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I went on a photo walk at a beautiful Japanese styled garden with a Canon EOS M6 Mark II and the Sigma 16mm f1.4 lens. It's worth noting that this equipment is now discontinued, but you can likely find it used. Sadly, the EF-M mount has been phased out. This photo walk was recorded in 2022 and has been on my work drive since then so I wanted to do something with it. The silver Canon EOS M6 Mark II & Sigma 16mm lens. I was using the silver version of the M6 Mark II. I won't go into a ton of detail about the camera itself in this article, but I will focus more on the lens. Camera Settings I also had two Canon M50 cameras at the time which worked well with the Sigma lens. For this photo walk, I used aperture priority with a minimum shutter speed of 1/60th of a second and a maximum ISO of 3200. I also had video stabilization on for the few clips I recorded (they are in the linked video). Since this camera doesn't have sensor-based stabilization, it uses a digital crop in vi...

It's time for another photo walk. This one was actually done way back in 2022 when I was using the Canon M6 Mark II with the Viltrox 33mm f1.4 lens for the EF-M system. Sadly, all of this equipment is probably discontinued at this point, except for the Viltrox lens, but you might be able to find it used if you look around. For this photo outing, I went to one of my favorite places, a beautiful Japanese-styled garden in the area. Given that it was around October at the time, it had a lot of color. A single red leaf on a rock, captured with the Canon M6 Mark II. The settings are 33mm, f/1.4, 1/320s, and 100 ISO. My Camera Setup for the Day For this photo outing, I recorded a settings video that I included in the linked video. Otherwise here's a basic description of the setup I have for the M6 Mark II on that photo outing. Of course, the touchscreen works as you would expect. I don't have that disabled.  I have the back dial fully disabled so it just doesn't get in my way....

Join me on a photo walk of a beautiful Japanese garden that was holding a summer festival. For this outing, I decided to work with some older equipment to see what kind of results I could get.  This was the second day of the event. It had rained on the first day, so I think that had an effect on this day; there wasn't quite as much going on as I had seen in previous years, but it was still fun to check out! Keep in mind throughout this article that italic text descriptions were generated by Gemini Pro 2.5 and were not specifically based on my video's information. A sign for the 2025 Japanese Summer Festival at Anderson Japanese Gardens. My Gear for the Day The Sony A7S camera with the Sony FE 24-70mm F/4 OSS lens attached. The camera I was using was the Sony A7S. This is a video-focused camera, but it works just fine for photos. However, I did have it set up in a mode that was not perfect for the situation. With the A7S, I was using the Sony FE 24-70mm F/4 OSS lens. I wanted s...

In this article, I'm going over my experiences with this setup. It's a Sony ZV-E10, which is video-focused, but I used it for mostly photography with a Viltrox 28mm f4.5 "pancake" lens. It's a very compact setup, which is great. But considering this is a video-focused camera, there are some quirks. And this lens itself is very unique. So, let's check it out.  Holding the Sony ZV-E10 with the Viltrox 28mm f/4.5 lens attached. I went to a beautiful Japanese-style garden in my area to take photos. It's a nice spot for casual photography. Considering that, I wanted to go as simple as possible with settings, so I was mostly using program mode with this setup. In photography, Program Mode, often indicated by a 'P' on the camera's mode dial, is an automatic shooting mode. In this mode, the camera automatically sets the aperture, shutter speed, and usually the ISO to achieve a correct exposure based on whatever metering mode it is in. However, the phot...

I've had this recording on my work drive for many years at this point. I went to a beautiful Japanese garden, used these lenses, and took some photos. The video is about the lenses, but also about the type of photography and the ways that I use the lenses.  First off, we have the 7Artisans 18mm f/6.3. This lens has a fixed aperture and is very compact. It's a really nice combination with the M6 Mark II or any small camera. This APS-C only lens will not cover a full-frame imaging circle besides the fact it's EF-M mount which never had larger than APS-C sensors.  A view of the Japanese Garden with the Canon EOS M6 Mark II, ready to shoot. The 7Artisans 18mm F6.3 lens, very compact. It's basically a body cap lens. The main consideration, and actually the main downside of this lens, is its fixed focus, with what they'd probably call "acceptable focus" at 0.35 meters (13.77 inches). This is limiting, especially with the style of photography I did here. Even so,...