People’s Flower Gardens

PHOTOGRAPHED 24 FEBRUARY 2024

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I am experimenting with AI and some of the content below was produced by Microsoft CoPilot or Google’s Bard AI. Based on my experience to date the results can be disappointing and frequently inaccurate or even false.

Phoenix Park – People’s Flower Gardens is a 9-hectare section of the massive Phoenix Park in Dublin.

This enclosed and immaculately manicured Victorian flower garden was laid out and opened in the mid-nineteenth century as the Promenade Grounds. It provides an opportunity to enjoy the horticulture of that era at its best.

The garden features a large ornamental lake with various fowl, a children’s playground, picnic areas, and Victorian bedding schemes. It’s a great spot for walking kids or dogs. Visitors often bring bread to feed the ducks.

You will find the People’s Flower Gardens between the Parkgate Street entrance and the North Circular Road entrance to the Phoenix Park.

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TODAY IS USED THE SONY 85MM LENS [THIS IS NOT A REVIEW]

The Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM lens is an absolute gem for portrait photography.
Let’s dive into the details:

Image Quality: The lens ticks all the right boxes for portraiture on a full-frame camera. With its 85mm focal length and fast f/1.4 aperture, it excels at isolating the main subject against a beautifully blurred background. The image quality is stunning, and the bokeh is wonderfully soft and dreamy, even when stopping down a little. The lens features a very well-rounded 11-blade diaphragm that contributes to the pleasing bokeh.

Build and Handling: The build quality is rock-solid, and the lens is weather-sealed. It’s part of Sony’s flagship G Master (GM) lineup, which means top-quality construction. Notably, it includes a customisable focus-hold button and an aperture control ring with a ‘de-click’ option for smooth transitions during video shooting.

Optical Design: The optical path incorporates a high-precision XA (eXtreme Aspherical) element for enhanced bokeh quality. Additionally, there are three ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements to boost sharpness, contrast, and reduce colour fringing.

Performance: Autofocus, based on a Linear SSM (Super Sonic wave Motor), is fast and near-silent. Sharpness is excellent wide open at f/1.4 and becomes stunning when stopped down slightly. The lens also features Sony’s nano-structure AR coating to minimize ghosting and flare.

Price: It’s undeniably a pricey lens, but its performance more than justifies the cost.
In summary, the Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM is ideal for top-quality portraiture and still-life photography. Whether capturing people or objects, this lens delivers outstanding results.

The Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM lens has garnered acclaim for its optical excellence, but it’s not without a peculiar issue related to autofocus noise.

Let’s delve into the details:
Focus Noise: Some owners including myself] have reported an unusual noise when the lens focuses. Descriptions range from a coffee grinder-like sound to a scraping noise. This issue was particularly prominent in the lens’s early days, around 2016-2017. You can find discussions about it on forums like SonyAlphaForum, Fredmiranda, and Dpreview.

Scratches Inside the Lens: In a few cases, this autofocus noise seems to have caused scratches inside the lens. While not widespread, it’s essential to be aware of this potential concern.

Comparisons and Observations:
Roger Cicala from LensRentals conducted some preliminary investigations:
Noise: All the lenses exhibit some noise during focusing, with varying levels of loudness. Most likely, this noise comes from the motor (possibly Piezo motor noise).
Inner Barrel Markings: Over half of the lenses have markings on the inner barrel when the focusing element is retracted toward the mount. These markings could be lube or scrapings in the plastic.
Dust: Like many wide-aperture 85mm lenses, the Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM has some dust particles inside, which is typical and not unique to this lens.
Lube Streaks: No lube streaks on inner elements were observed.
Metal Shavings: The inner barrel doesn’t appear to be metal, and no dust particles resemble reflective metal shavings.
Noise Consistency: After focusing back and forth 500 times, there was no noticeable change in noise.

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