Sony 135/2.8 [T4.5] STF

STF 135mm

Sony 135mm STF ‘Smooth Trans Focus’ – A Bit of Lens GAS Come Good – By Vincent Ferrier

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I am an amateur photographer, shooting family and friends and also doing outdoor / travel photography. I don’t think I suffer from GAS but I like to test gear, so I suppose I may suffer from GAS a bit. For my 50th birthday last year, I went for a Sony A7 III. Before that I tested a few systems, mostly Fuji APS-C format and some Sigma Foveon cameras. I really enjoyed them for different reasons but then I wanted to switch to FF and the Sony system because of the dynamic range of the camera that is really usable from ISO 100 to 6400, and for its autofocus performance for indoor action sports.

Sony 135mm STF

Sony 135mm STF ‘Smooth Trans Focus’ – A Different Compromise for Sharp Focus and Smooth Bokeh

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Months back, I talked myself (quite easily I should add) into buying a Sony/Minolta A-mount 135mm STF lens of regular reader Rollin Banderob. I was beyond intrigued by this unusual lens, and seeing Rollin shooting it on his Leica M10 made me want to do the same.

Unfortunately, it was one of those bits of GAS that came to nothing. In fact, the only thing I ended up using it for was as a slightly longer lens in combination with the Sony A6400 for video at work. That camera has a 1.5x crop sensor and with the “clear image zoom” which just uses a smaller part of the sensor and still give full HD video, it made for a ~400mm equivalent which turned out to be very useful for a few event videos we made.

Sony 135/2.8 [T4.5] STF Mini-Review – By Rollin Banderob

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As a photojournalist – in the vein of William Albert Allard, Eugene Richards and Alex Web – I strove to layer content in many parts of my images, and as such find obsession with overly thin depth of field (DOF) and the out of focus areas of a photograph, well, thin.. So what the heck am I doing with a lens that is the true bokeh grand master?

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