Sony 50mm f/1.8 Review

For just $150+ I already have a new Sony lens 50mm f/1.8. After I bought my Sony a300, I was already hoping to buy a portrait lens because the lens that came with the camera produces generic quality photos. After taking few shots with my new portrait lens, I am very satisfied with the image quality it delivers because, for just a small amount of price, I can already shot professional looking pictures. These are the sample photos I took.

I just tried taking pictures of people until I learned that large aperture captures lots of light. After reading tutorials about photography in low light conditions, I began taking pictures at night. I tried taking pictures of landscapes and obtain satisfactory results. After I got bored shooting mountains and cities at night, I aimed my camera to the night sky and I was amazed by the results. Even though there are lots of pollutants in the air, I still obtained pictures that contain hundreds of stars that I can’t even see with my naked eye.

I am very impressed with my new lens because I can capture portrait shots with satisfactory quality. With this lens, I also learned long exposure photography for night shots.

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Sony A330's ISO Test

I always see blog posts about ISO tests of certain cameras and I always observe that they always capture images in a well-lighted room. Testing the ISO capability of your camera in a perfectly-lighted room is useless. Most often, the owners of these cameras are boasting that their systems produce little or no noise. Obviously, if there is perfect lighting for the subject, then there will be few or no noise in the digital image. I have heard that some expensive DSLRs can’t produce noise even at ISO 6400, way beyond the limit of my camera which is only 3200.

Increasing the ISO sensitivity of a camera will help brighten the image when the subject is not well lighted. Increasing the ISO level of the camera is also way better than using the built-in flash of a camera because these built-in flashes produce strong shadows when used in dark places.

So I decided to test my Sony A330’s ISO capability in a low-lighted room. Well, the results are quite promising for ordinary sizes like 3R and 4R but for 100% crop, some photos are unusable.

ISO 100

ISO 200


ISO 400


ISO 800


ISO 1600


ISO 3200

All of these images are unedited except for the comparisons between the full size and the 100% crop. Overall, Sony A330’s ISO sensitivity is excellent since the noise produced even at its maximum ISO level is still good for 4R or 3R prints. Adobe has also developed a software called Adobe Lightroom that has a feature that can remove noise without destroying much of the detail of a photo.

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