I USED A NEW SONY FX30 AND A SONY FE 24-105MM LENS
UNUSUAL IMAGES PRODUCED BY A SONY FX30 [BROADSTONE AND GRANGEGORMAN 8 DECEMBER 2022 DURING AN UNUSUAL SUNSET]
A Collection of Unusual Images from a Sony FX30: Reassessing an Eerie December Light
I pre-ordered the Sony FX30 back in August 2022, though delivery was delayed until early December. That period of waiting felt familiar today, 7 September 2026, when I finally collected the newly released Sony FE 100-400mm f/5.6-8 OSS. I had originally pre-ordered the telephoto optic the moment it was announced, but a few days ago I spotted a photographer walking down the street with that very lens mounted to a Sony body. When asked, they pointed me toward an alternative local dealer. After checking with my regular dealer—who could still offer no firm dispatch date—I cancelled my standing order and secured one from the rival shop, which had three units sitting on the shelf.
Acquiring the FX30 in late 2022 prompted an urge to test it immediately. Several commentators had dismissed the camera as an unsuitable tool for still photography, categorising it strictly as a cinema body. Naturally, I wanted to see for myself. As soon as it arrived, I paired it with the versatile Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS lens and headed out to shoot.
The ambient conditions that day were peculiar. A low, diffused winter twilight hung in the air—I cannot recall whether it was moments before sunrise or just past sunset—and the resulting exposures appeared utterly unusable straight out of the camera.
Disappointed by the odd colour casts and murky shadows, I shelved the files and moved on.
Fast forward to the present. My workhorse remains an Intel 27-inch iMac. While macOS support for Intel silicon has drawn to a close, the machine still serves faithfully as a master display terminal, driving headless Apple Silicon hardware via Screen Sharing. A few days ago, I installed the latest Adobe Lightroom Classic update on the iMac, and to my surprise, performance remained remarkably fluid.
Browsing through an archive of older external drives tethered to the machine, I stumbled upon that forgotten catalogue from 8 December 2022. Curious to see what contemporary RAW demosaicing and updated shadow recovery algorithms could extract, I reprocessed those "lost" frames. The results are published below, and I shall leave it to you to decide whether modern software breathes fresh life into an old, discarded shoot.
Perhaps the lingering lesson here is simple: never be in too great a rush to write off past work—or to replace capable hardware.
Equipment Profile & Context
Sony FX30 (ILME-FX30): Released in late 2022, the FX30 caused debate among stills photographers due to its distinct cinema-line priorities. Built around an APS-C (Super 35) 26-megapixel back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor, it lacks a mechanical shutter and an electronic viewfinder (EVF). Despite these omissions, its sensor delivers wide dynamic range and 14-bit RAW stills, making it surprisingly capable for deliberate street and architectural captures once one adapts to composing entirely via the rear LCD screen.
Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS: A staple general-purpose zoom. Mounted on a full-frame body it covers wide-angle to moderate telephoto, but on the FX30’s Super 35 crop sensor, it offers an effective 36–157.5mm field of view. Its constant f/4 aperture, Optical SteadyShot (OSS), and linear AF motors provide steady handheld framing, though pairing it with an APS-C crop demands careful attention to low-light exposure limits.
Sony FE 100-400mm f/5.6-8 OSS: A compact, variable-aperture super-telephoto zoom designed for extended reach without the unwieldy bulk of traditional f/4.5-5.6 glass. Its slower aperture profile at the long end relies heavily on modern sensor ISO cleanliness and effective optical stabilisation, making it a handy, packable option for isolating distant architectural features and street scenes.
Intel 27-inch 5K iMac as a Management Console: Operating high-resolution vintage iMac displays via Apple Screen Sharing or VNC remains a practical way to repurpose discontinued x86 hardware. It keeps an excellent 5K panel in service as an administrative interface to orchestrate modern Mac Studio or Mac mini processing nodes on a local network.
A Collection of Unusual Images from a Sony FX30: Reassessing an Eerie December Light
I pre-ordered the Sony FX30 back in August 2022, though delivery was delayed until early December. That period of waiting felt familiar today, 7 September 2026, when I finally collected the newly released Sony FE 100-400mm f/5.6-8 OSS. I had originally pre-ordered the telephoto optic the moment it was announced, but a few days ago I spotted a photographer walking down the street with that very lens mounted to a Sony body. When asked, they pointed me toward an alternative local dealer. After checking with my regular dealer—who could still offer no firm dispatch date—I cancelled my standing order and secured one from the rival shop, which had three units sitting on the shelf.
Acquiring the FX30 in late 2022 prompted an urge to test it immediately. Several commentators had dismissed the camera as an unsuitable tool for still photography, categorising it strictly as a cinema body. Naturally, I wanted to see for myself. As soon as it arrived, I paired it with the versatile Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS lens and headed out to shoot.
The ambient conditions that day were peculiar. A low, diffused winter twilight hung in the air—I cannot recall whether it was moments before sunrise or just past sunset—and the resulting exposures appeared utterly unusable straight out of the camera.
Disappointed by the odd colour casts and murky shadows, I shelved the files and moved on.
Fast forward to the present. My workhorse remains an Intel 27-inch iMac. While macOS support for Intel silicon has drawn to a close, the machine still serves faithfully as a master display terminal, driving headless Apple Silicon hardware via Screen Sharing. A few days ago, I installed the latest Adobe Lightroom Classic update on the iMac, and to my surprise, performance remained remarkably fluid.
Browsing through an archive of older external drives tethered to the machine, I stumbled upon that forgotten catalogue from 8 December 2022. Curious to see what contemporary RAW demosaicing and updated shadow recovery algorithms could extract, I reprocessed those "lost" frames. The results are published below, and I shall leave it to you to decide whether modern software breathes fresh life into an old, discarded shoot.
Perhaps the lingering lesson here is simple: never be in too great a rush to write off past work—or to replace capable hardware.
Equipment Profile & Context
Sony FX30 (ILME-FX30): Released in late 2022, the FX30 caused debate among stills photographers due to its distinct cinema-line priorities. Built around an APS-C (Super 35) 26-megapixel back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor, it lacks a mechanical shutter and an electronic viewfinder (EVF). Despite these omissions, its sensor delivers wide dynamic range and 14-bit RAW stills, making it surprisingly capable for deliberate street and architectural captures once one adapts to composing entirely via the rear LCD screen.
Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS: A staple general-purpose zoom. Mounted on a full-frame body it covers wide-angle to moderate telephoto, but on the FX30’s Super 35 crop sensor, it offers an effective 36–157.5mm field of view. Its constant f/4 aperture, Optical SteadyShot (OSS), and linear AF motors provide steady handheld framing, though pairing it with an APS-C crop demands careful attention to low-light exposure limits.
Sony FE 100-400mm f/5.6-8 OSS: A compact, variable-aperture super-telephoto zoom designed for extended reach without the unwieldy bulk of traditional f/4.5-5.6 glass. Its slower aperture profile at the long end relies heavily on modern sensor ISO cleanliness and effective optical stabilisation, making it a handy, packable option for isolating distant architectural features and street scenes.
Intel 27-inch 5K iMac as a Management Console: Operating high-resolution vintage iMac displays via Apple Screen Sharing or VNC remains a practical way to repurpose discontinued x86 hardware. It keeps an excellent 5K panel in service as an administrative interface to orchestrate modern Mac Studio or Mac mini processing nodes on a local network.