Dustin Abbott: What's In My Sony Kit 2021

[Music] hi i'm dustin abbott and i'm here today to give you the second part of my episode series on what's in my kit or in my bag by popular demand for the last couple of years a lot of you have asked questions about what's in my personal kit knowing that a lot of gear flows across my desk so the question is is what is the things that i end up purchasing for myself adding to my own kit and using and so i hope to answer that question on the sony front today the first episode dealt with my canon kit and so if you missed that you can check that episode out here i primarily transitioned to sony several years ago about four years ago and at that point i was doing basically exclusively canon reviews but i begin to see advantages of mirrorless and particularly when sony released the a7r iii it really was the camera that sold me on the potential of mirrorless uh just able to do so many things so well and so as a byproduct of that i also have even after canon has released the it's full frame here listen i do love the canon eos r5 it's a great camera there's a number of lenses there that i like but sony has become the most attractive platform to me primarily because sony is much more open to third-party development and at this point there has been a more i think aggressive third-party development on the sony space than what i've ever seen before and it seems like it's enabling a lot of companies to hit their strides and produce better lenses than they they ever have before that's certainly true for samyang which we'll talk about in a second for tamron with primarily with their zooms and even for sigma that really has huge amount of momentum right now and is developing a ton of lenses on the sony full-frame mirrorless e-mount space and so as you can see it's kind of embarrassing when i get it all out in front of me i have a lot of cameras and lenses in my sony kit i first want to thank however our sponsor of today's episode one of our very faithful partners here and that is phantom wallet today's episode is brought to you by phantom wallet the minimalist modern wallet that sets you free from a bulky traditional wallet while also making it easy to access your cards and money when you need them thanks to their unique fanning mechanism visit phantomwallet.com to check out their unique sizes styles and finishes that span from aluminum to wood to carbon fiber you can even customize your wallet with new accessories like a money clip cache holder id display and even the chipolo tracking integration if you're the kind of person who loses their wallet use code dustin 15 for 15 off when you're ready to check out so let's start by talking about the camera bodies that i use and so at the heart of my sony kit is the sony alpha one now my first reaction to the alpha one it was that it was overpriced but as i began to look at the potential that was there that basically it was the possibility of having all that i like best about sony in one body i finally it finally kind of you know won me over and so i sold both my sony alpha 9 along with my a7r mark iii and i invested in the alpha one and i haven't regretted it i love this camera it just does everything so very well it has next to no flaws other than its price and so i really really do love it and of course as a gear reviewer i like to be able to uh you know as i put things through the paces to basically test them to the fullness of their potential and that requires sometimes using the best camera body available for it and so i really do love the alpha one even though i recognize that it's more camera than what a lot of people actually need and so you need to buy according to your own needs and there are a lot of great sony cameras at this point the alpha one is the one that hits the sweet spot for me i also have a pair of aps-c bodies including the a6400 and as shown here the a6600 at this stage i am primarily letting my new assistant whom i'm going to introduce to you in a couple of days i'm letting him use the a6400 and a few lenses including like the viltrx 23 millimeter f 1.4 and some other things and reviewing things as they come out for aps-c i have a couple of lenses that i reach for uh primarily if i'm not using one of the full frame lenses and frankly a lot of times i'm using full frame lenses on them but i do have the samyang af 12 millimeter f2 it's a a great priced you know premium type lens with good weather sealing good auto focus and good optical performance and a very enticing angle of view so if i want to go wide angle that's what i reach for and then i also really like the 18 to 135 millimeter sony oss lens it's a better than average all-in-one you know kind of super zoom lens and it's a great option for traveling or just those situations where you want more you value the versatility of a zoom range more than you value the versatility of an aperture and so that's my you know smaller aps-c kit which is augmented by my much larger full-frame kit so first of all when we talk about full frame some of my favorite lenses on sony are i just love what samyang is doing with their tiny series and so in my kit i have five of these tiny lenses including the 18 millimeter f 2.8 the 24 millimeter f 1.8 which may be the best most complete lens that samyang has just ever made it's a really great lens at a really great price the 35 millimeter f 1.8 also a very good lens the 45 millimeter f 1.8 i really love the rendering from this lens and reach for it a lot and then the 75 millimeter f 1.8 now particularly with the 45 millimeter and the 75 millimeter i use those all the time for filming on my channel here and so a lot of the videos that you see on a day-to-day basis are ones that i film one of those lenses and to me it's a really telling thing that as someone who needs to rely on autofocus to you know because some no one is manning the camera during these filming sessions the fact that i'm reaching for a samyang lens is really extraordinary to me but samyang has really done a great job of furthering the development of autofocus via firmware updates and the byproduct of that is that these lenses are extremely reliable for me and produce very good results but i just love the tiny form factor combined with the the really good optics and with each new lens samyang's showing a little bit more development in term of features and performance and really the 24 millimeter lens their most recent in this series it has the focus hold button it has their custom switch that allows you to use this as an aperture ring or for manual focus it has weather sealing now they're really just starting to nail the details while keeping things small and lightweight it's a great combination because sometimes even if you're shooting an alpha one you just want to travel light and so i really love that and they're small enough that they also work really nicely on aps-c as well so kudos to samyang for the great stuff they're doing on this front and i love these lenses i probably reach for them more than anything else that may surprise you but that's the reality equally on that front tamron is killing it on the zoom now full disclosure tamron has a little bit of an advantage on sony that they didn't have on you know canon ef or nikon f and that sony does have a minority stake in tamron which means that there seems to be a little bit more of an agreement between the companies the byproduct of that is that tamron lenses including these tamron zooms they tend to function very much like a native lens on sony and they you know gets you know for you know first party type um profile support and you know autofocus results so for example the 28 to 75 millimeter f 2.8 i've had since its inception i've been using for years i've used it a lot on my channel and a lot for just general purpose shooting because it's just really reliable produces great results so that's been in my kit the longest i did add the 17 to 28 millimeter f 2.8 zoom when it came out later on the 70 to 180 millimeter f 2.8 which i reach for for event work all the time because i really value a zoom and i love how compact this lens is and makes it just so much easier to travel with it and to use it more discreetly in those situations and then for full-on travel situations the 28 to 200 millimeter really exceeded my expectations and so it has become kind of my go-to lens if i'm shooting full frame and i've either traveling or want that all-in-one approach now on the tamron front there is some new shaking up that is coming including the g2 version of the 28 to 75 millimeter along with the really really exciting 35 to 150 millimeter f2 to f 2.8 vc lens and you know frankly i very well may consider uh going with just that lens instead of the 28 to 75 and the 70 to 180 millimeter because it just if it you know lives up to its potential it's a lens that just could do so many things so well and i could just augment it on the wide end with you know one of my several other options here and so that is the kind of third party side of the table here on my right side i have a number of different lenses here starting with the voigtlander 65 millimeter f2 macro lens it's an aprochromatic lens which means it has next to no chromatic aberrations it is just optically beautiful there's something about the glass that is special and i use this as the primary lens for all of the product photos that you see every now and then i use a different macro type lens but it's kind of a perfect focal length for that i find it very useful and i also will pull it out i don't do weddings often anymore because the nature of my business means that i mostly do this kind of thing for photography these days but i will pull it out in a wedding type setting or even in a portrait session because it has such lovely rendering and so i really do love that even though it's fully manual focus a great lens to consider if you're interested in a it's not a full one-to-one macro it's only a one to two macro but a lovely lovely bit of glass i also have owned for a long time the sony zeiss planar 50 millimeter f 1.4 and while i think that the most recent canon rf 50 millimeter f 1.2 and very likely i haven't had a chance to test it yet but the new 50 millimeter f 1.2 g master lens they may have exceeded this lens in performance it is was until that point the best auto focusing 50 millimeter lens that i had ever used and while i think that the newer lenses tend to be a little bit better in the autofocus department sony has made huge strides in autofocus development since the earlier days that this lens came from but optically it really is fantastic and so once i review the g master you know i may be tempted to make that switch but we'll have to see until i've been able to compare them head to head which obviously i'll be sharing with you as well i also own and love the sigma 85 millimeter f 1.4 dm uh to me it just gives me most all of the performance of the g master 85 millimeter f 1.4 with better auto focus and at this point i think it's the best value 85 millimeter lens that is on the sony platform and it produces beautiful results really really love it and then also we have one of my favorite g master lenses and that is the 135 millimeter f 1.8 it's an incredible lens in fact it is one of the best lenses optically i have reviewed ever of any kind it was good enough that it made me actually sell my beloved zeiss milvis 135 millimeter f2 which i love that lens loved its rendering however i got so many more keepers with the gm when i was reviewing it and comparing the two just because it has an incredible autofocus and of course ief works with such great precision it's just a more practical lens not to mention that it is amazing optically so it was good enough to dethrone my previous 135 millimeter king and so finally we have the the big dog of the group and that is the 200 to 600 millimeter g lens and there have been some great new competitors that have come out from tamron and sigma but if you are looking for kind of the best of this class i do think that it is still this lens as long as you can put up with the the size the heft and the price tag of it it really does so many things well and and i honestly believe that sony could have marketed this as a g-master lens and none of us would have complained for a moment it is as good as any of the g-master telephotos that i have used you know outside of like the super telephoto and so it really is a really fantastic lens and it's the best of its kind that i've ever reviewed on any platform and so i think that sony shooters are really a privilege to have such a great lens at a you know not an expensive but reasonable price for the kind of performance that it brings so there you have it i also do shoot fuji somewhat but i primarily do loaners from a fuji distributor here in canada when i do the reviews and i do enjoy fuji products but sony has been kind of the sweet spot for me in a lot of this this space and so it's where my own personal largest investment is at this point so as let's talk as we did in the last episode about lenses that may be going and so we've already kind of touched that that i may be you know changing things up a little bit in the tamron zoom space and that's mostly because tamron is offering newer and exciting options that are a little bit more tempting and possibly the 50 millimeter lenses that i would consider adding would be very very probably the 35 millimeter f 1.4 g master lens it is a beautiful lens optically and i love the size you know factor of it and i might be tempted to actually drop the samyang 35 millimeter f 1.8 which is a really good lens but the g master is in another class and so i might be tempted to drop that lens and to pick up the g master pony up a little extra money to move up to that but there is a a lot of the recent g master releases have been really really fantastic sony's doing a great job right now and i think that the huge lens selection out there at a variety of different price points a lot of what's on this table is not considered to be at the expensive end of the spectrum and so i think that that's really why sony is such an attractive platform as there are so many great lenses at so many different price points and that really is a very compelling reason to consider sony if you're kind of debating into what mirrorless space to go i'm dustin abbott and i hope that this has helped you out if you look in the description down below you will find linkage there to the reviews of most of the stuff on this table basically all of which that i've reviewed at some point and so if you want to get a little bit more a little more of a deep dive into those you can check out those links down there there's linkage to follow me on social media or to purchase some of my merchandise uh there's also linkage to become a patron to sign up for my newsletter and of course if you haven't already please click that subscribe button right here on youtube be sure to ring that bell so you get notifications when new content drops thanks for watching have a great day and let the light in [Music]

Channel: Dustin Abbott

Views: 21,766

Keywords: What's in my bag, what's in my kit, what is in Dustin Abbott's kit, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1, Sony a6600, a6400, mirrorless, full frame, G Master, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Dynamic Range, Tracking, Focus, Burst Rate, Sports, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Sony a1, Samyang, Tiny Series, Tamron

Id: -1Z2RpwUqMo

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021