After ending the previous post testing the Sony 50mm f/1.4’s successor – the Zeiss 55mm f/1.8, it was tempting to wonder if the app that spins the wheel of lenses is somehow watching what I write when it came to a stop on my newly purchased Zeiss. At least I didn’t have to reach far to put it on the camera….

What was different though was the camera body it would be put on – the Sony A6700 taking the honour this time around. For those who don’t know, the biggest difference between the A6700 and my other mirrorless camera – the Sony A7R IV, is that the A6700 has an APS-C sensor compared to a full frame sensor on its bigger brother. This means that a 55mm lens has an equivalent full frame focal length of 84.2 mm and an aperture value of f/2.75. Having used the 50mm f/1.4 and f/1.8 on a crop sensor camera for fifteen or so years this is a scenario I am somewhat familiar and comfortable with using.

The plan was to take the camera and lens on a morning walk around the outskirts of Grantham, hoping to capture the autumnal colours that are in their final throws as the storms and cold weather rapidly sheds the trees of their leaves once again. As luck / planning would have it, the day dawned with blue skies which would remain the case for most of the near ten mile walk, only clouding over in the latter stages. I think over the three and and a half hours I was out I spent more time photographing than walking, I took a lot of pictures, getting used to the new lens and the new camera, which is taking a bit of getting used to with it’s newer menu layout and lack of thumb joystick which I rely on a lot to focus with my other cameras. The easiest method now it seems is to use AF tracking to pick your subject and recompose, which is very good, but not 100% reliable.

First off I wanted to check out the new footpath on the controversial new Manthorpe / Great Gonerby house build. Grantham is a town that has by all accounts struggled with its infrastructure to cope with the traffic before they planned to build thousands of new houses with little thought / effort to accommodate this extra traffic payload and the indications are that the company building the houses is playing the same tricks that other companies have pulled to shirk their responsibilities and promises to alleviate the issues.

They have though built a new footpath that runs on the route of an existing right of way and will presumably link the new housing estate with the existing Manthorpe Estate.

For the past year or so this has been the path diversion we have been made to take while the land set aside for the buildings has been fenced off. Now we have this:

A proper tarmac footpath which I assume will also be a cycle path linking the new housing estate with the existing Manthorpe Estate and Manthorpe village. I’m sure in time it will look more aesthetically pleasing. In the meantime you get the impression you are walking through a building site, which is, funnily enough, exactly what you are doing.

The last three pictures were shot through the wire fence which made composition tricky, trying to avoid as much of the wire blocking the frame as possible. One can only imagine what the estate will look like once completed and the area as it once was will be a long forgotten memory.

What I do know is that not one single element of the five hundred or so planned houses will contain an ounce of the originality and quirkiness of the architecture of the houses of Manthorpe, which the new estate will become perilously close to encroaching. This chimney above never ceases to bring a smile whenever I pass it – the twisted brick the most eye catching of many quirky designs that has made it a designated Conservation Area. It was around here I was wishing I’d bought my variable ND filter with me, reaching the mechanical shutter limit of 1/4000 quite easily at not even the brightest apertures, and not even completely covered by the 1/8000 electronic shutter. It’s a consideration you need to make when shooting outside with wide open apertures. The colours that the lens produced was very pleasing – not a lot of post processing was required to enhance the vibrant, saturated tones.

Grantham has its flag fans; this is one of their efforts hoisted on a lamppost in Queen Elizabeth’s park. It shows you which way the wind is blowing, which is handy….

When I saw this cyclist I quickly toggled on the AF tracking and it nailed each frame I took, which I was pretty impressed with considering this is an older lens. I haven’t yet stress tested the AF on the A6700 which is meant to be excellent. To be honest I don’t really have an issue with the AF on the supposedly inferior A7R IV, but seeing the AF on the A6700 lock on and follow a subject is very cool!

The next footpath I found myself, much of the floor was covered in dead leaves. A trick to try and bring out some more vibrancy in the Autumn colours is to adjust the white balance, especially if you shoot with auto white balance switched on, which I do 99% of the time as I shoot raw + jpeg – the former allowing total flexibility over white balance in post production. In most instances I found simply switching to cloudy or shade, produced an overly warm (yellow) image, instead I would move the slider to the right to between 5500 to 6000, depending on the picture. This brought out the oranges in particular, without overdoing it.

I had about a second to try and compose this shot of the cyclist as he came past me and I tried to capture him in the small patch of light in an otherwise shaded path. It doesn’t quite work – he would be better if he wore brighter clothing, and if the sun were a little lower in the sky it would better differentiate the shaded path from what is lit. But I like the idea of him riding into the darkness….

The opposite of the shot with the cyclist in that there is light at the end of the tunnel formed by the trees. Again not totally satisfied with the end result – I think a further crop to take out the sky and emphasise the tunnel effect would be an immediate improvement.

Seeing a Pyracantha shrub always brings about nostalgia as a fine example covered the wall of my family home when I was a child. They were quite a few on present on the walls of the houses I walked past. The Zeiss did a nice job here of bringing out the colours and blurring the background in an interesting, pleasing way.

These electricity pylons run right through the houses on the Sunningdale estate and really don’t look very pleasant to live under. It showed also one of the flaws of the Zeiss 55mm lens and that is that chromatic aberration (CA) is pretty strong when the lens is or is nearly wide open. Luckily it is easy to remove in post production and in a picture like this wouldn’t even be noticed unless you were able to zoom in to way beyond 100%.

The crumbling brick walls that protect Belton Park Golf Club players from the road that runs alongside its perimeter is presumably at least as old as when the club was founded in 1890 and is badly damaged in this and other areas. The wired fencing erected as a seemingly semi-permanent security solution are fairly ugly, but given that the other side of the road houses Alma Park Industrial Estate, I highly doubt that the Alma Park residents care too much.

The Woodland Trust have done a really great job over the past ten years or so turning the Londonthorpe woods and the land surrounding the Belton Estate into a most pleasant walking (and cycling) experience. These signposts are just one example of the efforts made.

This isn’t a great shot but what was interesting is that the both AF and the AF tracking simply couldn’t focus on the berries in the middle of the frame, insisting instead on hunting mostly for the trees in the background. In the end I manually focussed, which is relatively straightforward with focus peaking and the magnification settings enabled.

I’d normally shoot this type of landscape shot at around f/6.3 but I was in an f/2 kind of mood so tried to focus on the small benches midway up the hill.

The Woodland Trust info boards made a note of the deadwood and its purpose it serves. One service is to make for pleasing photographs! I opted for a more closed aperture to show some of the long log in focus, whilst able to somewhat blur its full length which I think helps to emphasise it’s length.

I was trying to play with the light available here – darker where the metal gate is in the foreground and lighter on the only tree in sight that has autumnal hues in the midframe.

The vista looking west towards Nottingham is interesting in that here at Londonthorpe is the high point for the surrounding area. If you turn around and head east between here and the North Sea. It’s all gradually downhill into the Lincolnshire fens and as then it’s as flat as a pancake and barely a foot above sea level!

I was perched up on a stile to take this shot of some dark berries that stuck out with the surrounding red berries behind. I shot them at a moderate aperture to try and show some semblance of the red balls being berries, with only partial success!

This shot gives glimpses of the 3D Pop that the lens is partly famed for if you look up at the branches and foliage in the upper portion of the image. Another natural tunnel in the background – a popular theme with this walk!

The jewel in the Londonthorpe Woods area is probably the mile long wheelchair friendly (except where in a few places where nature is doing its best to make it a touch challenging) loop that was opened just in time for the Covid lockdown to make it one of the must visit attractions in the area. Now it sees a lesser but steady flow of visitors who are rewarded with ever changing views. I like to run up to here and do some laps every now and again, the gently undulating meandering path pleasant in all weathers (And I think I have run it in just about all weathers!)

There was theme of benches and picnic tables on my walk. This one is probably my favourite. The sun, which by now was intermittently disappearing behind clouds, was trying to shine a little brighter on the bench here.

This elderly gentleman seemingly being pulled along by his eager young dog adds a touch of interest to this picture. Once again the camera and lens did a great job of getting him fully in focus with just a second or two to compose the image.

Just around the corner and this seemingly abandoned girls’ bike caught the eye. You have to wonder what was going on for someone to leave their bike in a wood….

Londonthorpe Woods has been connected to Grantham by a path that begins in Alma Park Industrial Estate. They have made some considerable effort to make what could be a very unappealing concrete path more pleasant – one such way is to demonstrate winners of a photo competition – the subject being Londonthorpe Woods itself. I like the way that nature is attempting to imitate the art here.

This eyesore on the other side of the path has is appeased somewhat when the light allows it.

More examples of how the Woodland Trust, in association with the National Trust, have attempted to make something quite pleasant out of something that doesn’t scream beautiful nature when you encounter it. A possible unintended aesthetically pleasing feature of this path are the shadows the fence on the left of the picture of the left can produce – shown somewhat in the picture on the right. When the light is more favourable, the result can be quite striking!

So that’s just a sample of the many pictures I took on my walk with the Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 and Sony A6700. All in all it was quite a successful walk, a fair few pictures I was happy with although with no one picture I was delighted with. There were plenty of stock autumnal shots for the archive and a fair few mundane images that will be of more interest when I look back on them in the future.

Considering that the Zeiss is a lens I would perhaps not normally choose for a walk where I wasn’t planning on shooting portraits it worked well, particularly when being able to melt away the background was desired and the autumnal colours were certainly shown in a good light. There were some instances when I would have preferred something a bit wider or with a bit more reach, but that’s always the way when you carry with you a prime lens – you just have to do the best with what you have and have no regrets. I will also like to use it as it was intended when built on a full frame camera to see how it performs. I suspect it will do even better!