Some thoughts on the Sony a7R

Some thoughts on the Sony a7R after the first week. Few pluses and few minuses of the camera:

+ great dynamic range
+ 36 mega-pixels are great for landscape photos
+ good color on automatic white balance
+ fast start
+ very nice, high-res display
+ custom buttons
+ 14 times zoom in live view (great for manual focus)
+ focus peak
+ great shutter sound (one hears it so many times, would be horrible if it was bad :))

– weak battery life
– takes long to charge the battery (but only if it’s empty)
– no external battery charger delivered with the camera
– the screen gets dirty very quickly (haven’t noticed it to this amount on other cameras)
– screen stays on during long exposures (it’s black, but still on) which just uses battery
– low screen refresh rate when in dark situations (makes manual focusing harder)
– camera randomly restarts and returns to some previously used settings (average once per hour of shooting)
– very few settings for exposure bracketing, and no possibility to take all with a self timer
– no time indication on the screen when doing a bulb exposure (the screen is on though)
– stupid placement of the menu and shutter buttons (especially don’t understand the shutter button placement)
– very slow auto-focus (but could only test it with canon lenses)

Will do a bigger article/review after more usage.

Blue hour city

I didn’t get any nice fireworks shots on Saturday, but I took few city shots with the a7r while I was there. I actually don’t remember ever having green trees in my blue hour shots from here. The Sony gives quite different colors than the Canon.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 4, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 6.3, Middle exposure time: 6s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13704, 17.10491

Here is another photo from the Sony a7R. I’m really impressed with the dynamic range of this camera. It’s just stunning.

Here I used 6 exposures to create this HDR (just the middle part is HDR, the sky and water are from single exposure) but while experimenting with the RAW file, I managed to create almost the same result with using only a single file in Lightroom. That’s really impressive when one takes into account the huge difference between the castle and the hill under it. And so you can see it yourself, I uploaded the middle exposure from this photo, in it’s original RAW file here so you can download it and try it out yourself (please only for personal use :))

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 6, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 13s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13704, 17.10491

Yesterday I finally got out to try the new camera out. I chosen one of my more traditional places in Bratislava (of course under a bridge :)) and got few blue hour shots. I have to say, I’m really impressed with the quality of the result. The detail, the sharpnesses and also the colors are really great. And especially the dynamic range is a huge difference compared to the Canon.

I can’t wait to take more photos with it :) It’s maybe time for another trip again.

I’m including a behind the scenes shot and a 100% zoomed in detail today, so you see how good the quality looks :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 5s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13704, 17.10491

My plans got a little changed and since my trip got moved by two days, I had time today. And since it was a very (very) sunny day today, I decided to go to the Botanical garden, to get few spring shots. And here are some of them. All taken handheld with a Canon 7D with a Sigma 18-55mm f2.8 Macro lens.

This one is really one of my oldest photos. So many different colors in this one :)