Public Art

NEAR THE UCD SUTHERLAND SCHOOL OF LAW

Abstract: Catherine Greene (b.1960) graduated in sculpture from NCAD in 1984. She is an established figurative sculpture working in bronze and latterly mixed media and lives and works in county Kildare. ‘Portal’ was specially commissioned for the UCD Sutherland School of Law and marks the transition from the outer residential and support areas of the campus into the pedestrianised academic heart of the university. Viewers are invited to walk through the sculpture echoing the allegorical nature of the work.

Today an appointment in Clonskeagh was cancelled and I ended up near the UCD university campus and I had my camera with me. It was a Sony A7RIV but it was configured differently to normal and it was fitted with a Sony E 18-105mm f/4 G OSS ( SEL18105G ) so the A7RIV automatically switched to crop mode. So what is crop mode? The basic concept of crop mode (aka Super 35) is incredibly simple. You’re just cropping the sensor to use the typical APS-C size (1.5x crop). What this means is that you’re achieving a tighter field of view out of your full frame lenses, but at the cost to image quality (megapixels).

To resolve some issues I pre-processed the images using DXO ProRAW … a very slow process.

The build quality of this low cost lens is surprisingly high. The lens body is made of metal based on a metal mount and not only that – it does not extend during focus/zoom actions which is pretty much unique considering the very long zoom range (equivalent to “28-162mm”). It is not a small lens but the package is reasonable compact relative to its range and the constant max aperture of f/4.