still in full force, I'm heading out to deliberately torture the NEX-6 a bit and see how well those assumptions hold up.

Coda
Before I close for now, here's the last trial shot, with the full sun up in the corner of the frame:

Fig. 4. The sun in the corner of the frame

There's really only one faint ghost, just where the branches start on the bare tree near the middle of the frame. And it's not extreme.

Tentative conclusion: flare performance is only so-so by today's standards, meaning good by historical standards, but, on the other hand, the lens/sensor is pretty good at resisting ghosting with the sun in the corner of the frame. Good to know.

And here's friendly Daisy suffering the fortunately harmless effects of late-night experimentation with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2...an old-fashioned-y 1950s-ish Verichrome-Pan sort of vibe. Good doggie!

Mike

UPDATE, 9 p.m.: Well, I went out this afternoon with the best of intentions, but, as often happens, I got interested in photographing and forgot what I was supposed to be testing. I specifically meant to do some demo shots for CA, for instance, and I neglected to.

I think a confident verdict on my "two tendencies" listed above will have to await lots more accumulated shooting. But most of the "torture testing" I did today supported rather than contradicted the conclusion that the NEX-6 is particularly good at getting the exposure right and especially at protecting the highlights (the latter long a bugbear of mine with digital).

This shot, for example, naturally needed a bit of correction, but the exposure the camera chose by itself was, surprisingly, just about what I would have picked.

Maintaining usable detail in both the highlights and the shadows at the same time is the perennial challenge of outdoor natural light photography. This shot from yesterday, with a largish area of brightness away from the center of the frame, is an example of one of the kinds of pictures camera metering systems tend to have a hard time with, which is why it's so necessary to keep an eye on them. Here the tonality is quite good throughout the frame; the tan sunlit wall (which was visually far brighter than it looks here) has clipped just a bit, but only in the red channel. Our eyes get sensitive to the look of clipping, and a seasoned digital photographer might look at that area of the file with a touch of suspicion, but a civilian would never notice.

The detail in this shot is nice. It wouldn't surprise me if people lucky enough to own the NEX-7 are also liking the 24mm ƒ/1.8 Sonnar, because I would guess that this lens is even more rewarding with more resolution on tap.

I'm liking the combo's way with B&W quite a bit, too. (This looks a lot better bigger, but oh well.) The combination of lens contrast (not the same thing as contrast) and the camera's way with highlights is a nice one-two combination for B&W.

This idea that the Sony NEX-6 is unusually good at exposure—and with highlights—is something to keep in mind. It might prove to make it an excellent recommendation for the type of photographer who doesn't care to continually tweak (or worry about tweaking!) exposure, but just wants to set the camera on P and go.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John McMillin: "I can confirm what you're saying here. Both my Sonys, an a700 and a850, have shown excellent dynamic range. The highlight recovery capabilties of my a850 are especially good. Sony's DRO feature does the rest of the task, lifting the shadows as well as Lightroom, or better. Every time I try a different camera brand in harsh Western sunlight or high-DR interior shots, I miss that. When I use HDR, it's for an effect, not to extend dynamic range. That's rarely a problem.

"I'm looking hard for an alternative system, because I don't like EVFs and other recent Sony design directions. I just love the results from their sweet sensors. The closest I've come to the Sonys' long, forgiving tonal range was with my Fuji X10, whose EXR sensor does its own magic. Maybe I'll give the Pentax K-5 a try, as its prices fall. Isn't it rumored to pack a Sony sensor...like the OM-D, the first Olympus to garner praise for tonal range?

"Like 'em or not, Sony has some secret sauce. Now if their cameras didn't get in the way between those sensors and the Minolta lens collection, like some lump in the bed."

Andy Kochanowski: "Mike, I can spare you any suspense on this one, though you probably know it by now. For wandering-around photography, the Sony is pretty well perfect. I've been using the NEX-7 with the two Sigma lenses and the 18–55mm kit for the past six months, and sold all my Micro 4/3 stuff, including the GX1 which I also loved, because I wasn't using it at all. Balance, haptics, remarkably good sensor, fast enough AF, fine VF, cheap lenses (except the one you're testing), decent battery life—this thing's da bomb.

"About all that menu carping that the Interweb does: at least on the NEX-7 once you set it up you literally never look at the menu again. Every control you need can be hard-wired. Once I had it for a few days I got why Kirk Tuck's been all over this thing for the past year."

Sarge (partial comment—for the rest of Sarge's comment, please see the Comments section): "My first authoritative reading about flare was William Schneider's TOP article, 'One Photographer's Take on Flare,' which includes a link to Mike's LL article, 'The Filter Flare Factor.' I love sunstars captured without aid of special effects filters mainly because it isn't alien to our experience (as in 'seeing stars'). Likewise, 'sunstars' off a tulip glass or a polished car fender. I've always thought that the number of rays in a sunstar is determined by the number of aperture blades in a lens' diaphragm. How does the 7-blade Sonnar E 24mm ƒ/1.8 produce 14-ray sunstars? (Is it software?)"

Hugh Crawford replies to Sarge: "No, it's not software. Every blade of the aperture produces a 'ray' that crosses the light source. An even number of aperture blades makes rays that overlap, so an eight blade aperture makes 16 rays at intervals of 45 degrees which means that they overlap and you only see eight rays. An odd number of blades make rays that don't overlap, so a nine-blade aperture produces 18 rays, one every 40 degrees.

"Some people seem to like 'sun stars' but I think they are one of the most annoying things about automatic aperture SLRs which is about the only application where they (and the ugly polygons) can't be easily designed out of the lens."

Comments

[jim]

I've been using a Nex7 for over a year and a Nex6 since they were introduced. I also use a Nikon D700 which I routinely under-expose 1/3 stop to hold highlights. I learned pretty early on with the Nexes you dont have to do that!

[Dennis Mook]

Mike,

If you haven't already written an article on your lens testing exercises, please do, for all our benefit. If you have, please provide us with the link. After all, TOP is a wonderful learning resource.

Thank you.
Dennis

[I haven't, but there's a reason for that: most of the process is in my head. It isn't the shots, it's the analysis of the shots and the understanding of what's going on and what's causing what.... --Mike]

[Ken Ford]

I made the mistake of looking for images made with this lens while I was online last night. It's not helping me resist.

[Paul Van]

Crepuscular rays... (I think I spelled that right.)

[Adam Isler]

My experience with the NEX-7 has been pretty consistent with your NEX-6, exposure-wise, it seems. Often the first thing I'll do in Lightroom is hit the "Auto" button just to see what it will do - it's often a good starting place. But I've discovered that more often than not the NEX-7 in program mode has natively done a better job of overall exposure - I'll revert to the out-of-the camera exposure and apply something like Lightroom's advice only to portions of the image (typically reclaiming highlights, especially given my ETTR practice).

[Nicolas Woollaston]

One interesting thing is that the cost of the nex 5/6/7 + zeiss combination starts to make the price of the rx1 (+ finder) look not quite so crazy :)

[Stephen Scharf]

You can keep the NEX-6...I love that dog.

[cfw]

Brrrr - Daisy needs a coat.

[01af]

Okay, so the camera was a Sony Nex 6. But what was the lens?

[Thanks for alerting me to this, 01af...I added that info to the post (in the caption of the first picture). Obviously anyone who read the previous day's post would know, but I should keep in mind those who come to today's post cold. --Mike]

[Tom Kwas]

...all I gotta say is "nice Zeiss snappy contrast"...

[David]

That stuff looks pretty impressive. I noticed that you used a filed computer screen on the BW version of the pooch?

[Adrian Malloch]

Hi Mike,
That's a nice way to test for veiling and other types of flare. It is now on my lens checking checklist.
I do a bit of a regular gig reviewing photographic equipment for D-Photo, a New Zealand photo-enthusiast magazine.
Your observation, of how the Sony meters, matches what I have been seeing with not only Sony, but many of the recent camera arrivals that are based on an EVF.
They no longer appear to use the centre-weighted 18% grey paradigm, but instead use all the information from the entire sensor and proceed to 'expose to the right' while dialing in exceptions for specular highlights and obvious (whatever that means to a camera's computer brain) light sources, like the sun in your example photo.
Interestingly, the files don't look over-exposed, as they do with files from older cameras which have been 'exposed to the right'.
It's as if the boffins have closed the exposure/processing loop within the camera and raw software to cram as much information onto the file, yet present it normalised for viewing.

[george4908]

What meter mode were you in -- multi-mode or center weighted?

[Your question sent me to the camera and then into the User Manual for the first time...I don't believe you can change the metering mode on the NEX-6. Maybe I just haven't found it yet.... --Mike]

I'm guessing the relatively consistent exposure values in the first and second images is due to the sophistication of metering modes these days, which are programmed to "know" when to ignore things like the sun, treating it as an anomaly, whether you want it to or not.

[Kevin Bourque]

No, crepuscular rays are the light and shadow effects when the sun shines through broken clouds and the like.

"Diffraction spikes" is a good name for the starburst effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular_rays

[hugh crawford]

Mike, you might want to check what the Dynamic Range Optimization (DRO) setting is. I think it's on by default and would produce the "Huh? Left to its own devices" behavior you noted.

[I thought of that too--but I'm shooting Raw only. --Mike]

It's sort of an expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights feature that works surprisingly well other than the fact that the jpegs look great and the raws look all over the place (underexposed mostly) until you tweak them.
Or something like that, but once you get used to it the results are pretty good.

Funny you should mention Verichrome-Pan, it had a sort of similar behavior

[There is method to my madness. You just get it, is all. [s] --Mike]

[roy]

"I am liking..."
formerly:
"I like..."
Interesting how the present continuous tense - in this sort of context - has only come into widespread use since the emergence of the internet.
Roy

[Hmm, I'd say it's a good deal older than that...in any event, I don't think the two statements mean the same thing. "I am liking" indicates an emerging feeling, tentative and inconclusive--tantamount to saying "so far I like it, but I'm still reserving judgement." "I like" is an established conclusion. Wouldn't you say? --Mike]

[Sarge]

My first authoritative reading about flare was William Schneider's TOP article, One Photographer's Take on Flare, which includes a link to Mike's LL article, The Filter Flare Factor.

I love sunstars captured without aid of special effects filters mainly because it isn't alien to our experience (as in "seeing stars"). Likewise, "sunstars" off a tulip glass or a polished car fender. I've always thought that the number of rays in a sunstar is determined by the number of aperture blades in a lens' diaphragm. How does the 7-blade Sonnar E 1.8/24 produce 14-ray sunstars? (Is it software?)

AFAIK, lenses with less than 8 aperture blades tended to produce polygonal rather than round "light bokehs" and less than 8 sunstar rays which would look unnatural (although I haven't seen pictures of the latter). Zeiss MF lenses for ZF, ZE, ZA (and the discontinued ZK) DSLR mounts also have fewer aperture blades (8?) compared to their ZM lenses which have 10 blades yielding 10-ray sunstars. (Zeiss doesn't specify the no. of blades in the data sheet of their lenses.) Likewise, Voigtlander MF lenses also have 10 blades for their VM mounts vs. 9 for their DSLR mounts. (I gather that Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses are made in the same plant by Cosina except for the former's Made in Germany premium lenses.)

Re: Ghosting flare

I've had my fair (though rare) share of ghosts when shooting with a light source within the frame (e.g., the sun, full moon, or headlights), mainly because I have multi-coated "UV, Haze" (B+W, Kenko) filters permanently on my ZM and VM lenses.

"Do you use a "protective filter" on your lens? I encourage you to take that filter off your lens and leave it off." (The opening lines of Mike's Filter Flare Factor article.)

I haven't been able to follow this advice because I'm clumsy, have sweaty hands, and can scarcely afford a replacement for my M lenses. Also, it's humid and dusty where I come from. At least twice though, I've serendipitously captured stunning ghosts like this one:

This was taken with a GXR-M+Distagon 4/18 (28 mm-e) combo. This is a 100% crop of the OOC jpeg. Here's the photo where the crop came from.

Thank you, Mike, for your analysis of sensor-lens synergy.

I had the notion that flare resistance, or the ability to capture beautiful sunstars was exclusively a matter of lens design. Henceforth, I'll desist from trying to capture sunstars with my small-sensor GRD-4. And I'll remove them "protection" filters from my detachable lenses, more often than not. As for protecting highlights, my Ricoh duo aren't very good at this, or maybe it's me.

[Bob Rosinsky]

Daisy is welcome to come in for a photo shoot at my studio.

[Oskar Ojala]

It's very nice that the exposure just works. My OM-D is decent, but tends to underexpose, which is a pain at higher ISO where shadow detail is scarce anyway. My D800 runs around this by having enormous exposure latitude, but there are situations where the exposure goes way off, even with pro AF-S lenses. While I'm a fairly technical photographer, I would prefer to concentrate on the image and not tuning camera controls.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Good to see you having fun with the NEX, Mike. The NEX has been my primary general system-camera platform for nearly two years.

For those who can break away from the self-consciousness of how a camera "should" look (or, particularly, how they should look while using a camera) the NEX cameras reward them with remarkable image quality and camera versatility. There's nothing a NEX cannot do, often better than anyone else.

The Zeiss 24 is a very nice lens. But, honestly, I don't use mine often.

[What lenses do you tend to prefer, Ken? --Mike]

[Peter]

I always thought the rule of thumb was:

Odd number of aperture blades = 2x diffraction spikes
Even number of aperture blades = 1x diffraction spikes

[Tom Kwas]

My Lumix G-3 is better than my Nikons for this kind of exposure too..

[Ed]

What is happening is that the NEX 6 meter is verry clever, it saw a bright spot on a normally lit frame (aha Sun San thinks the NEX 6) and ignored the bright spot and adjusted it's lighting for the rest of the frame. And since exposure is well sort of a compromise anyway it compromised brilliantly by not compromising at all.

"My OM-D is decent but tends to underexpose"

The OM-D does intergrate the sun into the exposure calculations (and a bright sky as well) therefore it tends to underexpose (a bit) indeed. Now that can be corrected in RAW by the way....but you can avoid it by using the little wheel around the shutter button now and again, or use spot meter and meter away from the sun.

Had to do that from the time I used the Nikon F2 till now aparantly, and I'm glad at least one camera knows that we live in a solar system with a rather bright central star and at 8 light minutes away non the less. Kudos to the Sony engenieers....well Land of the Rising Sun, right.

Greetings, Ed

[John Krumm]

It sounds like the Sony is doing less dumb scene averaging, and more "intelligent" multispot metering, where the camera picks the optimum exposure after determining the brightest highlight. Of course with the sun shot it would have to decide that that sun is just too bright to worry about. Less of a reason to use the exposure comp with it I bet.

[george4908]

>>I don't believe you can change the metering mode on the NEX-6. Maybe I just haven't found it yet.... <<

I just found it online. You can select multi, center or spot. Don't know which is the default, probably the multi. You know, to keep guys like you from screwing up when you point the camera at the sun.

[roy]

Re: "I am liking.."
Despite diverse reading habits I never see this form anywhere apart from internet forums - and blogs. This doesn't mean it's invariably misused, although I'd say it's now devalued coinage. Clearly it's a distinct tense, however it seems to have become an interchangeable substitute. Now whether this makes any difference to anyone, anywhere, is debatable. Perhaps it's also time we started opening our hearts to "lense" as well?
Roy

[Anurag Agnihotri]

John: "Sony's DRO feature does the rest of the task, lifting the shadows...Every time I try a different camera brand in harsh Western sunlight or high-DR interior shots, I miss that."

I would like to elaborate upon the difference in how Sony and Nikon respectively do this...Sony's DRO will lift the shadows, but it will not pull the highlights back...Nikon's version will lift the shadows and pull the highlights back as well. To do this, Nikons will underexpose the image to avoid blinking highlights and then lift the shadows up. This trick, if i can call this a trick, works well in harsh light, but i like Nikon version more. Unfortunately, Nikons will end up exposing the RAW to save the highlights and therefore RAWs will be underexposed if you open them in LR and not in Nikon's own software...

PS: Nikon calls this Active D lighting, and this "is" different from settings which do a HDR like job post facto by lifting the shadows and pulling back the highlights after you've shot. ADL is applied "while' you're shooting and it changes the way RAW files look, so it behaves like a fundamental camera feature, like exposure compensation, bracketing etc.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

[What lenses do you tend to prefer, Ken? --Mike]

To be honest, I've not really seen a bad lens on my NEX cameras. My own least favorite is perhaps that Sigma 30mm. Rattles, slow to focus, so-so rendering.

My own choices tend to be driven by necessity. For example, in 2011 I shot around Japan for 10 days with nothing but my NEX 5N (I still love) with the 16mm and 18-55mm lenses. Honestly, I never felt the need for anything else. They both produced excellent results.

Lately I've been using the NEX 7 on a project that requires longer focal lengths. To that end I've been using the excellent Sony 18-200mm (SEL18200) and Leica's 90mm and 75mm f/2 Summicrons (with the Novoflex adapter) to produce some wonderfully detailed and compressed imagery.

I am eager to use my new (to me) 50mm (SEL50F18) and 35mm (SEL35F18) lenses more. My early peeks at them have been very impressive. But that has to wait just a bit.

In the end, of course, we shoot the same images whatever camera and lens we use. But the NEX allows me to do just that: shoot whatever subject I choose to whatever level of precision I need and at whatever budget is appropriate. I cannot say enough good stuff about Sony's NEX system.

[Eric Lew]

Hi Mike,

I think what you are seeing is less a brilliant metering design and more a purposeful under exposure that I've seen in all Sony cameras. I've been using Sony cameras for four years now (a700, a850, nex7, a55, a77) and I find they generally slightly underexpose to preserve the highlights. This is great in situations like the ones you wrote about, but annoying if you are trying to expose to the right with more uniform compositions.

For example, I find if I am shooting a front-lit scene of fairly uniform brightness, I will need to over expose by between 1/3 and 1 full stop to push the histogram to the right where I want it. And, in general I shoot with the meter at +1/3.

That said, I think Sony has made the right tradeoff by favoring the highlights and I know that in a pinch, I can always set the meter to zero and can be almost guaranteed to get the highlights.

Eric

[Sarge]

Diffraction spikes, number of

I only ever get "sun stars" or the star-burst effect when stopping down to f/11 or lower.

*Diffraction* then is the operative word in ~ spikes or rays. Next time I buy a lens, I'll get one with an odd number of aperture blades. {g}

Thanks, all.

[Peter]

Both Sigma primes have a distinct rattle, which was frankly disturbing at first, but at $100 each ($200 for the pair) I guess I'm not complaining.