Prague 2025

My wife and I had been planning to visit Prague for some time already. This summer was the opportunity for us! We went for three days. It was primarily a trip to enjoy time together with my parents, but I also brought my photo gear and managed to take a few pictures.

Gear used

I selected the gear based on planning the following kind of pictures:

Family photos and some street photography. Regular focal length. I brought the Viltrox 25mm APS-C lens, which translates to 37.5mm on fullframe. I was putting this lens mostly on my Alpha 5100, which is my casual walkaround camera.
Architecture and cityscape photography. Wide angle with shift function. I adapted an old manual-focus Tokina 17mm f3.5 lens (25.5mm on fullframe) to my Alpha 6300 using a Fotodiox Shift adapter for E-Mount. This odd lens setup worked well for the wide angle architecture pictures.
Cityscape photographed during boat tour. Telezoom lens. I brought the Sony 70-350mm APS-C lens (105-505mm on fullframe). Wide angle zoom lens. I brought the Sony 10-18mm f/4 APS-C lens. I used both the Tele zoom and the Wide angle zoom during the boat tour.

As I was taking pictures of both city scapes / architecture and family pictures in parallel, I decided to wear two cameras (Alpha 5100 + Alpha 6300) in parallel. I put the small Alpha 5100 on a Peak Design Capture Clip, mounted to the Peak Design Pro Pad, wearing it on the left side of my belt, this was for the family pictures. In parallel I wore the Alpha 6300 with the adapted Tokina 17mm lens on a camera suitably long for cross body, wearing it on my right side when unused.

Based on this setup I could move along with my family, not having to worry about spending too much time switching lenses and also being able at any moment to snap a quick family picture. This setup worked very well for me.

Notes on using the Tokina 17mm as a shift lens on Alpha 6300

The Tokina 17mm worked well on my Alpha 6300 in combination with the Fotodiox Shift adapter. I got the lens for 90€ on eBay (see here for a review). The adapter cost 140€. So, the combined cost for this was 230€ which is quite good compared to how much shift lenses like the Laowa lenses or Canon shift lenses cost. However, there are some things to be aware of.

Tokina 17mm adapted with Fotodiox shift adapter to Sony Alpha 6300

The Tokina 17mm lens has the Canon FD mount. The Canon FD mount has an aperture lever that is moved by the Fotodiox adapter to the right position by moving the ring with the “Install” label on the adapter to the left and aligning the little red dot with the four aperture dots. This ring on the adapter is a little easy to move. Sometimes it happened to me that this adapter ring accidentally moved back which had the effect that the aperture opened up completely. However, this lens does not produce very nice results at an aperture of f/3.5 and I lost a few pictures based on the accidentally opening of the aperture.

For the architecture photos that ended up in decent quality I usually simply set the aperture ring of the lens to f/11 and the focus ring to infinity.