It has been 18 months since I last posted a blog post, and the truth of the matter is I have been so busy that I have tended to just post on social media and been remiss with the blog.
But today is a day I really must blog the news that I have become a Sony Europe Imaging Ambassador. To say I am thrilled is an understatement, I am absolutely honoured to have been invited to represent and work with the great people at Sony Europe Imaging as a brand ambassador.
Now what does this mean? Do I get paid lots of money for being a Sony Europe Imaging Ambassador? Do I get all the latest Sony photographic equipment for free? Well actually no, there is no payment for being an ambassador or free kit, it doesn't work like that and neither should it.
It is about Sony recognising credible photographers who have first-hand experience of using Sony equipment that also have a great portfolio created with the Sony kit.
People that follow me online will already be aware that I have been shooting Sony professionally since the beginning of 2017 in top flight sport including the English Premier Football League and Super League Rugby. My portfolio is also awash with environmental portraiture, landscape and architectural work, all created on Sony full frame mirrorless cameras.
I am a person that has shot mirrorless cameras since 2009, but was forced to shoot them alongside DSLR's. I was an early adopter of the benefits of the mirrorless camera system and all it offered over the DSLR in terms of feature set. However, a few essential things were lacking on the mirrorless cameras I had used before the Sony Alpha series came along. Fast and accurate focusing capability and image quality were sorely lacking.
It has been my experience that Sony full frame cameras now outperform the best of the high-end DSLR cameras in terms of focusing and image quality and they have finally enabled me to move completely away from DSLR's and into the Sony full-frame mirrorless system.
The ability of the Sony A9 to shoot at 20 frames per second and utilise 693 autofocus points and shoot 241 RAW files without hitting the buffer all with a silent shooting option and zero blackout in the viewfinder is a sports photographers dream. This is in a word 'innovation', something that has in my opinion been lacking in DSLR's for many years.
The ability to see your picture before you take it in the electronic viewfinder with exposure value and depth of field represented accurately is one of the key advantages of shooting Sony full frame mirrorless cameras.
Eye autofocus is another key feature of shooting the Sony full-frame mirrorless system, where the camera identifies and recognises a human eye and locks focus onto it very accurately, a real advantage especially when shooting with wide apertures where the depth of field is super shallow and focusing can be problematic.
in fact, there are so many advantages in the Sony full frame mirrorless system that it was simply a 'no-brainer' for me to switch into the system, so much that it made absolutely no sense not to do so.
The image sensors in Sony FF cameras are state of the art back-illuminated sensors that are fabricated by Sony as the world leaders in sensor technology.
Sony are leading the way and innovating like nobody else in this market and rightly deserve the praise and rewards they are reaping. They are like a breathe of fresh air in what had become a stagnate market in terms of innovation.
Sony is intuitive enough to realise that photographers like a choice in cameras depending on their type of photography or inteded use, so they have four Sonly Alpha cameras which I would like to explain.
I am genuinely excited about what Sony are bringing to the photographic world with their innovation and for what the future holds for us all as photographers.
These are exciting times for our industry and I am privileged to be part of it and owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people at Sony Imaging for their support, encouragement and opportunities afforded to me by them.