Anyone who follows İlhan Eroğlu on Instagram will be used to seeing his spectacular landscape and travel images from all corners of the globe. Usually he has travelled with his trusted Sony α7R III, but for the last few months he has also been using the α6600. Travelling across Europe, İlhan pushed the α6600 to its extremes to see what the camera was capable of, and the resulting images are spectacular.
According to İlhan , the most noticeable difference between the α6600 and the α7R III is the size. On its own the α6600 weighs just 503g, but İlhan paired the camera with just two E-Mount zoom lenses to give him complete coverage without having to carry a whole bag of lenses.
I took the E 16-55mm f/2.8 G lens and the E 70-350mm f/4.5-6.3 G OSS lenses with me,” Ilhan says, continuing, “they cover a huge range and allow me to be prepared for a number of different scenarios. With my α7R III I would usually have 4 lenses covering this focal range, so by using the α6600 the kit is a lot lighter. As a photographer, I like to walk around and search for different angles but when I have a bag full of cameras, lenses and tripods with me it’s incredibly heavy and becomes tiring quickly.
The α6600 and the two zoom lenses changed all of that, with İlhan having one of the lenses mounted on the camera and the other, literally, in his jacket pocket: “I could walk around all day without feeling like I even had a camera with me. It definitely relieved the burden I normally face!”
Although Sony lenses are designated as E- and FE-mount for their respective APS-C and Full Frame sensors, the E-mount itself is identical regardless of which Sony mirrorless camera is used. This gives photographers the ability to use the Full Frame lenses on the α6600 and allowed İlhan to be more flexible with his kit whilst travelling.
He explains, “in Venice I even used the new FE 20mm f/1.8 G lens on the α6600. It offered me the equivalent focal length of 30mm and in terms of sharpness it gave me exactly the same performance as I was seeing on my α7R III.
One of the most challenging images that İlhan shot with the camera was taken in his homeland of Turkey, in the usually bustling streets of Istanbul.
“I wanted the capture the moon as it was rising above the city,” explains İlhan, “I had to use the 70-350mm lens at its most extreme 350mm focal length, and then set the aperture to its maximum f/6.3 setting. It was quite a windy night, which made it tricky to keep the camera still and vibration to a minimum, particularly when shooting at a 525mm equivalent focal length. However, as you can see, I managed to achieve a very sharp, crisp image and was very happy with the performance of the camera and lens.’
"The world is a huge canvas for me. In every country I visit, I paint my own pictures by taking photos"
