Continuous

As Sony fanboys go, I am definitely one of them. Started out as a Minolta user but also got the first Sony HDV camera that landed in Israel, and I've always enjoyed the superb image quality that Sony had to offer over the competition.
That said, the video on the Sony A99 is still in some ways, half baked. It's a great stills camera but some of the video features are lacking. I don't understand why the Modes for video are in a menu separate from the modes dial for video. How come continuous auto focus that was supposed to be a great selling point for Sony SLTs is only available in P mode. There is nothing more bumming out than having the camera switch erratically it's exposure during shoot, sometimes veering to radical shutter settings that are unusable. Even in P mode, I found out during an interview shoot that focus will just not stick, the camera searching frantically for the focus on the wall. I would expect some focus "Search" on a fast moving target, say a person walking towards the camera, but not a rather static interview. This seems to happen if the person being interviewed leans right a little bit, since it seems that the focus relies on a center point in video.
Sony should rewrite or seriously upgrade their video code for the A99, if possible at all, or simply mention that video on a DSLR is still a limited feature. Sure, I could use manual focus, and I do, but in some situations, I would rather have a reliable auto focus on my camera, especially when using a lens such as the 50 1.4.
Now for some positive feedback: Shooting with the EX1,a "real" video camera on the same shoot, it seems that the A99 is much better in some ways. The color is much more accurate, skin tones are betters and highlights do not get overblown.
So I guess we're simply in some sort technological limbo at this point. All the technology exists for creating a great everything-is-included camera, but nobody seem to have the Steve Jobs qualities that you would need to bring out a product that does it all with little compromise.
Last thing about continuous focus. I tried it out on a stills shoot and it looked good at first, but then it  sort of broke apart. I had a person walk down the street, dance a little, turn around. During the turn, focus was definitely lost. Doesn't really matter in terms of a stills shoot, I just told the model to do it again, but in a video documentary situation, sometimes there is no re-doing and you're stuck with an out of focus shot.
So, my recommendation is - don't use the continuous focus feature if you can avoid it, and definitely don't rely on it. Use a monitor and reliable focus pulling and budget for it, you can. I'm still hoping Sony would provide Wi-fi tethering and image viewing on a remote laptop, but that will probably not happen for the A99.

Update: Had another video shoot outside with a young woman hanging from a rope. It was a seriously bright day, but I didn't have to use a ND filter to get a shallow depth of field with my 90mm 2.8 lens, I simply adjusted to M mode and set the shutter to a very fast one. In daylight, unlike my tests with indoor office lighting , the shots looked spectacular.

Elections are over and more about focusing

Finally, the Israeli Elections are over. The party that I was covering, Meretz, doubled it's power which I hope will double my salary on the next elections.
Most photos that I took were okay, some prettier than average, but I did get the chance to sneak in some artistic ones.

Zehava Galon, Party Leader (Zehava means Golden in Hebrew)

I also got some better than expected results when shooting a behind the scenes green screen shoot.

The latitude and the superb color of the A99 are showing here in the way the green looks really good and both the LCD display and the stage are presented nicely in the same shot even though the lighting situation on them on them is totally different.

As for the focusing issues, I am still mostly using manual focus, sometimes pressing the focus button to auto focus. I've also programmed the front button to choose between focus modes, just in case I do want a continuous focus mode which is way better than switching through the menu system which is a seriously silly design. Nobody wants to fumble through myriad menu option on a critical feature such as focus.
The Sony menu system should be re-worked. There are things that photographers do more often such as formatting a card should be in a quick menu or easier to find on a page titled something like "operation".

Waiting for the A99 firmware update, but not holding my breath for anything other than better lens support.

Flash photography at high shutter speeds

I first encountered this when I was shooting this wedding. I set the shutter to faster than 1/200 and suddenly I  get black bars on the frame. Setting the camera temporarily to P mode solve the issue, but of course, I'd rather work in manual mode.

Shutter speed: 1/320 

My good Facebook pal Jon Levi helped me figure that out. It seems that the Sony HVL-F58AM explicitly says that shorter exposure times than 1/200 will create this effect, since the shutter on DSLRs is NOT digital but still works with "curtains" as shown in this explanation:

 http://www.petapixel.com/2011/02/04/lesson-on-slr-shutters-and-how-flash-synchronization-works/

As you can see in the photo above the "black bar" is actually the frame without the flash hitting anything and the rest in this case is a bit overexposed bit where the flash hit. You can use that for artistic purposes, but probably not a lot of uses for that.

To work around this issue, my flash has an HSS mode. However, though this mode was on when I was shooting, it didn't work for two reasons. One, it doesn't work in flash manual mode, only in TTL which I don't use. Two, I was using my radio flash controller, and HSS requires that the flash be on the camera itself. This strengthens my case for a new and improved flash setup for Sony. Sony wants to be this innovator to win some high end camera market share against Canon and Nikon? This is definitely one ares that could do with a complete overhaul. Sony should totally rethink how people use flash photography and make cheaper ones that are a generation ahead of the competition, perhaps borrow a page out of the Steve Jobs Apple playbook.

Sony, if you are listening I have tons of ideas that could put you well ahead of the competition. Also, I wouldn't mind living in Japan for a while (hint hint).

Update: It seems that some of the issues might be specifically with that A99 model as seen here:
http://www.sony.co.uk/discussions/message/1247566

Thankfully I don't need a lot of higher than 1/200 flash photos and I can use low ISO settings to keep the iris open instead of fast shutter.

Political Photographer

I've been contracted by the Meretz Party to cover their pre-election activities. So I will be posting a lot of green photos in the near future.
The first event I covered for them was the new year's party. I took my bicycle to this event, unpacked my gear only to find out that I forgot the Minolta-to-ISO flash adapter. This was my first job for them and already without showing a single photo I was looking really unprofessional. The reason I took it of was that I was using the LCD in reverse mode to shoot some video for another project in the studio. I needed 40 cm more to get the right frame so I placed the camera next to the wall and flipped the LCD. Unfortunately you have to take the adapter off for this to work, and of course I forgot to put it back on.
Luckily, my artsy photographer friend Merav was there and we figured out a plan to use the cellphone flashlight as key light. This worked well with 1600 to 3200 ISO.

Shani looking good with my Samsung Galaxy S3 lighting her from below
and room florescent doing the rest of the work. 

At a certain point, the Meretz art director came in and asked me to take funkier photos like he has seen some other photographer do where the object is in focus and the rest is blurred across the shot. This actually worked well with me not having wireless or any control over the flash. I had Merav hold the flash, opened the shutter for a second or two during which I shouted "Now!" for Merav to activate the flash manually. Low ISO and medium Iris was used so that the camera registered mostly the image lighted by the flash. Once the flash went off I swiped the camera towards building lights in the background and other lights to create the requested effect.

In camera trick photography effects at work

Note to self - should probably get a backup adapter and put in my bag, just in case.
  

More dance

I shot another modern dance performance in the same place as before when I had no cameras (waiting for my 580 to be fixed and A99 to be delivered) and used a Canon Rebel T2i instead.
The experience was of course much different. I did have a second photographer using a Canon EOS Kiss X3, shooting at the other edge of the stage as we were not allowed to cross the stage.
We both shot mostly in ISO 3200. I used the 50mm 1.4 lens, and Alon used a 50mm 1.8 lens. If you've ever been to a low budget performance in Israel, you'd know that they light the stage very little. They say it gives more character and drama to the shows.
Personally I think they should always have proper back lighting so we would not be forced to use these high ISO settings. Of course the lower-end Canon camera produced more grainy photos.

Hanukkah in high ISO

Generally speaking, I don't like to take pictures in family or friends' parties of any kind. I like to participate in them like other people do, have fun, talk to people, dance, etc... I take photography seriously so it takes time out of my being a regular Joe.
However, from time to time I find myself in a situation where I have to take photos due to various reasons. For example, my mom pressured me into taking pictures at a family gathering for Hanukkah. She now has a few granddaughters and she really likes to have photos of them.

My family at 1600 ISO

It was a nighttime event and I knew the lighting won't be very good so I decided it was a good opportunity to test the high ISO capabilities of the A99. I shot at 1600, 3200, 4000 and 5000 ISOs, previously unheard of. Surprisingly enough , the results were not that bad, certainly better than the A580s. That said, the rules for good high ISO photography seem to be sort of the same as "regular" ISO. You still need to have contrast in order to have a nice image. You can have much less light to work with, but it stills needs to be pretty.

My brother and father at ISO 3200

My niece at 5000 ISO

 On a very different subject I now have an Indiegogo campaign for my upcoming feature film, so if you want to support a most revolutionary film, you can donate here.

A little bit of Video

Finally got to use the A99 in a video job. I will probably not post the result video as it is not very pretty due to various reasons beyond my control.
 We shot a hand held scene where I switched focus manually between a newspaper showing some picture and a cellphone animating that picture using Augmented Reality technology. I used my 50mm 1.4 lens exclusively for this.
 I want to thank Sony for the really awesome  LCD on the A99 that lets me do these scenes where I can focus really well using just using the camera's screen. I did practice this quite a lot with the A580, and it works sort of the same and possibly slightly better with the A99.
The director of the video didn't like the crop factor of the video when using stabilization, so I had that switched off at some point.
I also discovered that, at least using the A99, some cellphones, including my Samsung Galaxy S3's display looked very flickery. I tried to change settings on both the A99 and the S3, including shutter speed, but nothing seemed to solve the problem.
 That said, the iPhone 3G and Samsung Galaxy S2 worked well for these shots. The iPad 2 was also a little bit flickerish, but slightly less than the Galaxy S3. I guess this is due to some new super AMOLED spec, with lower refresh rates that the screen traded for sharpness.

We also shot a few test scenes for my upcoming feature, "Spiral" but I will not post these either at this point. I did get a chance to use the flip to the front position of the LCD screen to both setup the shot without the need for a stand-in and to show the actresses how they looked in the shot.