Jumping to Sony

Sony hype is currently off the charts....a7r4.. 60 mega pickles....

And that's apparently not the big announcement lol...

 

Canon don't even have a professional mirrorless, and here is Sony with a good camera with great features for not many more dollars than the A7Riii, which means the A7Riii (and by extension, the A7iii) will come down in price.

 

To be fair, the R3 is $3000 today and the R4 is $5500.

83% more expensive.

 

Ah - I was thinking it was around the $4.5k mark for some reason.

That is a shitload of money to be spending on a body :/

 

I am more and more thinking that spending 4K to upgrade my 2 RIII bodies to RIV bodies seems like a waste of money when the RIIIs do everything I need right now. Though that could all go out the door when I get one in my hands.

 

Had a shoot today, I took I just took about 1400 shots and the camera got confused with the file numbering. I have no idea why, but it started writing from a random image number and then must have realised its mistake half way through and went back to the correct numbering system.

The end result is two different directories on each card and hundreds of duplicate image names.

 

Thats fine, just copy them in and select use a different name when it asks to overwrite. Then sort by capture time. Have had this happen on Canon multiple times as well, only annoying if you arent paying attention when backing up.

 

I take it the AF Assist on the new X2T-S still doesn't work on Sony?

The additional bulk of the V1 is unfortunate, but I'll bite the bullet if it works as advertised.

 

I have no idea on the x2. I have not tried one yet.

 

Stuck a Sony 24/1.4 on my A7Riii body in a shopping centre today, and took a snap wide open. Damn, it's sharp! Zoom in to pixel level absolute sharpness. If anybody wants to check out the raw file, just let me know where to upload it.

 

It's 110g difference. Will you actually notice that? You could just take your watch off if you want to save holding that much weight...

 

There's more like a 400g difference (including batteries) and the V1 is enormously larger and completely changes the balance of the camera.

 

You think I didn't look that up before giving an exact number like 110 grams? That's the difference. And it's the exact same body as the V860ii, with a round head. The head is no bigger than that of the V860ii. Just round, not rectangular.

 

I was comparing to the X2T-S, not a V860ii.

 

What they will probably do is update the X pro trigger with a more powerful AF assist beam like the V1. Well At least I hope they will.

 

For anyone interested, here is the dng file.

https://send.firefox.com/download/87cb41e1cdcf73b0/#xa0LB1vZCRXg25SPa0AYHA

 

Had another shoot today where the camera got all kinds of confused in a similar fashion, but without the duplicated file numbers. Wrote most images to one card, then when it was almost full, it started writing to the other, then filled the first back up again, then refused to play back the images until I did a dance involving swapping cards and some menu options every time I wanted to review).

Looking into things, I see that one of the cards was formatted Ex-FAT, which I remember doing as an experiment just before the last shoot. I find it strange that the camera is able to write, but not read (very well) this format. I guess I'll reformat it and see if that was the cause of the issues.

 

Formatting cards outside of your camera is always a recipe for disaster.

 

Yep... this is where good work flow is golden! (and not trying crazy stuff on memory cards)

 

I just realised I have been a Sony Mirrorless user for about 12 months now, and I should give a long-term review.

To re-address my initial impressions:

EVF is still very cool. Being able to chimp a clear image while out in direct sunlight has allowed me to experiment a lot more in bright locations and a surprisingly beneficial change to workflow is the ability to hand the camera to the model and let them scroll through the results, giving them confidence increasing feedback. SLRs seem primative technlogy when I have to use them now.

Still no complaints ergonomics wise, and the OSD zebras, focus peaking, gridlines and level are still useful.

As for "ISO 50", now that I know how it works, I don't use it.

The shutter sound confusion I had above is due to the "Electronic first curtain", and turning that feature off makes the shutter behave in a similar manner to the old DSLRs but by the time I worked that out, I have gotten used to the way it works, along with the arse-about dials.



I did some experiments and have come to the conclusion that anybody who shitcans a particular manufacturer's "Colour Science" has no idea what they are talking about. While there are colour differences between photos taken on Canon and Sony systems, that difference is mostly due to glass.

Another mirrorless plus is the shorter flange distance, allowing the manufacture of cheap adaptors to attach pretty much any lens ever made, from projectors to medium format. The focus peaking and zoom manual focus assist make using old manual focus lenses a dream, and I love the way this modern technology has allowed the use of pre-war lenses.

Eye-AF is the best thing to come to portrait photography since digital cameras, it has transformed my shooting. Where I used to end up with a handful of images that were perfectly focused, I now end up with a handful that aren't.

There is a lot of confusion over "Banding" on images under artificial lighting and HSS strobes. This is an issue with all mirrorless cameras, and simply shooting on full mechanical shutter solves the issue.



Those points above are general mirrorless and not confined particularly to Sony, unlike the following:


I have had a couple of issues with the images being written to the cards, but I suspect they were due to the cards being formatted elsewhere and not in the camera. Note, that no images were lost, and I have had no other issues since I started making sure I format cards in-camera. Also, simply renaming the cards on a computer screws things up, slowing down write speeds considerably. I have never had an issue with formatting cards outside of the camera before this body.

While on the subject of cards, there is an issue is with the inability of the camera to seamlessly transfer from one card to the other when reviewing images. For example, if a card can hold 500 images, and you take 510 photos, then you can only review the last 10 images. You can get into the menu system and set the default card back to the full one, but ultimately it easier to just physically swap the cards around. Long term solution was to get a bigger card, and store RAW on the larger card, and jpg on the smaller. That way the active card holds the entire session.

An annoyance is the inability of the A7(R)iii to allow access to the menu while there are images in the buffer, not even to take it out of high-speed shooting mode meaning you have to wait for the buffer to be written away completely before you can change it to single shot mode. Invariably, something happens that you want to capture while it is writing away, and you are back at the start... The A7Riv has partially addressed this issue, but you still can't change the shooting mode while there are images in the buffer.

I am still trying to work out how to switch quickly from video to photography settings - there should be a way, but I have given up playing with video so is a low priority.


TL;dnr

I have absolutely zero regrets with making the jump to mirrorless, but just a little disappointed that I was unable to stay with Canon to get full use out of my legacy glass. I will admit that the new range of mirrorless glass from all manufacturers shits all over my Canon L glass so if you are better off getting a second mortgage and buying new glass anyway.
If you are in the market for a new camera, regardless of the brand, I would suggest that mirrorless is the way to go - not only for the benefits of use, but also for the new lenses.