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With two urban landscape tests under my belt, I was ready to integrate the Sony A7C for everyday use. A week after my second downtown Austin test, in April 2023, I brought the camera and my one lens, the Sony 24mm f2.8, to San Antonio. I attended an event at Trinity University and later joined my two sons, who live in San Antonio, for a nice dinner.

The Trinity Event was at Dicke Hall, their newest building. I did a Photo Essay on Dicke Hall at the end of 2022. The university used a new building technique called mass timber, which is more environmentally sound and uses a lovely structural wood. You can see the extensive wooden structure on this staircase.

In the evening, we headed to the Pearl District for dinner. It’s close to Trinity, and there are many worthwhile restaurants. We ate at Ladino, which features Mediterranean food. This seating area is not for the restaurant but something I saw inside the Pearl development.

While the flagship building is an old character-filled brewery turned hotel, it’s surrounded by clean and modern architecture, which I love.

After dinner, we walked through the Hotel Emma, the redeveloped hotel I mentioned. The lobby is crammed with mechanical vestiges of its brewing past. It’s dark inside, shooting at ISO 5000 with a 1/10 second shutter speed.

The moody seating area in the first photo is also from the hotel, just outside the lobby.

Finally, as we returned to the car, I snapped this picture of the calm, tourist-free Riverwalk next to the Pearl District. I’m using ISO 5000 again and slightly brightened and warmed the image.

It usually takes me a couple of months to make the best photos as I get familiar with a camera. A month into using the Sony A7C, I was off to a good start. While I complain about its modest in-body image stabilization, I prefer the Sony A7C’s controls to those of the Fujifilm X-S10.

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