This weekend was busy! My wife wanted to go to the Harry Potter convention here in town, so we had to go to bed early and get up like any other weekday without sleeping in. I know, such a rough life. It was pretty cool, the convention. I like the movies, but I’m not as big into HP as a lot of the folks there. One thing I found really interesting was the Raptors.

Wait, what? It’s a Harry Potter convention…

The Raptor Rescue from Conway brought them up because, you know, Hedwig.

Owls are part of the Raptor family of birds, and they are cool. They started off by sitting outside the Town Center, and everyone got a close look at them. My favorite? The Owls, of course.

As a photographer, I am happy with these pictures, but I am even more impressed with the quality of the camera I have. I have a new Sony a7III, and it really makes me not miss my “crop” sensor a77 that I’ve been shooting on for years. I shot all these photos with my Sony 50mm off the shelf Prime lens. Nothing special to it, just a run of the mill lens. But the quality is so good, way better than what I am used to. The Sony a7III is a full frame camera with about 20 stops of exposure built in.

Almost all of these shots on this page are cropped. Not just cropped in, but SUPER cropped. Here is the full photo of the Horned Owl.

Now, Here is just cropping in on the eyes.

It’s not precisely Pixel Peeping, but I am really stoked about the resolution of this camera.

One other thing that really makes me happy about the a7III is the amount of detail the stills retain when underexposed. Sony always does an excellent job of keeping detail in the blacks. Just like a RED camera, the Sony holds up when underexposed but really can’t deal effectively with over-exposure when compared to their counterparts. But really, I shoot dark all the time, it’s my style, so this camera makes my life so much easier in post.

These shots were mostly outside with the bright sky behind the subject. The photos were able to expose well and with very little noise. I was just running and gunning with these shots so let's not judge the shooter, ok?

In Lightroom, you can get even closer with the RAW photo, and I looked really hard and could not find any noise what-so-ever. Ok, maybe a keener eye might find defects, but they would be hard pressed.

Then we were off to see my father. It was his birthday on Saturday, and they had a little wine.

I noticed a cool looking thing in front of me on the counter. Since I had my camera with me, I couldn’t help myself.

I think this might be a shot I set up later for a product type shot. Better lighting, cleaner glasses, and probably not a wine stain, leaking down the label. But you know, it kinda works.

So, we all went out to eat for his birthday to an ok restaurant in Springdale that is kinda famous. It has been host to three Presidents and the latest season of “True Detective” on HBO, the AQ Chicken House.

Still using the 50mm for all these shots, I was able to pull the detail out of them without sacrificing image quality even under some of the worst photographic conditions you can think of. Not too shabby.

The next day, it was finally sunny, but it was Sunday and Screenwriting day. Donald and I spent almost ten hours talking over just the opening image of our latest screenplay. UG!

He was running behind so that morning I went out and shot with my Tamron 70-300 zoom I bought for my a77. Fortunately, I thought far enough ahead to purchase the full frame version of the lens, so It works perfectly. The only problem I do have with it is that the lens information doesn’t pass through to the camera. Oh well. I can see the aperture but nothing else.

Since I couldn’t really go for a photo walk or leave the driveway (remember, I was waiting for Donald to show up), I decided to get some photos of the Cardinals and Robins that live in my yard, and of course, they weren’t around, so I had to wait on them too. With my patience rewarded I did get a few shots.

It was such a busy weekend that I had to include everything that went on in one post, I guess. Maybe I am just being a little lazy and not separating it all out into a daily thing, but as you can tell, I am really more interested in the photography of the weekend than I am Harry Potter stuff, but whatever.