Sony A7RIII – more than a skin deep upgrade

With a body-only price of £3,199/$3,198, the third generation of the A7R came as a surprise to Sony’s own photo studio, who labelled most of the product pictures release on Wednesday as ‘A7RM2’ instead of ‘A7RIII’. We’ve changed the filenames on our system, but countless mediafolk of the future will be confused. They do after all look similar.

In fact the new 24-105mm f/4 G OSS lens was released with pictures of it on the A7RIII, above, and also on the A9 below. With the A7RIII having a 10fps 42 megapixel motordrive capability, thanks to an improved LSI and new processing engine reading off much faster from the 42 megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor, you might have expected economies of scale to have given it the same Dynax 7D-like left hand end drive mode physical dial like the A9, below – especially as the A7RIII has an additional drive-type mode, a four-shot sensor shift to capture 169 megapixels of image data.

This involves shifting by one pixel in four positions, and does not create a 4X size, 2X linear pixel count file. You can only get that by shifting half a pixel as Olympus do. The Pentax sensor shift high-res mode shifts by one pixel, and it does not increase the image dimensions, only the sharpness and colour information for each pixel location (making the image similar to a Sigma dp Quattro file in fine detail resolution). The Sony implementation also appears to need almost half a second between each of the four subframes, requiring a tripod and roughly 2 seconds of capture time. Sony’s proven multishot processing will certainly be able to remove any problems with movement of parts of the subject during this time, but it has to be done in the computer, using the new software suite.

Some commentators have assumed that the 169 megapixel four-shot file means large dimensions, effectively a 169 megapixel resolution full frame, the same way Olympus gets high megapixel files. But the pre-release information clearly indicates it’s a Pentax-type mode – here’s from the wording provided to dealers by Sony:

“You can then stitch the images together to create an image with fewer artifacts and a truer range of colours”.

I tested that on the Pentax K-1 and concluded it was not worth the effort. Regular normal 42 megapixel AA-free shots on a top grade lens are all you need. I’ll repeat that bit about top grade lens.

The A7RIII also has a new shutter mechanism which reduces shock, improving the SteadyShot performance, though still 30s to 1/8,000s as before. The sensor gains a new anti-reflective coating and there will be many ‘under the hood’ improvements because that’s what happens. There may also be teething troubles and newly introduced problems, because that also happens. However I’d say early buyers run less risk with this third generation A7R than they did with the predecessors, or indeed with the A6500.

But we’ll leave you with the 9 for comparison. Most else that matters is the same, like for example the Memory registers – only two on the A7RII, but three on the A7RIII. It will remember more things, like Setting Effect OFF/ON, and that is just as well because the III puts a DSLR-like feature on its left hand end, a threaded coaxial Prontor-Compur (PC) flash synchronisation terminal (below). Let’s just hope that the circuitry inside is well isolated, as one of my vintage flash units destroyed the Godox X1-T which I use both to get Setting Effect OFF and isolation from high trigger voltages on my A7RII.

Study this left end for a bit. It does have phantom power for the 2.5mm mic jack, but the earphone output has been moved so that two doors must now be opened at once to use both together. And there’s something missing.

The A7RII has a screw socket next to the neatly paired mic/headphone jacks, which allows a custom made tether clamp assembly (supplied with the camera, seen above) to hold HDMI and USB cables with clamped protection looping. You’ll need some extra Tether Tools kit to safeguard the connectors on the MkIII. There is now a USB-C/3 Super Speed connector as well as a USB-Micro Multifunction, and Micro HDMI. But no provided security of a tether clamp.

The back of the camera has much the same screen, but with improvements to resolution and daylight visibility – still no twist and turn, or reversing to face the camera back and protect the LCD. The rear button layout is revised, with movie button located near the viewfinder (well, if Canon does it, it can’t be wrong, can it?) and the switching AF/AE Lock/Toggle/Hold button replaced by an AF-ON and separate AEL, with C3 moved to the left end. Where the movie button used to be you’ll notice a catch for the weathersealed door which covers TWO SD card slots, one UHS-II enabled (more broken bits of card contact septum to lose inside your slot!). Changes to the movie mode using the main shutter release make the use of the red button less essential.

You can assign those cards the usual ways, to make copies on card 2 of card 1 as you shoot, just in case one fails (the most important use for wedding photographers) and also to use sequentially (overflow into card 2, liked by action photographers), or split RAW and JPEG, or still and video.

This is the new lens, 24-105mm f/4, and it will probably be very good. It has 77mm filters so I think I’ll stick with the A6500 for travelling, as the little CZ 16-70mm f/4 which is the direct equivalent of this is tiny by comparison and uses neat 55mm filters. Despite some reports to the contrary, I’ve found it to be a good lens, sharp across the frame at 70mm wide open, though prone to flare.

The top shows that the strictly amateur ‘SCENE’ position of the mode dial has been replaced by S&Q. I look forward to finding out what this means – probably much the same*  *Gary Friedman has provided the answer in Comments – it’s a slo-mo/fast-mo video mode which is of no interest to me personally, but might fascinate messers around with short video clips for YouTube, even if their smartphones do it better. Green auto survives, as not all owners will be experienced photographers, some will just be wealthy camera buyers and this setting will be where they leave it.

The published specs were vague about Bluetooth, used for GPS tagging from a smartphone – I’m told US Sony Store specifications clearly state it does have. The A6500 and A9 both do, and can therefore use the Sony mobile phone function for live geotagging of pictures as you take them, using information read at the moment of capture from your nearby smartphone. We’ve also seen reports saying the A7RIII does not use Apps but that seems very unlikely.

There are also improvements claimed for dynamic range, with the figure of 15 stops mentioned. This would actually need a 16-bit A to D conversion internally followed by compression to a virtual 15-bit range (via a tone curve) saved in the 14-bit uncompressed raw .ARW format. A 14-bit raw format is now offered for all shooting modes including high speed continuous, which on the A7RII means automatic stepdown to 12-bit. The ISO range is extended to 32,000 before Hi expansion up to 104,200 and goes down to 100 native with Lo down to 50. One benefit of an effective 15-stop range will be that ISO 50 should have 14 stops, or as much highlight data as ISO 100 on the MkII.

The extra effective bit depth also pays off when using the S-Log3 and Hybrid-Gamma HDR video settings. This brings Sony professional video camera standards into a primarily still camera for the first time (better than the video-targeted A7SII, and the A9).

Sony claim improved skin tones too, though compared to what is a bit of a worry. Many people like Canon skin tones, I think they are like a 1970s USA colour portrait and that Sony’s skin colours have always been more natural. Others disagree and want the pinker, less yellow, face tones.

The A7RIII uses the new larger battery with its 2.7X capacity, introduced in the A9. I rather like the way my current Sony cameras share one rather underpowered battery type, but at least a bagful of batteries covers A56500, A7RII, RX10. There are not many different battery types, as we could find with our Olympus kit (check E-M1, E-M1 MkII, E-M5, E-M5MkII, E-M10, E-M10MkII and E-M10MkIII batteries if you want a nightmare). You can also charge Sony batteries in-camera.

Will I buy it? Probably not. I use the A7RII for relatively static, large image size, low ISO, controlled shooting of landscapes, architecture, products and so on. I have sold my full frame zooms except for the 70-300mm G OSS and now only use primes on the A7RII (10mm, 18mm, 28mm, 50mm macro, 55mm, 85mm). I don’t travel with it. We’ve bought an Olympus OM-D E-M1 MkII for its Pro Capture (60fps, 18-20fps with pre-shot buffering) and macro auto focus stacking. I’m sticking with the A6500 kit for travel (10-18mm, 16-70mm, 55-210mm) but it’s got to go head to head with the Olympus including the use of the two different smartphone GPS methods.

  • David Kilpatrick

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Sony A7RII versus Nikon D850 – noise

There’s a lot of noise about the Nikon D850 right now but few direct comparisons. One problem I have with some early reports is that new D850 owners are most likely to be existing D810 or perhaps D750 or D5 owners. Any comparisons are therefore being made with earlier Nikon sensors.

Recently a Nikon ambassador whom I respect greatly placed some .NEF raw files into a Dropbox for fellow professionals to examine. Since this article effectively criticises Nikon, I will not reproduce anything recognisable. I naturally grabbed the files and processed them with my usual care in Adobe Camera Raw. This includes making adjustments to the Sharpness and Noise Reduction settings depending on the ISO used. My standard with Sony, Nikon and most other files is to reduce the radius for sharpening to the minimum (0.5) leaving the basic settings of 25 for sharpness and 25 for detail untouched, with no masking. I also don’t touch the Colour Noise controls at all, and usually only adjust the first Luminance control leaving Luminance Contrast and Luminance Detail at default. This first Luminance control tends to set to zero for ISO 100 (or the minimum for a given camera), 10 to 15 around 400 to 800, 25 at 1000 to 2000, 30 to 35 at 2500 to 4000, 50 at 6400 and never above this level.

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Sony launches A99II at photokina

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Sony has today released the details of the updated A99II, using a 42MP sensor and 5-axis stabilisation to match the A7RII. It does not appear to have retained GPS and the paragraph highlighted in red later on indicates a weasel-worded possible get out for this – it may not embed GPS in the image files, but instead store a mobile phone location data track on the camera’s memory card. We may guess that this choice could be partly down to cutting out fees payable to incorporate a GPS module. Not the same, guys, not the same:

From Sony’s site, the ambiguous word is highlighted here:

Use Location Information Link to make the most of your camera anywhere you go together. After the camera has been paired to the PlayMemories Mobile app installed on a compatible mobile phone or tablet device, it can acquire location data from the mobile device and record that data with still images. The acquired location data can also be used to correct the camera’s date/time and location settings. The PlayMemories Home application can then be utilised on a personal computer to organise still images imported into the computer on a map.

Edit: note that Sony’s later announcement for A6500 uses specific wording which says that its GPS Blueooth app embeds location data in the images as they are shot. This wording has not been used for A99II. We have not, though the A9II has now been released and bought by some users, been able to confirm how it works yet.

In the Sony release (used almost complete, slightly edited, to form this post) they appear to imply that dual SD card slots are new, which of course they are not, the original A99 has this already. No UHS-II, no USB 3 Not only that, the dual slots are apparently exactly the same spec as the original unless someone at Sony Towers has forgotten to edit their website:

Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo, Memory Stick Micro (M2), SD memory card, SDHC memory card (UHS-I compliant), SDXC memory card (UHS-I compliant), Micro SD memory card, Micro SDHC memory card, Micro SDXC memory card

Some of the hidden, clever features of the A99 remain like the buttons which are coded to touch with concave or convex tops or a small raised dot, making it easy once you have learned their feel to find them by fingertip. In fact the entire interface remains constant (in the way that Canon did throughout the EOS 1D series) meaning you can pick this up and shoot immediately, coming fom the A99. Only the Silent Controller is significantly improved, and the badly placed Movie button remains exactly where it was.

  • Full-frame 4D Focus: Innovative Hybrid Phase Detection AF system with accurate 79 hybrid cross AF points[i] enabled by 79-point dedicated and 399-point focal-plane AF sensors and continuous shooting at up to 12fps[ii]
    There is no AF Illuminator, but please note that -4 EV is quoted with an f/2.8 lens at ISO 100. In the past, AF low limits were always quoted with an f/1.4 lens (although the sensor only works at f/2.8). This is very good.
  • 42.4 effective MP 35mm Full-frame Exmor R™ CMOS sensor so it’s essentially an A7RII
  • Newly developed optical 5-axis in-body image stabilisation system
  • Outstanding operability and reliability in newly designed downsized body
  • Internal 4K movie recording in XAVC-S format[iii] with host of pro-orientated movie features
    IMPORTANT: this appears to be a Super-35 4K mode if you want no pixel binning and the highest overall quality but near-full-frame is offered with the usual partial readout.We would add a few extras – this camera has the much-needed (almost essential) Copyright Info function, minimum shutter speed when using Auto ISO, 10/5/2 sec self-timer, Hi+ in addition to Hi, Med and Lo motordrive shooting (not just shifting three settings over a faster range but giving 12, 8, 6 or 4 fps); built-in WiFi wireless including WiFi remote control and NFC (but not, apparently, apps); there are new Highlight and Average metering modes, and for each metering mode, you can calibrate the standard exposure if you prefer your shots slightly lighter or darker than the camera’s default.The A99II can capture 54 uncompressed RAW+JPEG images at 12fps (Hi+) before the buffer is full. There’s no great advantage in capturing RAW only, or JPEG only, and even with Fine JPEG at Hi speed (8fps) the limit is still 71, not ‘until card full’.

    Omissions include no Multi Shot Noise reduction, no GPS, and the external DC power supply is no longer via a dedicated socket, instead it uses the dummy battery approach. The camera is still not officially recommended for use in temperatures below freezing or over 40°C/104°F, both of which can easily be achieved in Scotland in a single sunny winter day (even without the benefit of your car parcel shelf oven).

a99-ii_rear-web

The upgraded autofocus

The newly developed Phase Detection AF System is capable of ‘full-time AF’ and is the first implementation of 4D FOCUS in the full-frame ɑ series, bringing a supreme new level of AF performance to ɑ99 II users. The Hybrid Phase Detection AF System is enabled by combining a precision 79-point[iv] dedicated phase detection AF sensor with 399 focal plane phase detection AF points to produce a 79 hybrid cross AF point[v] array. These cross points deliver incredibly precise autofocus performance and advanced subject tracking of any moving objects right across the image, at high speed. In addition, as there is no moving mirror, TMT enables continuous AF operation and the finder image remains unaffected during any type of shooting, including live view and movie recording.

Low light conditions present no problem to the ɑ99 II. The precision AF system will function properly down to EV-4[vi] brightness levels where most other cameras struggle. Editor’s note: the A99 is poor in this respect and often can’t focus modest aperture lenses at all in low light.

Data flow through the ɑ99 II has been redesigned to allow for high resolution and continuous shooting at high frame rates. A new front-end LSI works with the image sensor and BIONZ X image processing engine, as well as a newly designed shutter unit, to enable continuous shooting at up to 12fps with AF/AE tracking[vii], all whilst harnessing the sensor’s 42.4MP capabilities. The result is an ultra-fast camera that will deliver incredibly detailed shots, even with fast moving objects in challenging light conditions. Thanks to a large buffer and sophisticated data processing, these shots can be viewed immediately after shooting even when in high speed continuous shooting mode and if shots are being taken indoors under artificial lighting, flicker is automatically detected and the shutter is timed to minimise its effect on the end image[viii].

Improvements to the EVF display algorithm now deliver continuous live-view shooting at up to 8 fps[ix] with AF/AE tracking with minimal display lag so that the viewing experience is essentially no different from that of an optical viewfinder. Exposure, white balance and other camera settings are displayed in real time in the viewfinder and continuous live view shooting can be set in 3 stages to match a variety of subjects: 8 fps, 6 fps and 4 fps.

Pixel Power

The back-illuminated full-frame 42.4MP[x] Exmor R CMOS sensor benefits from a gapless-on-chip design and allows for fast readout of large volumes of data as well as being extremely efficient in its light gathering ability. The net result is very high sensitivity with low noise, wide dynamic range and 42.4MP resolution across an ISO range of 100-25600, expandable to ISO 50 – 102,400[xi]. The ɑ99 II has been designed without an optical low-pass filter to allow the finest natural details and textures to be captured with unprecedented depth and realism and the photographer can select compressed or uncompressed RAW files, as required.

5-axis SteadyShot™ INSIDE Image Stabilisation

Having proved to be incredibly popular in the ɑ7 II series of cameras, Sony has designed a new in-body 5 axis image stabilisation system for A-mount cameras which debuts for the first time in the ɑ99 II. In addition to movement in the pitch and yaw axes that tend to occur at longer focal lengths, this system effectively detects and compensates for shift blur that can occur on the X and Y axes when shooting close-up, and roll blur that is often apparent in still images and movies that are shot at night. Newly implemented precision gyro sensors are capable of precisely detecting even tiny camera movements that can cause blurring, providing a 4.5 step[xii] shutter speed advantage that can help realise the full potential of the 42.4MP sensor, in both stills and movies. The effect of image stabilisation can be monitored in the viewfinder or on the LCD screen during live view when the shutter button is half pressed or the Focus Magnifier functions are used. This allows framing and focus to be accurately checked via live view when shooting at telephoto focal lengths or macro distances.

Improved design and operability

The design of the new ɑ99 II has noticeably evolved compared to its predecessor, based upon feedback from professional users. The new model is 8% smaller than the original ɑ99 and has a newly designed grip, magnesium alloy body, dual SD[xiii] card slot and other upgrades that improve both hold and operation. All major buttons and dials are provided with seals and the media jack cover and enclosure edges feature tongue and groove – the result is a body that is both dust and moisture resistant[xiv] and can be used in the toughest and most challenging shooting conditions.

In addition to being designed for faster response, the new shutter unit is also more durable and has passed endurance tests in excess of 300,000 shutter operations[xv].

a99-ii_top-web

The XGA OLED Tru-finder has a ZEISS® T* Coating and has a 4 element lens group that includes a double sided aspherical element whilst offering a powerful 0.78x magnification, delivering outstanding clarity from corner to corner. It also has a fluorine coating on the outer lens to prevent fingerprints, dust, water, oil and dirt from sticking, thus ensuring a clear view. Editor’s note: the ocular of the original A99 is a weak point, and in the A7RII Sony finally produced a really good non-squiffy eyepiece optical train which shows a clear view with some leeway to move your eye. So this is a major upgrade as much of the experience of using the SLT models comes down to finder quality.

The silent Multi Controller introduced in the original ɑ99 has been improved so that in addition to allowing control of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, AF area, AF mode and other settings, it now features a click-stop ON/OFF switch. When ON, the preferred setting for still image shooting, the control clicks, providing a tactile indication of the length of rotation. When OFF, the control turns smoothly and quietly, ideal for movie shooting. Location data acquisition has also been made possible via Bluetooth[xvi] connection to a compatible mobile device and it is now possible to select whether the storage location should just be on a tethered computer or also on camera for easy review without leaving the shooting position. Based upon feedback from a number of ɑ users, the menu structure of the ɑ99 II has also been updated to deliver a smoother navigational experience.

Internal 4K movie at 100 Mpbs

The ɑ99 II enables internal 4K movie recording[xvii] featuring full pixel readout, without pixel binning[xviii], for ultimate high resolution video in the pro friendly XAVC S format. It is capable of recording high quality footage at 100Mbps for 4K recording. A new ‘Slow and Quick’ mode[xix] (S&Q) supports both slow motion and quick motion. Frame rates from 1 fps to 120 fps (100 fps) can be selected in 8 steps for up to 60x (50x) quick motion and 5x (4x) slow motion recording.[xx] A number of features designed for a professional movie production workflow are included such as picture profiles, time code and HDMI clear output and the new ɑ99 II now also offers gamma assist for real time S-Log monitoring and a zebra mode for easier exposure adjustment. S-Log3 and S-Log2 gamma are now included, making wide dynamic range shooting possible with(out) – our edit, the press release says with! blown highlights or blocked shadows making the ɑ99 II easily integratable into a fully professional movie production workflow.

Editor’s note: there’s a problem with the A99II for movies, which also applies to the LA-EA4 and SSM/SAM or other A-mount lenses on the E-mount bodies – the lenses really don’t work well at all. Sony had pictures of this camera with the 24mm f/2 SSM, still a current lens. I sold mine because it could not handle the same AF and exposure control functions as the 25mm f/2 Batis or the 28mm f/2 Sony (which I use) during video shooting. The A-mount was never built for movies, the E-mount has been from the start. However, both are fine using purely manual focus, manual aperture ciné lenses which many professionals prefer.

a99-ii_sal2470z2_wvg-c77am_front-web

The new ɑ99 II will start shipping in November, priced at approximately €3600 and full technical details can be seen here.

Editing: David Kilpatrick

Further information can be found on the Sony Camera Channel: www.youtube.com/c/ImagingbySony/ and the

Sony Photo Gallery: www.sony.net/Product/di_photo_gallery/

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[i]The number of usable AF points may depend on the lens and shooting mode. Up to 323 focus points are selectable. Not available for movie recording

[ii]Continuous shooting mode set to ‘Hi+’

[iii] Class 10 or higher SDHC/SDXC memory card required for XAVC S format movie recording. UHS-I (U3) SDHC/SDXC card required for 100Mbps recording

[iv]The number of usable AF points may depend on the lens and shooting mode

[v]Hybrid Phase Detection AF active. The dedicated phase detection AF sensor or focal-plane phase detection AF sensor may be used independently in certain photographic situations.

[vi]Central focus point

[vii]The supported focus area will depend on the shooting mode and lens used. Furthermore, when“Continuous Shooting: Hi+” is selected, focus will be fixed at the first frame shot when Hybrid Phase Detection AF is active at aperture settings of F9 or higher, or when Hybrid Phase Detection AF is not active at aperture settings of F4 or higher

[viii]When Anti-flicker Shoot. is ON. Flicker detection at 100 Hz or 120 Hz only. Continuous shooting speed may decrease. Does not function during bulb exposure or movie recording

[ix]Continuous shooting mode set to ‘Hi’

[x] Approximate effective megapixels

[xi]Still images only

[xii]CIPA standards. Pitch/yaw shake only. SAL135F18Z lens. Long exposure NR off.

[xiii]One slot can hold an SD card or a Memory Stick.

[xiv]Not guaranteed to be 100% dust and moisture proof

[xv]Electronic front curtain shutter activated

[xvi]Requires pairing with compatible mobile devices running the PlayMemories Mobile app. Supported devices are Android smartphones running Android 5.0 or later and compatible with Bluetooth 4.0 or later. iPhone/iPad: iPhone 4S or later/iPad 3rd generation or later

[xvii]SDHC/SDXC memory card of Class 10 or higher is required for movie recording in XAVC S format. UHS-I (U3) SDHC/SDXC card is required for 100Mbps recording

[xviii] In Super 35mm recording mode

[xix]Sound cannot be recorded. SDHC/SDXC memory card of Class 10 or higher is required

[xx]In NTSC (PAL) system

Sony A7R II review by David Kilpatrick

Sony’s A7R II has a unique position in the mirrorless ILC world, creating the largest image files at over 42 megapixels from an in-body five axis stabilised sensor with exceptional performance given by backside illuminated CMOS.

My reviews in print of the Sony A7R II have now appeared, in the British Journal of Photography, f2 Cameracraft and Master Photography magazines. All three make slightly different points, and reflect growing experience of the camera which I bought from WEX as one of the first despatched on July 28th. The UK best body-only price then fell from their £2,695 to just over £2,000 from one main Sony dealer (at an event promotion) in under three months.

Despite finding bargain deals or importing directly, since the introduction of the A99 only three years ago I have lost about £3,500 keeping up with Sony full frame camera bodies. I’ve also spent around £2,000 buying other Sony models like the NEX-6, RX100, RX100 MkIII, RX10, and A6000 to cover the shortcomings of every different full frame model – and £2,000 or more updating my lenses.

So why invest in the A7R II when experience tells me the Sony system loses value faster than any other, yet so often falls short of performing as required?

One body for all lenses

The A7R II almost matches medium format digital, and gives great results with rangefinder (Leica) fit wide-angles. It has enabled me to add a 12mm f/5.6 Voigtländer Ultra Wide-Heliar to my kit for sharp, tint and vignette free 120° architectural and creative work. I write about lenses, and with current and future adaptors, this body lets me focus and make test shots with all lenses from Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Leica and many others. Click the Heliar image below for a link to a full size (slightly cropped and straightened from 42 megapixels) file. It’s actually shot at f/11 though the pBase data says f/5.6, that how the camera’s Lens Correction app works.

Caerlaverock Castle

There’s no lens made which disagrees with the 42 megapixel sensor as far as I can tell. My kit includes the 12mm mentioned above, the 16-35mm f/4 Carl Zeiss OSS, the 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 Sony OSS, the 28mm f/2 Sony OSS FE (look out for individual reviews shortly); a 40mm Canon f/2.8 STM pancake, a 24mm Samyang tilt-shift, 85mm Sony SAM f/2.8, Sigma 70-300mm OS and a whole bunch of interesting older stuff used on adaptors.

With the Lens Correction App configured for SS with each manual lens, the very high resolution of the A7R II sensor allows a stable view for precision magnified focus well beyond the ability of any AF method or reliance on focus peaking alone. Doing this at working aperture ensures no focus shift on stop down. The results show me quickly which lenses are excellent performers without needing an optical bench or test charts (give me a single LED light and a darkened room, and I can find out what I need to know about any lens very quickly).

driedflowers-A7RII-web

Most Sony and Sony Carl Zeiss zooms do yield good sharp images on 42 megapixels but it’s easy to exceed their best by fitting something like my 1970-ish SMC Takumar 50mm macro (used for the shot above), or even my Russian 50mm f/2 tilt-adapted Zenitar. I found the 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS which was fine on A7 II inadequate for critical quality on the A7R II and after tests concluded the 24-240mm was the best option to replace it. To learn why FE/E mount zooms and OSS lenses are never likely to blow away fixed focal length unstabilised types like the Zeiss Loxia or adapted classic RF and SLR optics, wait for my 24-240mm review.

Having said size matters, I downsize many of my final images to as small as 9 megapixels. I don’t need 42 megapixels (7952 x 5304) for every image and for some it’s ridiculous. I’m still selling thousands of stock images* taken with DSLRs from six megapixels up. So for general ‘field’ use, most lenses are more than OK, as I can reduce the file size right down 3600 x 2400 pixels when noise needs cutting, depth of field is a problem, or general sharpness is poor.

One sensor for all image shapes and sizes

With the A7R II, unlike the A7R, all the APS-C E-mount lenses work properly (they never have their OSS forcibly disabled). The auto cropped image is 5168 x 3448, 17.8 megapixels, and that’s a perfectly useful size for all personal and most professional work. The 0.78X EVF is, of course, completely filled to exactly the same visual quality as when a full frame lens is used – the user experience with an APS-C lens is identical to that with full frame.

As with downsizing or lens based cropping, I can crop full frame captures right down to less than a quarter of the A7R II image and have a file acceptable to Alamy for stock library use, or to a client directly for almost any reasonable editorial use. That same crop can go full page in a wedding album, or make a fine A3/16×12 print. It’s like using 120 rollfilm again, you can find pictures within pictures.

lemurs-fullframe

A 240mm shot clearly not close enough…

lemurs-240mmf9-iso400-crop

This is a 3600 x 2400 crop. That is, an image large enough for full page publication or a 12 x 18″ photo/inkjet print (click to view full size)

With many lenses which don’t cover full frame, a 24 x 24mm crop is perfect. The Sigma prime lens ART trio (19mm, 30mm and 60mm f/2.8 AF without stabilisation) all do well on this basis. I had a 16 megapixel square format digital back on Hasselblad V and the square format is a favourite. Unlike Olympus, who offer a 1:1 ratio capture, Sony only includes 3:2 (35mm shape) and 16:9 (HD widescreen) – I’d love them to add a proper 1:1 square image seen in the EVF and on screen, a perfect 28 megapixel crop.

The high resolution FF image also means there’s less need to stitch panoramas or use shift lenses. Canon’s 17mm f/4 TS-E tilt shift lens was introduced in 2009 when their full frame 12 megapixel 5D has just been upgraded to the 21 megapixel 5D MkII. On the A7R II, using its maximum 12mm shift reveals serious loss of outer field sharpness even at apertures like f/10, f/11 and f/13 which are optimum on other ways. It’s not a sensor cover glass problem as the Canon 5DS R revealed exactly the same weakness. Downsize the image to 12 megapixels, which the lens was probably first designed for, at everything looks sharp. But here’s where 42 megapixels can pay off – I just need to use a 12mm Voigtlander or a Sigma 12-24mm, crop a 14 x 21mm area from any part of the 24 x 36mm frame, and I have a 14 megapixel image allowing even more effective ‘shift’ than the Canon. And I can, of course, use the Canon via an adaptor if needed.

The same kind of strong cropping works for telephoto wildlife shots (300mm lens, better than 500mm on 14 megapixels) and for macro work (1:1 on full frame, 2.2:1 at 14 megapixels). You need to remember all the time that traditional depth of field calculations just don’t work well with sensors of 36 megapixels and over. When you view a full size A7R II image at 100% on a non-Retina iMac or HP 27″ monitor, you are looking at part of a six foot wide ‘print’. Depth of field tables, still used today, were based on viewing a 10 x 8″ print from a similar distance! This problem is reduced by higher resolution screens but sometimes, you simply need a smaller image size.

Canon 5DS/R (in proportion with earlier models) have useful M-RAW and S-RAW formats, allowing the cameras to become full frame 28 or 12 megapixels with a single menu change. This function is missing from Sony raw files and would be a great firmware enhancement, if it was possible.

Reasons to buy the A7R II

SONY DSC

Having used two other A7 series bodies, and started the transition to the FE lens series with some mix of adapted glass on the way, why didn’t I stick with the far more realistic and practical A7 II, or the A7R which was paid for and at 36 megapixels just as useful a large file size?

  • Internally or externally recorded 4K video though not a commercial offering from my side might well be a request from a future client. I don’t make videos though many years ago I did made 16mm films and many 35mm slide based dual and multi projector AV programs. However, I know many still photographers who have found sufficiently high-end clients for video to invest the time. I wouldn’t touch any video production, even a brief 20-second ad clip, for under four figures. It’s fun to experiment with until any serious use emerges. Also, excellent Super-35 crop format video.jamesgem-1371-web
  • Completely silent operation when needed – though not compatible with any kind of flash, the fully electronic shutter is an option for wedding ceremonies and I’ve used that function already. It is also useful for shooting stills when someone is making a video, or during quiet concerts, in meetings, or when you simply don’t want the sound of a shutter to be heard. When silent is not needed, electronic first curtain (not provided on the A7R) improves shutter lag time and cuts vibration
    .SONY DSC
  • It’s also got a 500,000 actuation life shutter built to more than pro specification and a superior 0.78X electronic viewfinder, a slightly improved body flange for the lens mount (now common to all the II models, tighter and more precise than the original machining), no light leaks. And the mode dial is improved with a locking button, the Multi Function Accessory shoe is further improved in contact reliability, the ocular is T* coated and gives better eye relief.SONY DSC
  • It will perform well with all kinds of lenses and the 399-point wide area phase detection AF array built in to the sensor functions partly, or completely, with more native Sony and converted Canon lenses than ever before. It betters the A7R and A7 II in this respect, though I sold the Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM above as it didn’t work with the II having worked well on the A7R. Metabones have now fixed this, but my adaptor is a cheaper non-programmable type… you get what you pay for!
    Canon5DS-6400-web
    This is what you get from the Canon 5DS at ISO 6400, default, for shadow detail and noise (click to enlarge a 100% view of this section from a much larger file)


    Compare the separation of the black ribbon, and the shadow detail in general, from a similar shot ISO 6400 A7R II file, using the same lens and settings (click to view enlarged).

  • The back-illuminated CMOS sensor has a dynamic range – and a contrast curve or gamma function through controlled A to D conversion – which provides an ideal raw file for subsequent adjustment at lower ISO settings. Here, the difference seen above between the Canon 51MP sensor and the Sony 42MP is striking. The Sony images may often look softer and lack punch, but they reveal two stops more detail in the tones close to deep shadow. It’s probably been designed this way to allow s-Log gamma settings for professional video, producing flat neutral results ideal for grading to match from take to take. This happens to be very flattering to skin tones and it’s no surprise the A7R II is rivalling Fuji’s X-Trans sensor amongst fans of the flesh.jamesgem-1685-web
  • The same sensor has awesome practical performance in low light without sacrificing resolution, and noise levels which allow surprisingly high ISO settings for critical subjects like wildlife where fur and feather textures are easily damaged by noise (or noise reduction). Properly processed from raw, or shot as JPEG in camera, ISO 800 can be used as an everyday setting and 1600 will not even harm landscape detail. Up to 6400 an effectively noise-free full size image can be extracted, and at 12,800 to 25,600 some downscaling is all that’s needed to clean up. Admittedly, it’s never going to match the 12 megapixel A7S or A7S II at 51,200 and has a limit at 102,400 rather than marching on to an insane 409,600 EI as that body does.SONY DSC
  • Compared to buying an A7 II, remember that with the A7R II you get two Sony batteries and an external charger (about £150 in official value) as well as the ability to operate the camera from any 5v 1.5A USB source (not just to charge the battery internally, but to shoot using USB power)
    .SONY DSC

    You also get a neat tether-trap locking cage which screws into the camera side and can secure your USB and HDMI cables against accidental disconnection or strain on the connectors.
  • Final reason – going beyond the A7R II specification does not seem to offer further compelling advantages. It doesn’t have any major flaws or shortcomings except perhaps the single card slot and some doubts about the durability of the body, weatherproofing, and the quality of the lens mount (see below). I’m not in need of more than 5fps and 22 continuous raws before slowing down, and if I am the smaller Sony models like the A6000 and my RX10 do some pretty neat extra high speed sequences. So, for the first time since the sale of my A900 to get the A99, I feel I have a long-term camera no matter what Sony does in six months to make it hopelessly out of date.

What’s could be wrong?

First up, the poorly specified and designed lens mount and low precision body/lens relationship. Where Minolta A, Fuji X, Pentax, Leica and nearly all good makes secure the body and lens bayonet mounts using six screws, the E-mount uses only four even for the top end bodies which may have to support lenses approaching 1 kilo in weight. The four-screw fitting creates two axes of potential tilt restrained only by diametrically opposed screws, six-screw design is better but actually a five screw design beats both as you can’t draw a diameter across any two screws and create a tilt axis.

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The E/FE lens-body system is built round a concept of achieving final accuracy in alignment and focus without needing precision in every component. The nominal 18mm mount to sensor register doesn’t have to be perfect (and seems to vary by at least ±0.1mm). All Sony E and FE mount lenses compensate for variations and use free-floating magnetic focus often combined with floating OSS – they don’t have fixed infinity stops. Just as the bodies don’t have to be all that precise, the lenses themselves don’t need to be. As long as both work with the sensor to AF perfectly, the overall system is self-correcting.

You soon find out the limits of E-mount precision when buying adaptors for older manual lenses or modern Canon EF lenses. I’m sure Zeiss makes due allowance in the design of manual focus Loxia lenses, and Voigtlander has specifically allowed the new E-mount range planned for 2016 (10mm, 12mm and 15mm) to focus past infinity because they are aware of the variable register of the system. I have measured many adaptors and the only safe decision for the engineer is to fall short of the target register. Some very expensive adaptors turn out to be 0.3mm thicker than others for the same mount (I’ve found this in Leica M, Canon FD and Canon EF adaptors). The lenses being adapted often have a fixed infinity stop and are designed to hit this precisely. Combine a 0.1mm ‘plus thickness’ Sony body with a 0.2mm plus adaptor, and your manual wide angle lens won’t focus on infinity.

So, one overall issue is that despite the high cost, the Sony FE/A7 series range of bodies and lenses lacks the precision engineering of past systems and it’s designed that way. When you find one side of your pictures always seems soft with wide-angle, wide zoom or very fast lenses you have encountered the limitations of Sony precision and quality control.

Secondly, the A7R II has such large files and a slow overworked processor relative to those files and the massive task of running a high resolution, high frequency EVF and many clever software functions. Any kind of systematic ‘chimping’ to check each shot after taking may leave you frustrated. Depending on your choice of card and some unknown spin of the CPU’s internal dice, you will sometimes encounter long file writing times and a brief lockout from playback.

Install the 14-bit (in 16-bit container) raw uncompressed format introduced in October 2015 through a firmware update, and the situation may improve. With Firmware V2.0 I’ve seen typical write to card times halved but identical shots could take varying times and the worst case remains close to 10 seconds for the light to go off on a single shot. Most of time it’s clearing about 1 second after 2 second auto review, and disabling auto review has no apparent effect on this, or the time the camera takes to respond to a fresh shutter actuation.

Secret solutions

Since you’ve been patient, and listened to why the A7 system in general has a few failings, here’s how to get the best optical performance and general response from it.

SEL70200G_A-1200

First of all, for the best optical performance use lenses where OSS can be disabled but in-body SS allowed to operate. The internal 5-axis sensor based stabilisation of the A7II/RII/SII is awesome. In-lens OSS is impressive but by its design will always lose you some resolution, often more towards one side or corner of the image than centrally. Amended paragraph, see comments: To see how good your stabilised lens really is, turn off stabilisation and shoot something using flash or at a high shutter speed.

But… if you turn off Steady Shot or OSS on the A7R II, you disable it in the body and the lens. You can not turn it off for the lens, but keep it working in the body. Only the 90mm f/2.8 Sony G OSS Macro, the 70-200mm f/4 Sony G OSS (above) and the 28-135mm f/4 Sony G PZ OSS offer the on-lens switch. So if you want stabilisation, you can’t choose to have it provided by the body with these lenses. You can do so with Canon, Sigma and Tamron lenses used on a Canon EF adaptor – their IS, OS or VC will operate normally when the SS in the body is disabled. In fact you must never use these lenses with both methods turned on together, or the result will be unsharp. This is a problem we first noticed with the Olympus system, where their lens and body stabilisation do not communicate and it’s possible to us none, just body, just lens or ruin shots by turning on both together. The Sony body used with third party lenses does allow this; used with Sony lenses, it prevents it.

The A7R II will switch between internal SS, lens OSS and a combination depending on settings. But it won’t tell you what it is doing, which makes this intelligent function something of a handicap. As a rule, if you can lock the camera down (tripod) or use a very fast exposure (studio flash, shutter speed 4X the focal length of the lens) shooting with no stabilisation at all will offer the best results.

sonyjune1527

Secondly, don’t use ‘AF With Shutter’ all the time. It’s convenient sometimes, but every time you take first pressure on the shutter, your E-mount AF lens will initialise a short routine involving focus position recalibration followed by AF. It costs you a variable extra lag before the shutter fires, maybe 1/15th to as long as 1/4 second. Instead, turn this off and AF will default to the centre button of the rear controller (you can change this assignment). You then use this to AF for each change of subject, composition or distance but if nothing’s changed you do not touch it and you do not re-AF. You save battery life, and you eliminate the whole shutter-button-AF delay cycle. You can now capture pictures, using electronic first curtain shutter or silent mode, within 1/20s of pressing the shutter.

Thirdly, for action shots prefer stops close to full aperture on E-mount lenses for the same reason – the aperture closing action involves a delay you can clearly identify and it’s longer with apertures like f/16. But for maximum reaction speed, use a purely manual lens. The camera knows there’s no aperture to be closed so it misses out that stage. It knows there’s no AF. You can get down to a mere 1/50s shutter lag, faster than most photographers can think. If you are used to older DSLRs which typically fire the shutter between 1/15s and 1/8s after you have pressed the button, you’ll anticipate and fire too early for action shots. Beware the LA-EA adaptors for A-mount lenses as you can’t turn off the aperture lever actuation. These adaptors will always add a delay even if you fit a manual lens.

I’m not going to delve into how you use focus peaking, magnification, setting the slowest shutter speed to be used by the Auto ISO function and so on. You can find out about this from countless videos and blogs, not all of which feature grandmothers, sucking and eggs. Nor will I recommend JPEG noise reduction and image settings in camera, since I don’t use JPEGs. Remember that your picture style and adjustments, like extra sharpening or contrast, will be reflected in the view you see through the EVF and on-screen. They will affect focus peaking, the histogram and what the image looks like when you use magnified manual focus, too. My tip is ‘stay neutral’ for the best EVF experience and ability to judge and control your results, especially if shooting raw. Camera Standard – boring but it won’t fool you into making adjustments which are not needed.

smailhomsony16-16-p-h-srgb-web

A 16mm landscape with careful focus checking, and only just enough depth of field even at f/16 if the end result is going to be a 1m wide print

Read the manual, think about all the functions of the camera, assign your custom buttons, set your parameters. My set-up includes (routinely) Auto ISO 200-1600 because within that range the A7R II files have low noise and good textural sharpness and there’s no great benefit in dropping to 100; AWB; 1/250th slowest shutter speed because the world moves and I’m very happy with 1/250th at ISO 800 rather than 1/125 at ISO 400 for nearly all my walkabout shots; AdobeRGB because I need that but actually sRGB is better matched to the EVF and rear screen, and will give you a more accurate histogram; no JPEGs because I don’t need them; Airplane Mode on; compressed raw unless there’s a really good reason; AF-S and Centre point focus; no face recognition, no smile shutter, no tracking, nothing clever with AF; single shot; generally Aperture Priority but sometimes P, M or very rarely S; Date Format file folders; SS on; electronic first curtain; setting effect on; finder and screen at default brightness and colour; grid lines 3 x 3; focus peaking low, yellow; lens correction enabled; 2 secs review, or none.

– David Kilpatrick, all images except front and rear views of A7R II body and 70-200mm lens are ©David Kilpatrick/Icon Publications Ltd; please do not link directly to images or copy

* You need thousands on offer to sell dozens…

 

 

B&H has Hasselblad HV offer again

Hasselblad HV from B&H

I feel slightly sick… I’ve spent so much on buying and replacing successive Sony A7 series cameras and their lenses that I can’t just buy this outright, which I would love to do. I sold my A99 to get the A7R (subsequently replaced by A7II, and now by A7R II) and have regretted it in so many ways, the whole optical concept of the mirrorless system being built down to a price by using innovative construction… unlike the A99 lenses which are designed even to be usable on film, let alone on a DSLR body. And then there’s GPS. I really miss GPS-in-camera and it can take me many extra hours without its benefit, to caption a 500 to 1000 final edit from one or two weeks of travel shooting to the degree of detail my work requires. And dual memory card slots… and just the whole feel of the camera.

B&H have this today for only $3,495 with the 24-70mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens, two batteries, and case.

And this is actually cheaper than an A99 and pretty much hand rebuilt by Hasselblad into a new body, with a hand-picked lens (you can be sure) all fitted in a Pelican-style hard case. It’s not vacant bling on a camera which does not deserve it – it’s a thorough upgrade to one of the best system cameras ever made, to make it even better.

They ship to the UK and rest of the world very reliably and honestly, if I had the spare cash, there would one on the way to me now. If you do buy from this link (anything from B&H, even if you navigate away from this offer) we do make some small commission to help support the site. Buy a hundred of ’em and I can maybe get mine!

– David Kilpatrick

Low-cost macro for the A7 series

It’s been a while since my last review of Sony products here, and not because I have been inactive. The truth is that I’ve spent so much on Sony kit 24/7 working has been necessary, including a good few reviews and tests of the A7RII and lenses appearing elsewhere. It’s a real issue, I now lose so much value with the lightning-fast depreciation of Sony’s products within a few months of launch that my old tactic of buying, reviewing and selling no longer works. For one thing, no media in the world will readily pay a fee which even matches the amount you might lose on a camera body in the A7 series over its first two months of retail life. Sony have been good enough to lend me a few items for brief periods but you really can’t form any useful opinions on such radical and new hardware on that basis.

However, my A7R II report is shortly on the way, and the extra time spent using the camera and suffering the damage to my credit card does not harm the process. It helps put the gear in context. I’ve resisted the anti-social pricing policies of the UK camera retail environment for some time, even buying one grey import from Panamoz. So it’s appropriate that my first article for a fair while should be intended to help you save money and get great results from any A7 full frame FE mount camera, while also supporting a company whose UK pricing policies are entirely reasonable – Sigma.

The Sigma 60mm f/2.8 ART DN lens

The butterfly above is one example of what this lens can do on uncropped full frame, in this case adding a single 16mm extension tube, which we’ll come to later as the exact type of tube you buy matters a great deal!

The neat, low-cost 60mm f/2.8 is the portrait lens in Sigma’s Art DN lens trio for APS-C and MicroFourThirds mirrorless systems. I’ve used the 19mm f/2.8 and 30mm f/2.8 as well, but the 60mm is my favourite. Originally, I tested it on Olympus MFT and the 50cm close focus with their 2X factor made it almost feel like a macro. It’s actually just 1:7.2X scale, but 1:3.6X relative to full frame on that smaller sensor. That’s a really good working distance and subject scale.

I was curious to see how much of the full frame the 60mm would cover. All these Sigma lenses are just £129.99-£139.99 retail at most UK dealers right now. They are beautifully designed and made, very light, use 46mm filters and have advanced optical design giving high contrast and first-class full aperture sharpness. Well, the answer is easy enough; you’ll get more than APS-C, with a 24 x 24mm square format crop working well, but not anything like full frame at any aperture from the 60mm.

This is the closest focus of the Sigma ART DN 60mm on the A7R II, uncropped.

Sigma call it a telephoto, with its rear nodal point much closer than 60mm to the focal plane. But its design signalled it would probably perform well as a macro lens too.

Meike extension tubes

So, we add extension tubes between the A7-series body and the lens. There’s one prominent make, Meike, and a couple of years ago I bought their very low-cost fully electronically coupled plastic 10 and 16mm twin tube set. 26mm of extension is not much. It won’t even make the E-mount 35mm f/1.8 focus to 1:1, and does even less with a 60mm. However, what it does is worthwhile combined with the lens’s own focusing range.

 

I found my plastic Meike tubes have a narrow circular throat and cut the image off all round. But, you say, the image was cut off all round already, so what could be done?

When you mount an APS-C lens on tubes, it covers more than APS-C. Put it on tubes adding about 1.4X to its focal length – like using 26mm of tubes on a 60mm lens – and it will cover full frame. You are moving the lens further from the focused plane, and as you do so, its fixed angle field of sharp coverage grows (it more or less follows the inverse square law, as does the effective working aperture of the lens when you use tubes). So a lens made for the NEX sensors, c.16 x 24mm, can cover 24 x 36mm when used on tubes for close-ups. The 60mm on 26mm of tubes would cover 24 x 36mm even with no leeway. Since the lens already has a good image circle, it turns out that it covers 24 x 36mm when used on the 16mm tube alone, and shows just a hint of corner cutoff with the 10mm tube alone. With both, it covers the full frame easily.

This is the result of using a 10mm metal extension tube – not the plastic set. The plastic design cuts off even more than the lens used on its own.

Meike understand this. They have a newer, metal-mount extension tube set costing about twice as much as the original plastic one. To get it, you must search for Meike metal extension tubes – and they are not easy to identify for certain. There’s very little explanation on-line. These tubes have a full width throat with baffles top and bottom, more or less matching the 24 x 36mm frame shape. Some black flock paper is glued in to prevent light reflection at the sides, but none is fitted top and bottom, and this is the main weakness of the design (you can obtain flock paper and fix this yourself).

Twin set, no pearls

Used alone, the metal Meike tubes turn the Sigma 60mm into a very good close-range long standard lens for the A7 series. I found that you can add the plastic tubes next to the lens, not next to the camera, and suffer no cut-off. This combination of four tubes adds 52mm and makes the Sigma 60mm able to do 1:1 with the addition of its own AF range.

You need to understand sensor-based stabilisation before using any manual lens on tubes (which these are equally suitable for, with adaptors). The A7 II series bodies use the focal length and focus distance of the lens as transmitted to the camera to control the Steady Shot Inside function. As far as I can tell from practical tests, the Meike tubes do not transmit any change to the information reaching the CPU, but SS seems to be OK with such relatively minimal extra focus extension.

This shot was taken at 1/15th hand-held with the 16mm tube on the A7R II, ISO 800, 14-bit uncompressed raw, f/8 on the Sigma 60mm lens. There’s no significant corner vignetting with 16mm of extra extension to the lens.

This is a 100% clip from the shot.

When I mount my 50mm Macro SMC Takumar on the A7R II I use either the SSI menu control, or the Lens Compensation App, to tell the SSI system I’m using a lens with an extension in place. It focuses to 1:2 size, and for this I tell the camera I’m using a 75mm lens not a 50mm. If I add 26mm of tubes, it will focus to 1:1 and I need to tell the camera I’m using a 100mm lens. That’s because a 50mm lens extended to 1:1 focus has the same camera shake characteristics as a 100mm lens used on a distant scene. Be careful, as this relationship only holds good for simple lenses (Tessar, Sonnar etc) and not for any zoom lenses, or any macro lens which uses internal focusing. If you mount a Tamron 60mm f/2 macro on your Sony body using a dumb adaptor, just tell the camera it’s got a 60mm attached. The Tamron changes focal length to focus, but the effect for anti-shake purposes is that it remains a 60mm. Its angle of view remains unchanged as you focus, while my 60mm Sigma when used at 1:1 repro covers half the angle of view it does at infinity.

I am not entirely sure whether the Meike tubes work properly with SS Inside, or if the system simply has enough latitude to function with my degree of unsteady hand-holding. Those contacts just seem to make a connection, with no chip to add information. The EXIF data does show the focal length correctly, and the set aperture (which will be a reduced effective aperture at closer range, 26mm of tubes turns 60mm f/2.8 into a working f/4-ish). But the focus distance is shown as whatever the lens focus function chip confirms – a range of 50cm to infinity. That’s obviously incorrect when tubes are added, in contrast to using a dedicated lens like the Sony 90mm f/2.8 FE G OSS Macro, which will show the true focused distance in the viewfinder and also pass correct data to the CPU.

So, a warning – the 60mm plus tubes is not technically perfect but seems to work well enough.

When you use a tripod or flash, or a fast shutter speed, and turn off Steady Shot none of this applies. In practice with shutter speeds fast enough to stop subject action or wind vibration, it all goes well. The Sigma is very sharp even though not designed for macro range work, but that’s typical of this type of lens – even if 8 elements in 6 groups with several low-dispersion elements is not basic.

sigma60mm-26mmtubes-iso800-A7RII

Here’s an example with 26mm of tubes plus some lens focus range. The ISO 800 14-bit uncompressed file has allowed some work on the bee’s back which lacked contrast. Click to open a 2048 pixel wide version.

sigma60mmf9on20mmtube-iso800-A7RII

Here’s an example which clicks through to a full size A7R II AdobeRGB JPEG (no doubt much crunched by WordPress image storage) taken at f/9 on the 16mm tube. If any of my image files have 20mm in the filename it was the 16mm tube – I’m so used to the lengths used by regular SLR mounts! The 60mm has a seven-blade aperture and gives pleasantly neutral defocused quality behind the subject. You can call it bokeh if you want to. Thank you, Scottish weather, for keeping a few flowers in this condition and giving me some sunshine just after the 14-bit uncompressed raw upgrade for the A7R II arrived.

The Metal Meike extension tubes have the same essential benefit over the plastic version with all FE and E mount, and legacy, lenses used of the A7 series full frame bodies. You can use them on the 28-70mm, 24-70mm, 55mm f/1.8, 28mm f/2 and most lenses though they have little use with the 70-200mm and I would not recommend hanging a 24-240mm off a tube.

Footnote July 2017: I now have the 50mm f/2.8 FE Sony macro. It’s a very nice lens, indeed, but the internal focusing means it’s really more like a 40 to 35mm as you get the subject bigger, and you end up just millimetres away. I compared using this lens on 26mm of tubes to focus on a target 7.5cm wide with the lens itself set to infinity (and therefore, 50mm). Working distance from the lens rim to subject – 11cm. Then I took the tubes out, and focused the lens using its own range, on the same target. The clear distance was reduced to 7.5cm. Now you know why you need tubes and probably don’t really need a macro lens.

– David Kilpatrick

If you have found this article useful, you can support Photoclubalpha by using affiliate buying links (we are not sponsored or paid in any other way, except by selling subscriptions to f2 Cameracraft).

Sigma 60mm at B&H

Vello metal mount extension tubes at B&H (similar to Meike)

Sigma 60mm F2.8 DN for Sony E – Silver from Amazon UK, no idea why they have none in black

Neewer metal extension tubes – much better price than Vello! on Amazon

Visit Wex Photographic and search for any items (UK)

No FE or A mount for new Sigma 24-35mm f/2

We’ve had news of the new Sigma Art HSM high speed wide angle full frame zoom – 24-35mm f/2.

Sigma24-35f2

It will be available in Nikon, Canon and Sigma mounts only (release date not yet confirmed) according to Sigma in the UK.

Note that this will be a bit of monster with its 82mm filter thread, 117mm long barrel and substantial petal lens hood.

Sigma does not make a full frame DSLR. Sony is now a major market for high end full frame lenses. What’s going on here? We’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe Sigma just reckon every FF Sony mirrorless owner will have a Canon AF adaptor and maybe their HSM – which works pretty well on the A7II – will even allow fast AF on the new A7R II.

– David

Sony A7R II, RX10 II, RX100 IV – making everything else obsolete

(Updated June 15th after press conference)

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The new Sony A7R II is the camera I’ve been waiting for, which everyone has predicted, and which seems to tick every box without having a huge price label on its own. I find the $3,200 (UK coinfirmed £2,600) matches its stated specifications well. Others may disagree, but they’re probably influenced by the price collapse of the original A7R, now occasionally found for under £1k.

sonyjune1526

Even so, at $3,200 the A7R II commands a $1,500 premium over the A7 II and much of that must be what you pay the new sensor – which does not seem to be licensed or sold to any other brand. Not even to Nikon, yet. The A7S remains the most expensive model despite the minimal 12 megapixel capture and lack of in-body stabilisation (SS in Sony terms, or IBIS generically).

On Monday June 15th I flew to London to have a look at the A7R II and the new RX10 II (£1,200) and RX100 IV (£850). This was a bit like a motoring journalist going to a car launch and being told, you can sit in the seat, waggle the gearstick but don’t start the engine as no photography was allowed with any of the demonstraton cameras. I was surprised to find it was a European conference, as this normally means journalists from across the Channel have a facility trip to be present, and that seems very extravagant just to look at cameras which can not be tried out. I wish I lived in France not Scotland – it might not have cost me almost £300 to be there, eight miles from Heathrow (but an eight miles which might as well be a fifty Scots miles!).

Don’t expect to get one on June 17th, as B&H’s information and too many bloggers have repeated. We are told by B&H it won’t arrive until August even though pre-orders open on June 17th in the USA. It may be later arriving in some regions. Demand is going to be so high that if you want one, you’ll need to crash into that queue…

But you can snag a Canon EOS 5DS – 50 megapixels – for only $3,699 right now

A7R II – or A7 II R?

In brief, the A7R II consists of an A7 II body with a new 42.4 megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, same Bionz X processor allowing 5fps at full resolution, new 399-point Phase Detection AF on the sensor covering most of the field (up from 117 points), a similar EVF with improved eyepiece giving a genuinely impressive 0.78X instead of 0.71X virtual magnification, the same rearRGBW bright LCD, plus silent shutter and HD 4K movie functions improving on the offering of the A7S. The new shutter mechanism is claimed to have a 500,000 actuation life expectancy which puts it ahead of almost every pro DSLR yet made. The back of the camera body is magnesium, where it’s solid composite plastic in the A7II. And it has, unlike the A7R, five-axis sensor stabilisation which talks to Sony OSS lenses for the best blend of anti-shake methods ever devised.

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The new EVF size, to the eye – compared with the old (A7II, A7R, A7) 0.71X view below (A7R, Sigma 12-24mm at 12mm, Canon EF fit, on Commlite EF-FE adaptor).

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You will read in the specifications and promo blurb that it has a new LCD double the brightness, new tough body and strengthened mount, new shutter release and controls but all these ‘improvements’ are listed by Sony over the A7R and already existed in the A7 II. Instead of making comparisons with the A7 II – which this is really a development from – Sony has listed many advances made relative to the A7R. It is not an A7R II. It’s really an A7 II R.

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The eyepiece surround is much improved, wider and softer still than the A7II which in turn is softer on specs then the earlier models. Eyepoint and position flexibility both improve and there are no unsharp zones at all even if you shift your eye around.

It’s important to understand that many of the improvements already exist in the A7 II partly as a result of criticisms of the original A7R made by objective reviewers, not Sony artisans or staff or sponsored bloggers. You don’t owe this camera to the success of its predecessors or the daily Facebook sermons of awestruck evangelists – you owe its features to corrections made to the shortcomings of the models so far. And to those who have had no vested interest (other than ownership) persuading them to weaken critical appraisal. The further improvements in the A7R II are either extremely technical – serious core improvements in the sensor and focusing – or minor refinements and carries-over from the A7II.

42.4 versus 36 point anything

If you really think 42.4 megapixels is going to take you to realms far beyond your 36 megapixel sensor, think again. It is the same step up as from 18 megapixels to 21 megapixels, a move Canon made without absolutely transforming the images created, or about the same as from 10mp to 12mp. There’s one big difference – it does not make the jump to any larger common print or repro size. Remember going from 6 to 8? That was from sub-full-page to a decent full page resolution, for US or A-size documents at a touch under 300dpi. 24 megapixels took us to a really sharp A2, 36 megapixels takes us to a acceptable A1, and all that 42 does is to make a slightly better A1 but not 300dpi.

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Above you can see the actual, real size difference (in proportion) between a 36 megapixel shot and a 42 megapixel shot. If you click on the bigger version, it will take you to my pBase page with a full A7R II sized version of this A7R shot. Zeiss? No – a 45 year old Asahi Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Macro Takumar 50mm f/4, used at f/11, and a 30 second exposure at ISO 50 lit using the ICE Light 2 moved round the subject in horseshoe shaped path for 15 seconds, laid flat, and then moved under the perspex for the remaining 15.

In practical terms, it’s 7980 x 5320 pixels (or very close – Sony has been extremely coy about releasing full specifications, even at the conference I could not find this out) versus 7360 x 4912 for the A7R. In perspective, make a big print from the A7R and it’s 24.5 inches long at optimum resolution; use the A7R II and you get one inch extra each end on the long side, 2/3rds of a inch extra top and bottom. The A7R makes a 16.3 x 24.5 inch print to perfection; the A7R II makes a 17.7 x 26.6 inch print.

Anything smaller than A4 printed, it’s got no great advantage over the 12 megapixel A7S – but you are getting close to enabling a 2X crop (one quarter of the frame) to look as good as the A7S full frame. Sony showed A3 prints. They could, honestly, all have been shot on the Sony A100 from 2006 and no-one would have been any the wiser. One enlarged section was the only real test of the camera. I’m sure the model’s dermatologist loves it.

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Where it does count most is when using crop frame mode. In APS-C crop mode, the A7R II file is large enough for a 300dpi double page fine art magazine spread, just under 18 megapixels. I’d say that where 42.4mp is not a critical size, 18mp actually is. You can get away with 16, and for Nikon, Panasonic, and Olympus this had been an important baseline. Cropped frame FF from Sony now rises above that baseline instead of sitting just below it.

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What I’d like to see would be 1:1, 4:3, 5:4 ratios implemented with the EVF and LCD screens cropped to match – and ideally the raw files reduced in size the same way. A square 1:1 would be 28 megapixels and that crop allows so many APS-C lenses (like the Zeiss Touit 12mm) to be used without vignetting or limits of coverage distortion issues. The example above is from the A7R and it’s a square crop 24 x 24mm from a frame taken with the 10-18mm f/4 Sony OSS, at 11mm; the lens would have allowed a 4:5 crop equally well.

Important edit: just read another ‘Sony artisan’ blog post asking the (redundant) question as to whether Sony lenses will be up to this new resolution. Anyone who owns an A6000, NEX-7, or A77 is already shooting at well above this resolution (full frame will need to match the Canon 5DS 50 megapixels to beat them). The resolution of the A7R II is slightly lower than that of the base level entry A3000. Don’t panic. Plenty of old legacy lenses will match it well, let alone any new Sony FE and A-mount designs.

I checked out the 20mm f/2.8 SEL lens with the new version 2 wide and fisheye black converters on full frame at the Sony event. Really, this lens comes so close to doing a good full frame and the converters even leave much of the area intact for a much bigger crop than APS-C.

20mm-on-FF  20mm-wide-FF  20mm-fisheye-FF

And that’s all without removing rear baffles or doctoring the built-in lens hoods of the converters!

Detailed points

When we get a chance to use the camera, the following points will be of interest:

Has the mount been upgraded again? It still has only four attachment screws, compared to Fujfilm X system’s six screws (and the A-mount uses six too). My two camera bodies and two changes of mount on the A7R, to Tough E mount and then 2nd generation Tough E mount, all produce unpredictable degrees of slop, smoothness or jam-on tightness from various adaptors showing that no matter what, tolerances are broad. Comment: can’t tell from changing lenses at the event, it feels much the same as the A7 II.

Has the Memory position, 1 and 2 on the mode dial, been improved to remember MORE of the important settings – notable, Setting Effect ON and OFF, for saving a studio flash preset mode with the EVF/LCD setting effect disabled? Answer: No.

Is the hot shoe part of the Multi Function Accessory Shoe hampered by paint, or tolerances in fit, or does it readily accept all standard ISO hot shoe simple flash devices and triggers? Looks clear.

Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM on Focus EF-FE adaptor (also works perfectly with Commlite) on A7R. The 40mm f/2.8, and Sigma 12-24mm in EF mount work well on my A7R with these two sub-Metabones price adaptors. At the press event we found the 85mm just didn’t focus at all with any adaptor on any of the pre-production A7R II bodies, but the 40mm was fine.

Will the promised ability to use PD-on-sensor AF with Canon and other lenses rely on Metabones as the only adaptor, or is it generic? The microlenses on a backside illuminated sensor have a large effective aperture than traditional design, and this means the PD-lenses (a special variant of the microlenses used on sensel pairs) will be similarly improved. This may make some difference, but it’s actually the focus motor control via lens to body data communication which will enable fast and sure operation with Sony SSM on LA-EA3, Canon USM on EF-adaptor, and so on. Remember, this does not make screw drive or SAM, or micromotor Canon AF pre-USM lenses, function any better. It will only apply to ultrasonic, piezo, linear motor and similar finely controllable AF mechanisms with close to zero play and accurate (8 contacts, not 5) distance and ‘state’ reporting. Note, too, that Sony’s revised lenses (SSM II) are not just optical and weatherproofing reworks – the new SSM is designed to work with contrast detection, as found on the A7R, much better.

Comment: we found that the Canon 85mm f/1.8 USMdidn’t work on any adaptor on the A7R II, while the 40mm f/2.8 activated the PDAF points and focused very rapidly, and a 24mm f/2.8 USMf/2.8 focused fast – and that various different demo A7R II bodies responded differently and one malfunctioned a lot of the time even with Metabones. Sony said this was known and the final retail stock should at least work OK with Metabones IV and probable firmware updates, but other cheaper adaptors will not be tested.

The new camera’s mode dial has a central lock button, and a slightly lighter click action without risk of being turned by mistake. We’d had liked to have seen a lock on the +/- EV compensation dial too, but this just has slightly strengthened clicks.

Wish list

The same small battery has been used yet again despite the II body design having what looks like enough room for a full sized Alpha battery (see below – carefully positioned batteries with A7 II body). Let’s hope for upgraded batteries from Sony.

Please, Sony, you provided a GPS pinout in the new shoe – you have never rolled out a GPS module or firmware. It’s three years now and no news. Hell, I nearly bought a brand new boxed A99 at Dixons Heathrow Terminal 2 shop for £1075 inc VAT maanger’s special, I miss GPS so much!

Please let the Lens Data entered into the menu for SS of manual lenses, without data communication, be embedded into EXIF so if I enter 50mm, my files say so. And ideally, please make it possible to enter the focused distance (this would improve stabilisation) and the aperture in use (just to complete the EXIF data).

Sony pointed out that the latest version of the lens correction App will record the focal length and aperture as you enter them, in EXIF. It has its own SS on/off setting and automatically recognises whatever focal length you have entered. You can name and recall each different lens, and if for example you normally use your 24mm f/3.5 Samyang shift lens at f/16 for architecture, you can enter f/16 as the lens’s aperture and that will be corrected embedded in your EXIF. But to get this you must run the app, not just shoot with a manually set focal length for SS.

Please change the Memory 1 and 2 registers to save and recall ALL the camera settings and not just those in the first bank of the menu system (but see the vital point above about Setting Effect On/Off). Until I test the camera, no more to say – but Sony does not usually keep quiet about changes, and has not mentioned this aspect.

The existing rear screen – the II design, left, improves on the original A7R but this is still a basic, amateur level screen to be working with and a fully articulated design would be better.

Though you’ve missed the boat with this camera, the crudely hinged and angled rear screen needs to be replaced with a fully articulated screen that can be reversed to the camera for protection and to prevent distracting light when working in the dark.

Out of the loop

I’ve been out of reviewing new Sony gear for some time, as it has not proved possible to get hold of it early enough or for long enough to give any meaningful assessment which Joe Photographer anywhere in the world couldn’t appear to do themselves. For six or seven years I have bought and sold new Alpha gear to fill the gaps between the occasional availability of review kit, but recently that has become so expensive it exceeds any margins available from the three magazines I publish, or any fees I can obtain from other media. Like politicians, people who write about gear either need an independent mind or independent means – without one of these, you’re always in someone’s corporate pocket or feeding from crumbs under the main table.

The result, as we see all the time, is that many early users or reviewers of Sony kit are no longer all that independent and much of the first wave of information now comes through the channel of ‘artisans’ (as it does with ‘ambassadors’ for all makes). And we see plenty of others who are clearly of independent means, whose main purpose in life is to be the first to post pictures taken with new item X regardless of the cost.

So maybe I don’t need to push to get hold of an A7R II for the too-short two week period of any review loan, after a six month wait while other consumer-orientated magazines and blogs take priority – or indeed rush to buy one.

But… like the RX10 which I use all the time… like the A6000 kit which is co affordable and compact it’s essential… like the RX100 MkIII which goes where even the RX10 is not welcome… like my A7 II with stabilisation which has transformed a box of assorted lenses into a solid outfit… this one’s possibly something to buy because I actually need it and will use it.

I may not even cosy anything as it will make both the A7R and A7II redundant, because it does both jobs and also covers the A7S I did manage to borrow but never bought. And it does more.

So, thinking whether or not to bother with this upgrade is a bit irrelevant. Even if it was still ‘just’ 36mp the other improvements would mean it still replaced the need for a handful of A7 models, all in one.

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Small miracles

My one doubt is that the A7R II may be beaten in practical terms by the RX10 II. Please note that so many incorrect snippets of info have gone around about the ‘stacked’ sensor design, I thought it referred to RGB stacking. It does not, the sensor is a conventional Bayer pattern, and what is stacked is the electronic substructure. This does not affect the top side of the sensor and the performance in image quality should be similar to the existing models. What it does is greatly speed data transfer and enables over 1000 (lower resolution) frames per second to be clocked through from photon received to movie frame recorded.

The RX10 and 100 new versions offer ridiculous levels of high speed slow motion capture, clean 4K video and other technical benefits which come with a very small chance of dust on sensor, unlike the A7R II which is almost guaranteed to be a dust devil. Why do I say that? Because a backside illuminated sensor renders dust on its cover glass even more sharply than a conventional one! We know the RX models are not dustproof and if you are unlucky enough to get a spot on the sensor it’s a service visit to get it removed, but in my experience with five or them so far I have never had a single dust spot.

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So what? Just retouch? Not when making movies! Admittedly most movie makers will open up the lenses to max or only a stop down on these 1″ sensor cameras, and would open up lenses just the same on the A7R II and never see dust even if it was there. But what about the time you want that ‘American take’ – f/22 at 20mm? Traditionally they were taken in dusty settings for the spaghetti westerns!

All I can say is that the RX10 has come very close indeed to removing the need for any other camera and it’s been a pleasure to work with the raw files. The RX10 MkII might be so much better that I forget about DSLRs or mirrorless systems and just get on with capturing great images. Or then again…

– David Kilpatrick

Sony Alpha 7R – the Swiss Army Knife camera

I guess it’s time to publish another field test review of the Alpha 7R despite rarely having used the camera in anger, or in any state other than anger. It arrived in late November and caught me at a time when I was not going anywhere or doing anything, nothing was happening and the weather was just plain ordinary. We didn’t have floods, or snow, or anything else like the rest of the country. It also came with a set of problems to be solved some of which turned out to frustrate any affordable solution.

I started writing this page in February 2014. It may give you some idea of my issues with the whole current Sony system that I’ve taken almost until May to publish it. Additions have been made on December 2nd 2014.

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When you’ve got a wonderful new tool to work with, it doesn’t help to have no work to do which requires that tool. This really is the Swiss Army Knife camera, a strapline I used on the first issue of the new-look f2 Freelance Photographer magazine which I took back into ownership at the end of January. The A7R has the potential to fit in my pocket and replace every single other camera I own, to use all the lenses I have bought for all other systems and formats, and to remove stones from horses’ hooves.

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But, and here’s the problem, it also replaces nothing at all as well as it could. There are maybe no more than half a dozen reasons why, but they are critical reasons and any one of these reasons will limit the use of the A7R.

  • No in-body stabilisation and not all lenses are stabilised
  • No electronic first curtain means the shutter cycle is noisy and causes vibration see later comments
  • The sensor design prevents optimum use of rangefinder type lenses under 35mm focal length
  • No native full frame wide-angle lens under 24mm is likely to be available before September 2014
  • Any Sony FE-mount lens with a performance matched to the sensor is going to cost double its true value
  • No on-board GPS and (to date) no multi-function shoe GPS module to add
  • Single card slot only and consumer size lith-ion battery
  • Very slow start-up and wake up from sleep especially when not using Program, Manual or intelligent fully auto modes
  • Slow optimal AF/AE performance continuous shooting
  • Slow laminar shutter blade transit speed and flash synchronisation limit
  • Firmware compatibility problems with some existing E-mount OSS lenses
  • No provision for IPTC copyright information entry
  • Custom lens app can be used with manual adapted lenses but does not embed metadata in EXIF
  • User memory settings don’t cover functions from some menus
  • Apps are charged at additional cost for functions which would reasonably be free or included in a camera body with a price-tag of £1,800
  • No battery charger is supplied and default charging method is by micro USB cable
  • The rear LCD screen can only be tilted and is not reversible to face the body
  • The EVF even at its brightest is not up to tropical or desert viewing conditions
  • Auto switching EVF to rear screen is unreliable
  • As I have now found after five months’ use, not as durable as it looks (I have repaired the worn metal showing through the sharp edges on the ‘prism’ and body with a black Sharpie pen, but I’m tempted to use a guitar fret polishing sheet to make all the sharp edges into bright silver… just rub that thin black coating off!)

In case you’re thinking this is a completely unfair list of negative points to start a review with, well, you may be right. It’s here to make up for the usual lists of star features which *end* reviews. I’m also going to need to explain all these points. Here, to balance the negatives, are the positives.

  • The highest resolution full-frame sensor (24 x 36mm) currently made
  • The smallest full-frame system camera body
  • No moving mirror, no SLT mirror, and no optical low-pass (anti-aliasing) filter
  • 18mm lens mount register allows the use with adaptors of all current and past lenses from all systems designed to cover 24 x 36mm except those which used fixed rear assemblies and front groups
  • Custom lens app allows corrections for any lens, while built-in function auto corrects E and FE mount lenses
  • WiFi and Nearfield Connection transfer file to mobile devices or other hosts with automatic small JPEG creation even when full size JPEG or RAW is the selected shooting format
  • Sony PlayMemories Mobile Apps downloadable to camera and devices add functions such as remote control and intervalometer, lens corrections, sensor shading and colour shift compensation
  • The shutter is a professional specification speeded to 1/8,000th with motorized actuation
  • The body is reasonably rugged, very light magnesium with some composite surface panels and is sealed against everyday dust and moisture ingress
  • Although you can’t hear any sound, it has an Olympus-style ultrasonic vibration dust removal process and it is stunningly effective – no big buzz, no vibrational you can feel, but it really works
  • A full set of buttons can be customised for functions, and there are three adjustment controllers plus a dedicated exposure compensation dial
  • The electronic viewfinder with 2.3 million pixels and a 0.70X virtual view is only beaten by Fuji’s X-T1
  • Triggered or manual magnified manual focus allows exceptional focusing accuracy when needed
  • The high cost of Sony dedicated lenses is offset by the quality of many low-cost, older manual lenses and the option of two adaptors for Sony A-mount lenses, SLT mirror type or mirrorless
  • The interface allows manual selection of most functions, including APS-C format crop or using full frame with non-FF lenses, movie audio gain, finder/screen exposure simulation, and lens corrections

This last point may seem a bit vague but it’s actually what makes the A7R usable at all in many circumstances. The APS-C crop on/off has saved the camera from having zero real wide-angle choice during its first three months of release, as our December 2013 article on the use of the Sony E 10-18mm lens showed.

Although electronic viewfinder cameras are not ideal for studio work, the high resolution of the A7R makes it an alternative to medium format for the highest quality. It can be set to ISO 50 or 100, with 14-bit raw files using a compression method which is comparable to Nikon’s lossless option. If ‘Setting Effect Off’ is selected, the EVF or screen will always show a bright auto white balanced image allowing modelling lights to be used for composing and focusing even when the actual shot will be taken by flash with a fixed preset WB. The professional or advanced user will want to have all the settings for such work stored as a custom memory preset, but Sony puts the ‘Setting Effect’ outside the saved functions. This is most frustrating as getting to it requires menu-diving.

The same applies to stabilisation, which is a function of the lenses not the camera. It is turned on or off through a menu setting or by assigning a Custom button for direct access, making occasional tripod work need an excursion into the menus before and after, unless you are to end up with OSS enabled or disabled inappropriately. The E/FE lenses have no OSS switch, the body has no switch, and there’s no one-press shortcut. Sony’s decision to omit M/AF and OSS on-off switches from the FE lenses makes the system just that little bit harder to work with. Buy a Canon or Nikon and even the cheapest lens has a stabilisation switch you can use easily every time you mount the camera on a tripod, work with flash, or use a fast shutter speed and want the optimum lens performance (achieved, almost invariably, with stabilisation off).

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No in-body stabilisation is going to handle this anyway – luck, flash, a tripod or a very fast shutter speed provide the answers

Working speed

How much does ANY of this matter, if you simply fit the appropriate kit lens or prime, and just get out and use the camera? Not a great deal if you use the camera like a point-and-shoot and your objective is a small print or posting on Facebook. Given the remarks I’ve seen on-line from people buying an A7R with a view to catching their ‘toddler running around’, plenty of new owners fall into this category. They are lucky because no matter what camera they buy, from a £50 supermarket offer to a Canon EOS 1DX, they will be happy with the results and only criticise them when the family pet outpaces the autofocus in the ideal photographic conditions of their living room.

The main issue which will hit any user of the A7R is its overall operating response and speed. Acquiring focus, by contrast detection, normally seems to take around 1/4 second with an FE or E lens, but can take half to one second in low light or with a low contrast subject. It can also fail but confirm positive occasionally, and this is a little frustrating as we are not used to getting defocused snaps today. Even one fail in a hundred is a surprise. If you try the LA-EA3 adaptor, which provides a mirror-free light path and supports AF with SAM and SSM lenses, half to one second is normal in good light. You may find it worth disabling the ‘AF with shutter’ option and using only the AF button to set the focus, so the shutter release does not keep resetting it with each shot. However, after doing this I found it more than inconvenient NOT to have the familiar AF on half-pressure.

The shutter cycle

Having acquired focus, you complete the shutter release action. The A7R then executes a pre-exposure shutter action which involves closing the shutter with a movement of both blinds. This takes 250ms, or one-quarter of a second. That is longer than the mirror lift timing of a DSLR. After the exposure is made (a minimum period of about 6ms) there is short blackout dwell and the shutter re-opens to restore live view. The complete cycle is between 375 and 385ms as timed using audio and video recording and analysis.

This is not so very much worse overall than the Alpha 99 full frame SLT used with mechanical first curtain, but more of the cycle happens before the exposure, creating a surprisingly long shutter release lag. The A99, like the A77 and NEX-7, NEX-6, A6000 and indeed most other new Sony models including the A7, can use Electronic First Curtain. This means no mechanical action happens before the exposure at all. By the time you see any blackout or hear any noise, the image has already been captured, silently; the second shutter curtain closes to end the exposure and allow electronic readout. The shutter lag with an Alpha 99 or A7 in this mode is 20ms, or 1/50th. The shutter lag with the A7R can not be reduced to less than 1/4 in single shot mode.

This is also why the regular continuous shooting offers only 1.5fps, with AF and AE supported for each individual frame and 14-bit raw data. If you set Speed Priority mode, you can get between 4 and 5fps at the most with the exposure locked but AF active – however, you don’t get a real time viewfinder display, and you also get 12-bit recording instead of 14. This lowers JPEG quality in-camera as well as the headroom and dynamic range of the raw file. You’ll only get this performance by using the best SD cards. Some which claim 90-95Mbps speed only write are half or less, and are quoting their read speed.

The A7R will often remain in a card-writing state for several seconds (as long as 16 seconds if a raw sequence has been shot and buffering is queuing the images). Playback or review is not always possible without a brief wait. Since turning off auto review (which is not subject to this wait) greatly improves EVF performance for rapid fire shooting, you may have no clear idea of your shots until well after they are captured.

The simple fact is that where many competitors including Sony’s own A7 have fast responses, the A7R has an operating speed closer to a 1970s film SLR with ‘auto winder’ (the slow alternative to a motor drive), or being more charitable, to a Mamiya 645 with a power winder. It’s essentially medium format operating speed. This is in contrast to the Nikon D800/E, which offers the same file quality without a speed penalty.

Sensor shading and lenses

The A7R sensor microlens and coating structure produces not only a strong magenta-purple shading towards the frame ends with short rear focus wide angle rangefinder lenses, it also throws up a yellow-orange discolouration at the top of the (horizontal) frame. It shows some degree of this effect with nearly all lenses under 40mm focal length made for Leica M, screw, Contax G or similar mounts.

A month after releasing the camera, Sony issued a PlayMemories App which can be loaded up and invoked to record and re-use manually adjusted corrections for named lenses. These include distortion (barrel or pincushion), vignetting, and colour shading. The app does not allow the creation of a reference image or mapping mask. You can do this for Lightroom (shading only, saved as data) or Capture One Pro (shading and colour, dust and defects saved as an image). Consequently it actually won’t correct properly as it ignores the yellow-orange patch. Its limits are insufficient to correct full fisheye to normal (as found in the onboard correction which Nikon use for their 10.5mm lens) or handle typical shading from lenses like the Voigtlander 12mm, 15mm and 21mm.

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This is typical of a non-retrofocus wide angle shading map produced from the A7R. The slightly magenta vignetting can be cured easily. The piss-yellow patch can not and it’s there, to one degree or another, with more lenses than you would imagine.

A different aspect of the sensor construction produces smearing. I noticed that this was minimal with the 15mm Voigtlander and strong with the 21mm. It seems to depend on the rear group geometry relative to the sensor. I ended up selling both these lenses.

Since then, I have given up on the idea of a super-compact Leica style outfit though I still have a 40mm f/1.4 Voigtlander and an 85mm f/4 Zeiss. Sony’s FE lenses are not very small and not all that attractive in specification. They do little more than return me to the kind of lens choices I had thirty years with the launch of the Minolta AF system – a slight step backwards at the time, losing the 17mm f/4 option, 24mm VFC, 35mm VFC Shift, Varisoft and many other unique bits of glass. I’m using a bunch of vintage Pentax, Minolta, Canon and other lenses in the 17mm to 85mm range. They don’t suffer from sensor shading or smearing problems and have generally proved far better than modern zooms.

My gripe with these solutions is that even if I enter a lens identity in the App, my images show no focal length data in the EXIF info, and certainly no aperture data. At the end of a long day, I have not made notes on every change of lenses. I have no idea what lens or settings may have produced a good or bad result. What I need is for every lens to be a properly dedicated FE mount one whether AF or manual focus. And I don’t want to pay Carl Zeiss a thousand pounds to get a sharp result from the type of lens and aperture specification which has been easy to make to an outstanding performance level, at modest cost, for the last half-century.

There are three lenses made by Sigma – 19mm, 30mm and 60mm f/2.8 designs in E-mount – which prove it is possible to make low cost, lightweight lenses which deliver results almost beyond criticism. Just making the direct translation of these lenses to 28mm, 45mm and 90mm f/2.8 for (say) 50% extra cost would give the A7R exactly the kind of glass it needed from the launch day. Sony’s Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 and 55mm f/1.8 may be wonderful in their own right but they appeal to me as much as 35mm f/2.8 lenses and 55mm f/1.8 lenses did back in the 1970s. Not at all. They are the focal lengths and apertures you used to find on twin-lens film compacts and they’re what you still find in the scruffiest old bag of 1960s worn-out SLR kit at a junk sale. They are what my father’s Pentax kit had (plus the inevitable 135mm).

Fuji’s launch of the X-series with a fast 28mm pancake equivalent (18mm f/2), very fast 50mm equivalent (35mm f/1.4), and good 90mm equivalent macro (60mm f/2.4) paid off well and they followed up with a 14mm f/2.8 (21mm equivalent) and pro portrait 56mm f/1.2. Though not cheap, these lenses are all affordable and have been supplemented by further excellent kit, tele and wide-angle zooms. What the A7/R needs most is a direct counterpart to this Fuji system and it simply doesn’t have it.

As for the long end, I see almost no point in buying any lens made for the FE mount longer than something like 100mm. The 70-200mm f/4 may be attractive, but it’s forever limited to the FE mount while being as long as a regular Alpha lens. Had Sony made a clever two-part SSM lens for FE and Alpha, with a detachable rear tube like a dedicated LA-EA3, they would have had a winner. Instead they have the lens which Alpha A-mount owners have been waiting for – pressing for ever since the digital system arrived – made in the new mirrorless mount only. After seeing the final prices of the CZ 24-70mm f/4 and the Sony 70-200mm f/4 G, I’ve bought an LE-EA4 Alpha SLT adaptor as well as an LE-EA3 mirror-free adaptor.

But longer lenses are still much better on the Alpha mount, with its sensor based stabilisation and the larger bodies with true phase detection AF ideally suited to the wildlife, action, news and sports for which lenses over 200mm are destined. You can add an LA-EA4 SLT type adaptor to the A7/R, but these are still full-frame cameras one of which (the A7) has extremely low resolution for tele work compared to the ultimate telephoto capture machine, the neglected Alpha 77 (or its lesser spec 24 megapixel siblings).

From my point of view I’ve got an amazing camera body with a few limitations, but a menagerie of odd lenses all with even greater limitations or lack of connectivity. If someone came out with a Canon FD lens adaptor with a chip able to tell the camera I was using a 20mm and what aperture was set, that would be great.

What does work is any LA-EA adaptor with Alpha lenses. You get all the EXIF data, and aperture control from the body. What you don’t get is the smooth focusing of a manual lens, or contrast detect AF, though you do have AF calibration to fix the inevitable inaccuracy of phase detect systems. It’s just a pity the 20mm Minolta/Sony AF design isn’t as good as the 1980s Canon last version manual focus FDn.

Timing and shake

The A7R shutter is a full size mechanism. A shutter like this running at 1/8,000th maximum speed should be achieving flash synchronisation at 1/250th. The fact that this camera is restricted to 1/160th shows that the transit speed of the shutter blinds is slower than normal. There must be a reason, and the discovery (by me, and others, despite vehement denials in some quarters) that a shock-induced form of camera shake happens could be it. Sony has also disabled OSS support for many E-mount lenses. I believe this is connected to the typical shake pattern in the hands of the average user. Update: because it occurs less with unstabilised lenses, for example my 70-210mm f/4 Minolta AF used on LA-EA4 shows none of the typical patterns, I now think this is not a ‘shutter shock’ or ‘user shake’ issue but is due either to mistimed communication between the camera and most stabilised lenes, or more likely, to a brief loss of the power needed to maintain moving lens groups or elements in position whether stabilisation is active or not. A need to moderate the drain on the battery is indicated by the slow transit of the curtains (slow motor speed to operate the shutter). Otherwise the A7R would surely have had a full speed 1/8000th shutter with X at 1/250th.

I made recordings using video, audio and motion sensing methods and observed the typical results from repeated exposures with different lenses. I found that shutter speeds from 1/30th to 1/160th could be affected by a shake or double image which occurs 1/250th after the shutter has opened, looking like a reflected or transmitted shock. At speeds longer than 1/60th this jolt occupies less than a quarter of the overall exposure and is not so clearly visible as a double image. It can look worse at 1/160th than 1/80th, because at 1/160th about half the exposure can be in one position and half with the image shifted a tiny degree. A distinct double image is often shown and it’s always in the vertical direction when the camera is held horizontally.

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FE 28-70mm handheld 1/80th, OSS switched on (100% detail click to enlarge). Pre-update firmware. It’s very hard to be sure, but I think the April firmware update has made the 28-70mm (originally NOT recommended for the A7R or sold with the body) perform better.

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FE 28-70mm handheld 1/80th, OSS switched off.

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Sigma 70-300mm OS switched on, on LA-EA3 adaptor. One problem with using any non-Sony lenses is that firmware updates have no effect on them at all. Sony don’t make a stabilised lens going as long as 300mm, yet.

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Sigma 70-300mm OS switched off. All images at 70mm (many tests made, these are accurate representations of the results and tend to show that stabilisation is likely to produce no benefit).

Since some stabilised lenses including my Tamron 18-200mm Di III VC also produced this distinctive double exposure, I believe that Sony’s disabling of OSS in the 55-210mm E lens for example was done because their engineers identified the problem before the camera went on sale. I also think it can be fixed by firmware updates to Sony E lenses, but probably not for others. Update: they did not update the new black 55-210mm OSS. I think it just imposes too much battery load without an entirely redesigned OSS mechanism, or perhaps a combination of OSS and focus. Fuji has overcome this problem using very carefully balance triple linear motors in their new large lens for the X-system, the 50-140mm f/2.8 – it’s a stabilised, fast focusing lens with minimum power consumption.

In response to those who say oh, it’s a super-high resolution camera, your technique needs to be (bla bla bla!) it’s actually slightly lower resolution than my NEX-5n and far lower than my Alpha 77 or the NEX-7 I no longer have. It’s also lower than the A3000 I owned briefly, and the NEX-6 I have used as a second camera since early March. 36 megapixels full frame is 15 megapixels APS-C and that’s a lower resolution than any E-mount camera made except the original NEX-5 and NEX-3 14 megapixel bodies. I can enable mechanical first shutter curtain on any other NEX or Alpha SLT body and never see the same ‘jolted exposure’ effect with the same lenses. I can also shoot with our Alpha 700, 900 and 580 bodies and never see this shake fingerprint despite their mirror mechanism and mechanical first curtain combined.

Of course I may get shake with disabled or absent stabilisation, hand-held, with almost any digital body. I use many different cameras through the year and sometimes I get very poor stabilisation, as when using certain Nikon lenses with the earlier VR zooms on their 24 megapixel DX format bodies. This shake is random and variable, and reflects my own instability, body sway, wind chill and so on. It’s not one type of shake visible too often in shots which should not normally be affected.

Reviewers have been incredibly cautious to observe this effect. I don’t know why. I’d spotted it within a few hours of trying the camera out. Others have been fast to defend the A7R and suggest that you just need to avoid that critical shutter speed range of 1/60th-1/160th. If this was not such an extremely useful speed range that would be fine. It’s actually the precise range you most want to be perfectly stabilised and least want to have to avoid. It’s also favoured by Sony when program mode and auto ISO are used.

One way to minimise this shake seems to be to use manual focus, mechanical lenses and to favour short focal lengths. The A7R never feels or handles better than when you’ve got a rangefinder lens in the range from 12mm to 28mm fitted. It becomes like the Leica that never was, the eye-level camera which doesn’t need a separate viewfinder to handle a 12mm, 15mm, 18mm, 21mm or 24mm lens. Leica may have a good rear screen to help with this issue now but no EVF. So the next point has been a big issue for buyers.

For the latest firmware updates, and new Apps and software, see:

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/ILCE-7R

And for the rest…

While I do miss the dual card slots of most of the Alpha cameras I’m using, I know the NEX and E-mount models have never had this, and with a 32GB card installed I have adapted to using the USB cable to read off new images and let the A7R charge. I do not miss the separate battery charger as I have one, and spare batteries. Nearly all the time, the camera is kept fully charged by its time spent overnight attached to the Mac. Since my RX100, RX10 and NEX-6 all work the same way using the same cable life has been simplified.

My favourite designs remain the A55, A77 and A99 all of which have had GPS on board and rear screens which enable self-filming for video demonstrations, or folding away to face the camera (how I normaly use EVF cameras now). The shared battery across the A55, A7R, NEX and A3000 models and RX10 makes it likely I might travel using a combination of these. I don’t have much use yet for the WiFi functions but I understand their importance to others, and they will really come in useful for remote camera operation in future. That can include skypole or kite work, or having a camera tripod mounted 10 metres away from the main shooting position for a different viewpoint of an event, operated from a phone or tablet.

kerelanchurch-web

GPS identified this as a church at Mailadumpara on the highway to Munnar – the 10-18mm lens used on full frame enabled this uncropped 36 megapixel shot at 14mm, f/11 (the shading is due to natural sky polarisation and the vignetting of the lens which I have not corrected).

I found a solution to my GPS problems in the form of a £40 igotU device from Maplin. It’s tiny (I am tempted to put a hot shoe mount on it but so far have just popped it in my shirt pocket). Free igotU2gpx file reading and low-cost PhotoLinker (buggy and unreliable in the extreme with 36 megapixel raw files) let me write GPS data into full day shoots on all cameras used. It’s not as accurate as built-in GPS and the process is tedious; the GPS data also exists in sidecar files until MediaPro is used to embed it into finished JPEGs. I’ll still buy the GPS module for the multi function shoe just as soon as Sony release it.

Top quality files

The appeal for me of the A7R is the sheer quality of the image. Even at ISO 3200, it is completely acceptable when processed carefully with Adobe software from raw. The JPEGs are mediocre with the exception of multi-shot modes and I don’t use them except for panoramas and night shots. The raw file has been criticised but compared directly with competitors, I find it has what I need – excellent highlight recovery from normal exposure levels, very low noise across a wide range of ISO, an ISO 50 setting ideal for studio lit subjects, and extreme pixel level sharpness.

Lomography Petzval lens

The Lomography Petzval lens used on the A7R with Nikon adaptor. This reproduction lens from an 1840s design is a wonderful tool for portraits.

RTK-silverfex-faded-petzval

Richard Kilpatrick as a Victorian portrait subject with our Interfit background as a drape – A7R, ISO 50, Petzval lens at f/5.6 (Waterhouse stop) manually focused, Elinchrom Ranger Quadra RX flash.

Manual focusing with peaking and magnification combined tells you a lot about your lenses. Find a good lens, and the peaking will be present even at Low setting, with a very narrow band of activation. A poor lens (or aperture setting) usually fails to show a peaking line at Low setting, then shows one at Medium or High which has little discrimination. I’ve been able to identify my best manual and A-mount lenses by using the 14.4X magnification and the peaking function to examine targets.

Having done this, the extra performance squeezed out of almost lenses by super-accurate focusing makes AF seem inadequate. The contrast detection AF of the A7R is good, but just invoking magnified manual after it has locked on proves that it rarely hits the perfect mark. It gets to ‘good enough’. Like many new A7R owners, I find myself often using manual focusing without noticing that it is any slower than AF used to be. It’s a quantum leap ahead of any optical finder accuracy.

SONY DSC

I find the body shape and size ideal, and have no complaints about the position of anything except the shutter release, which could have been 3mm or so further forward, and also would have been improved by the addition of a manual cable release thread (found on the RX10). I don’t plan to get a vertical grip, as the whole point of the A7R is small size and light weight. The external finish feels secure, the battery and other doors are adequately sealed and I don’t tend to overwork them.

The small body size causes a few problems with tripod mounting. Even the smallest monopod head can restrict the rear screen movement making it impossible to angle the screen down if you want to hold the camera above head height. It doesn’t angle down much to start with. The position of the Menu button, needed to access some adjustments like OSS and Finder Setting Effect, isn’t ideal as the only button on the left end of the camera. The exposure compensation dial is unusual as a solus function using up an entire large mechanical control, and has no lock, so it can be turned a little easily.

The A7/R is so customisable that after a couple of months getting used to it and changing things you’ll have a camera as far removed from its out of the box settings as a typical Canon ends up. Mine, for example, has the AF/MF and AE Lock button/switch control set up to act as Focus when set to AF/MF (with pre-Focus and tracking lock and eye-start focus all disabled), and to act as Focus Magnifier when set to AE; while the shutter release is set not to activate AF, but to lock AE on first pressure (when using the camera in a controlled environment – when travelling, I soon reverted to AF with shutter). This makes the camera anything but point and shoot, as out of focus shots are guaranteed without a separate focus action.

In practice

Like far too many A7R users, I’ve spent half my time testing and experimenting, and not enough time shooting. I’ve had the RX10 as a companion at the same time, and needed to shoot with new flash systems, where that camera’s exceptional high speed sync makes it more versatile – there’s not much point having flash heads which manage 1/5000th duration when your sync speed is 1/160th, unlike the RX10 which can manage between 1/1600th and 1/3200th depending on aperture. I had a concert venue opening to shoot, with video, and once again the silent RX10 with its superb video quality was the obvious choice.

Then, at Easter, we had a nine-day tour of Kerala, an exceptional offer from Citrus Holidays providing us with a private driver and a packed itinerary covering 1000km and five locations. This was our first visit to India for 28 years, and would provide the first library images of India apart from a few scanned transparencies of subjects which do not date. Equipment mattered. Shirley always uses her Alpha 580 with Sigma 18-250mm OS original version; it’s heavy and the lens has been through one factory service already, but it’s been very reliable and survived a short period where a Nikon D600 kit was tried as a replacement (and sold pretty sharply, in favour of returning to the more reliable AF, AE and clean sensor of 580).

Logically, my A77 and A55 would have come along. They share the same battery type, and my basic lens set 8-16mm, 16-80mm and 70-300mm gives both exceptional wide angle and a good tele performance (300mm plus APS-C plus 24 megapixels) for wildlife. It is however a very heavy kit and we wanted to travel light and work light, in high temperature and humidity.

So, the A7R had to be my choice. Apart from anything else, this camera at £1800 had not so far proved ‘better’ for any given job – it was barely used. In the studio our A900 and A700 optical finders just work far better than any EVF camera, and for general PR and social photography the last thing you need is 36 megapixel full frame. It just creates oversized files and tends to have too little depth of field. The A7R had been used for tests, for some winter landscapes, and some architectural shots. We had not travelled at all since early November.

This decision also led me to leave the RX10 behind, and this was a big mistake. I took the RX100 instead because the RX10 is fairly large. Its zoom range and silent operation would both have been valuable. With the A7R and its 28-70mm OSS lens I took the 10-18mm OSS, my Tamron 18-200mm VC DiIII, NEX-6 body and 16-50mm OSS collapsible kit lens. This was really a backup in case any fault developed. In practice the A7R makes a better APS-C camera. I only used the 28-70mm lens once, and used the wide zoom and the Tamron fairly often on the A7R with APS-C crop, occasionally with crop disabled. While it’s possible to get a bit more wide-angle from the 10-18mm by shooting full fame, the 15 megapixel crop is a 100% perfect frame every time with this lens.

Despite the phase-detect focus of the NEX-6, this camera proved less accurate and slower in all conditions. Its main benefit was better timing for shots once the finder image is focused and stable, along with quieter operation. It may be a smaller body nominally but there’s little practical difference. Also, I was wearing a baseball cap, the minimum headgear needed in the sun. The left-end viewfinder eye position prevented a right hand ‘on top’ vertical grip on the NEX-6 while the central eyepiece of the A7R allowed a choice of grip style without having to remove the peaked cap.

The most significant loss my choice involved was telephoto power. Shirley’s 250mm f/6.3 reach on APS-C would have demanded a huge lens, a true 375mm or in practice a 400mm, to get the full benefit of 36 megapixels on full frame. It would also have demanded at least one f-stop more stopping down to match the critical long lens depth of field. I didn’t have an E-mount 24 megapixel body, but if I had one my 18-200mm would have slightly outreached Shirley’s 250mm as used on 16 megapixels.

162mmf8-anhinga-nex6

This snake bird (anhinga) was photographed using the NEX-6 and 18-200mm (162mm and f/8), from a moving boat. There is no trace of shake at 1/250th, indicating the VC stabilisation works on this body. I got excellent results from the NEX-6, which I picked up at The Photography Show on March 4th with its 16-50mm collapsible motorized zoom on a special deal. However that deal was not as good as the current B+H of $524 with free accessories.

There are no lenses yet made longer than 200mm for the FE mount. If there are any made other than an obligatory zoom to 300mm they will be expensive and limited to the E-mount system for ever. In contrast a Canon, Nikon or Alpha SSM long lens will always be usable on SLR-form bodies and also on mirrorless – possibly on various mirrorless systems. Canon EF lenses for example can be used on almost all mirrorless bodies, and Nikon teles have the possibility of fitting to their 1 system 2.7X factor bodies with totally successful functions and focusing. I’ve tried this and it works – an 800mm equivalent with outstanding image quality, from a 300mm.

It’s for these reasons I have succumbed to ordering an LA-EA4. I value the LA-EA3 because it allows me to use some lenses with contrast detect focus and a pure image path, but my favourite 70-300mm Sigma OS will not CD focus. Buy the EA4, and I can use all my screw drive Minolta and Sony glass.

This is why I sill feel the A7R can be described as the Swiss Army Knife! It can do APS-C as well as its 16 megapixel APS-C siblings, but switch to use full frame to squeeze extra angle from many lenses. My Tamron 18-200mm is only just compatible with the A7R – its VC stabilisation and general performance indicate that a firmware fix might be needed (see earlier comments) – but it can give me a 19 megapixel image sharp corner to corner with a range of image sizes from square to 35mm, at 18mm and f/11, making it as useful as a 16-200mm lens instead of an 18-200mm.

In March, I needed to write up the Samyang 24mm Tilt-Shift lens, which was only available for review in Nikon mount, and needed a full frame body. The A7R with a low-cost Nikon adaptor did the job perfectly and the magnified focusing function allowed full and successful use of the lens functions. I now have a wide range of lenses and adaptors, and there’s no manual lens I own which the A7R can not use.

SONY DSC

The Samyang 24mm Tilt-Shift f/3.5 manual lens has better control over movements (including 30° intervals for independent rotation) than the Canon or Nikon in the same focal length, though it lacks auto iris, EXIF data and focus confirmation. Here it is used with a low-cost manual Nikon adaptor.

24mmTSseriesmono

Using the 24mm Tilt-Shift – a lesson here in floor/ground and ceiling/roof relationships and camera position. First shot, a typical eye level architectural compromise in which a normal wide angle keeps the verticals straight. The trade-off is that you get a similarly generous view of both the floor and ceiling. Second shot, moving the camera close to ground level. Third shot, applying a full vertical shift; the floor is now seen from an angle giving it much less emphasis, while the vaulted roof is seen from below. For real estate shots, the camera is usually placed close to the ceiling on a tall tripod, and a drop front applied, to show the extent of room interiors better by emphasising their floor area. This is stuff I learned 40 years ago working with 5 x 4.

The A7R stabilisation incompatibilty issue with the Tamron 18-200mm was ‘tested’ at considerable cost in lost shots. During most of the Kerala trip, fortunately including a few chances to get close to wildlife like the anhinger shown above, I used the 18-200mm on the NEX-6 for the slightly higher resolution and faster response. I’m very glad I did this and put the A7R away. No shot shows any sign of stabilisation failure. Finding a dramatic sunset location with rocks and predictable spray from breaking waves, I used the same lens on the A7R, which I had taken to the beach to produce some tests showing full frame coverage.

175mmf9

One of my frame coverage tests of the 18-200mm on the A7R. 175mm, 1/200th at f/9 – conditions which with stabilisation should result in a perfectly sharp result almost every time. Instead, this combination produced a jerked slightly double imaged unsharp shot every single time. Even at 21mm focal length this degradation was visible.

All the images (full frame tests and rock sunset shots) showed the same characteristic stabilisation jerk even at 1/320th, which I had not considered possible as the peak vibration from the A7R shutter occurs 1/250th after the shutter opens. It may not be shutter shock which causes this shake effect, but a firmware incompatibility (in timing signals?) between the A7R body and certain lenses.

piccure-processed

Here is my processed image put through the new software Piccure, which I can recommend as the first program to analyse and remove shake effectively – see http://intelligentimagingsolutions.com – and which has significantly improved some of my A7R ‘shaken up’ shots to the point that when reduced to 9 megapixels, they are as sharp as you would have expected from a KM Dimage A2 (ah, the irony… we do make progress, don’t we?). Click the above image for a full size screen shot.

kovalambeachfamily-web

This was my final crop and process from the shot involved, which was an 18.2 megapixel ‘more than APS-C’ crop from the full A7R frame, sharpened using Piccure and reduced to 24MB final image size.

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This sunset, and all the similar shots taken with the 18-200mm on the A7R, proved too badly affected by stabilisation malfunction to use at the desired full size.

Again, Sony’s decision to disable OSS with many lenses on the A7R only, and to issue firmware updates to enable this, supports this theory. Whatever the case, I lost all my first night’s sunset shots for anything except web sized use (above – it’s not sharp for printing or library use). We returned two further nights at the right time and tried various combinations. It was a subject not helped by heat haze and blown salt spray (UV filters were fitted, of course, and needed cleaning frequently to avoid the whole picture being softened).

shakexample-rocks

It’s so bad it almost hurts your eyes, but this was the focus point of many shots, and the double image (always in the vertical direction when the A7R was held horizontally) from the 18-200mm Tamron consistently gave a result like this. You might also suspect inaccurate focus and poor lens performance, but plenty of other shots at similar apertures and settings on the NEX-6 were completely OK. Perhaps the only answer with the A7R will be the near-£1,000 70-200mm f/4 G and replacement of the 28-70mm with another £1,000-worth of 24-70mm f/4. All that to get me back to where I was thirty years ago in terms of aperture and focal length range!

shake2-rocks

Using Piccure had no useful effect on this shot. It created triple outlines of the shake in place of double.

Eventually I got what I wanted but only with the 70mm reach of the 28-70mm OSS lens. The final, third, visit had cloud cover as the sun reached the right position. But, if you want to try this for yourself, visit Light House Beach in Kovalam at around 6.00pm (get a beer and wait) around April 16th-22nd. Like all such sunsets, there are just two times each year where the sun will hit the right position over the horizon.

lighthousebeach-sunset1

The 28-70mm really didn’t have the power to give me the sun at the size I wanted, but at least with Photoshop processing this was a more or less acceptable result. For any shot like this, I would far prefer to have a true mirrorless camera – no SLT mirror either – and the A7R should be a perfect choice. Tripod use was not an option because of the crowds (which you can’t see) and combination of incoming tide and wave.

There was one lens which never let me down – the 10-18mm OSS. Whether on the NEX-6, A7R crop or A7R full frame this lens always turned in a perfectly focused and well stabilised result.

At the end of our Keralan tour, we were invited to have lunch and a short tour of a major ayurvedic resort hotel, Isola di Cocco. The tour only took twenty minutes, seeing some of the rooms, and was at mid-day when the light is not ideal. I took a few shots on the A7R including room interiors, and sent small versions to our hosts afterwards. The outcome was a request for commercial use of the image set in their next brochure. These were not exactly what we would do on a commission – for one thing, we’d normally remove towels from round the pool, pick the best time of day, make fine adjustments to room details and even use lighting.

Isola di Cocco Resort Poovar

A pool needs to be very clean to handle a shot from three inches above the water surface (at 10mm).

This is what we we used to do in the 1980s producing brochure pictures for travel operators and it was never a casual thing, more a very long and full working day with many appointments and too much driving. These shots were quick snaps, even if professional snaps, and we agreed to use for a charity donation (all Indian businesses seem to support local charities as a matter of routine).

We’d be more than happy to go back and do it properly though!

Back in the 1980s we had nothing to approach the 15mm equivalent angle of the 10mm used on crop frame A7R, even though a few such lenses did exist for 35mm systems. 35mm was like using a 6 megapixel camera, and our shots had to stand full page to double page use. I used a Pentax 6 x 7 with its widest non-fisheye 45mm lens and that was equal to a 24mm, something you can now find at the wide end of many compacts. It had to go on a tripod, as the exposure times with Fujichrome RF 50 film (for shadow detail) with the f/16 or f/22 apertures needed for sharpness in depth were usually around 1/4 to 1 second. The tripod was one you couldn’t easily take by air today, and the camera kit with two bodies and three lenses was heavy and bulky. Then there was a matter of a hundred or so rolls of film to handle the five bracketed exposures for each frame, lead anti-X-ray bags, and a large Metz flash with an extension head… and our 35mm Minolta kit on top of it all. Each room could take an hour or more to photograph.

Isola di Cocco Resort Poovar

Raw conversion controls enable the rich teak wood interior to be shown clearly without losing the highlights of the wall and white sheets.

And here I am today, complaining about aspects of the A7R when I can walk into a room like the one above, without a tripod, find my viewpoint, observe the horizon level display while composing carefully, and make an exposure at ISO 1600 with quality equivalent to ISO 100 35mm film. With a lightweight carbon-fibre tripod, this almost Leica-sized camera can now outperform anything we might have expected from 6 x 7 film and at ISO 50 is good enough for wall-sized prints and poster reproduction.

We have some aspects of A7R technique and performance to ‘fix’ and you’ll realise that I do not approach using any new camera uncritically. But there’s nothing else on the market short of medium format which can match what it does.

I do not address, here, the demands of users wanting to switch from conventional heavy-duty SLR type cameras whose gear includes fast long apo telephotos and zooms, who work frequently with sequence bursts, require to track sports action, shoot news, capture wildlife or want to snap their kids and pets (which requires much the same camera performance as covering sports and news… they may move slower but they are much closer!).

My present thinking is that the new 12 megapixel A7S with its 4K motion picture capture and extreme low-light performance may not be what I want, but I’m considering adding an A7 or changing the NEX-6 for an A6000. I’m not quite ready to sell the A900 or the A77. I’ll see how the A7R performs over the summer and update in due course.

The A7 MkII with full-frame stabilisation, announced in November 2014, tends to put my theory about power drain and lenses into doubt, but only because I might assume the 5-axis sensor stabilisation also puts a heavy load on the battery. It does have the different shutter mechanism found on the A7, and of course, it does not have a 36 megapixel sensor to power.

– David Kilpatrick

 

 

 

 

Sony’s Alpha 99 – mastery wrapped in dilemma

alpha99side

The launch of and initial reaction to Sony’s Alpha 99 has been spoiled, for many, by the overpricing of the camera generally and to a greater degree in some key markets. The promise of the SLT design, and Sony’s move away from flapping mirrors and optical prisms with their associated collimation and alignment, was one of reduced manufacturing cost and more competitive product.

Along with this, we should remember Sony’s 2006 statement that external mechanical controls, switches and buttons would be reduced on future models for the same reason. The Alpha 99 has as many external physical controls as any predecessor and will make traditional users happy.

a900toa99

Compare the Alpha 900 and the Alpha 99 – despite apparently very different designs, they share many points and clearly come from the same gene pool. There is no longer any need for the largest glass prism of any modern DSLR, the power switch has moved to Nikon position round the shutter release, lines are rounded off. The construction is similar as the strap lugs fitted through the outer skin into the solid magnesium chassis indicate.

a900toa99rear

From the rear, the 900 looks somehow more complex because of the left-hand button array. In fact the A99 has just as many buttons (it is only missing a SteadyShot switch and the selector round the AE lock button for metering method – this is no longer as important with the 99 doing its metering directly from the imaging sensor).

Out there we find Canon’s lightweight travel-friendly full frame 6D appearing at £900 lower launch street price (UK) with both that essential built-in GPS and the marketable function of WiFi, and Nikon’s almost comparable D600 officially at a £500 lower RRP, and a street price match for the Canon. In practice the UK Sony price of the A99 fell from £2499 to £2299 in the first two months on sale; the D600 fell from £1955 to £1495 in the same period (WEX dealer figures) and on that basis we can expect the see the Canon fall to £1395 in early 2013. By then the A99 may have fallen to £2195.

Sony lenses are not cheaper, nor wider in range of choice or sources of supply, than Nikon or Canon. There is no collateral benefit when you hand over as much as 50% extra to Sony for their innovative cost-saving technology. In my British Journal review, I concluded that the Alpha 99 was between 30 and 50% over-priced and combined with the cost and limited range of Sony lenses there would be little good reason for any new full-frame entrant to prefer Sony over Nikon or Canon.

At the same time, the Alpha 77 – so close a sister to the 99 that it shares exactly the same EVF and the same file size, with identifiable advantages in some respects – has been selling for £819 body only in the UK when the 99 in the same store was priced at £2299. That’s 64% less, 36% of the price or just over a third. You could almost buy three A77s for one A99. And it even has that very useful built-in flash.

a77-a99-topaligned

You may pause to work out which of these, photographed to exactly the same scale (one shot) and then moved so that their focal plane markings coincide horizontally, is the 99 and which the 77. The 99 is actually bigger but looks smaller.

a77-a99-sideheight

This will give you a better idea of the height of the A99, and also the improved eyepiece which puts your eye further away from the camera screen or back than the A77.

Assault and battery

In fact, there’s a hidden penalty in addition to the high price of the A99. The Nikon D600 with its single 1900mAh battery as supplied will keep on shooting into four figures where the A99 with GPS enabled manages a couple of hundred on a good day with the wind behind it from 1650mAh. Officially it does over 400 without GPS. That was not my experience, any more than it has been with the Alpha 77.

Perhaps this is because of the odd conditions Sony uses to measure battery life – only using a MemoryStick PRO Duo card not SD, no card in slot 2, ambient temperature 25°C, shooting Fine quality JPEG only, shooting one frame every 30 seconds and turning the camera on and off every ten shots, and not having GPS active. Needless to say I shoot raw, back up to a second card with JPEG, and have GPS active. That’s why I bought the camera…

d600-a99fronttop

The economical Nikon D600 is a direct competitor, despite rabid claims on internet that the 99 is ‘professional’ and the 600 is ‘consumer’. They are both semi-pro models but the 99 probably has a better shutter mechanism and a higher precision body. The Nikon has better image quality and battery life. Both have similar dual card slots, manual adjustment of audio input for video recording, wireless flash options, grip and so on.

d600-a99rear

GPS eats batteries. We’ve got a GPS module for the D600 which runs off the camera’s power, but so far have not had it switched on permanently for a week. Maybe it will reduce the D600 to the same ‘battery every day or two’ as the A99. The Canon 6D is the only other DSLR made with built-in GPS. Unlike the A99, the 6D does not turn off its GPS when you turn the camera off. Result? The 6D drains a battery in four days, flat – dead flat 0% – if you just switch the camera off and leave it in your bag with the GPS symbol showing. You have to go into a menu and turn off Enable. At least the A99 does not draw on its battery at all when switched off, regardless of settings.

d600-eos6d

The EOS 6D compared with the D600 – it’s smaller, lighter, and built to a far more consumer-level standard with minimal controls. But like the 99, the 6D has GPS on board, and as a ‘first’ in this field it includes WiFi, which is not just file transfer. We used a free iPhone app to view, focus, adjust settings and shoot remotely and wirelessly with the 6D (EOS Remote). This is bound to win substantial sales.

You need deep pockets in two senses for two extra Sony batteries (£136) or the add-on vertical grip at £299 plus two batteries (not included). The first option will keep you going without GPS about as long as the Nikon on one charge. If you are travelling and using GPS, be prepared to change and charge one battery daily.

Another reason for this short battery life is the electronic viewfinder. Unlike any optical prism finder, it uses as much power as shooting video. Even if you turn the camera off every time it leaves your eye, the typical length of time needed to compose and follow subjects will add up. I do not have review enabled, and I rarely ‘chimp’ because one big plus side of the Alpha 99 – as you will learn – is the near 100 per cent success rate achieved by its metering and focus. If you use the rear screen for composition instead of the eye-level finder, you can extend battery life by 16%.

Sony must be commended for sticking to the same battery format used by all larger body models from the Alpha 700 onwards. I do have half a dozen spares but of course, many are now getting old and barely manage 150 shots in the 99. What Sony must do is to take the advances made in lith-ion production and create a higher capacity NP-FM500H. Third party makers have been able to boost their clone batteries to 2000mAh (I’ve bought two and they are non-compliant with the chargers and clearly don’t deliver what they claim…). Sony’s battery should match Nikon’s similar size at 1900mAh, even if the EVFs now standard across the Sony range will always eat twice as much power as a regular DSLR.

The EVF dividend

Would-be Alpha system professionals and advanced amateur users face a future of electronic viewfinders. The good news is that at photokina 2012 Epson showed a prototype with twice the resolution of the current 2.3 million pixel ceiling, and in five years most current complainers will accept that an EVF can be as accurate as any true groundglass screen ever was.

We tend to forget that after autofocus arrived focusing screens lost their visible granular or laser-cut structures unless you deliberately specified a type intended for manual focusing. Plain old groundglass has a ‘dot’ all of its own because it does break the image up. Minolta’s Acute Matte screen was like a superfine microprism field. The new Epson developments come so close to being as fine as this kind of screen, visually, that you might be able to fool someone into believing it was not an electronic finder.

While the A99 finder is excellent, it falls a touch short of this. It is absolutely identical to the Alpha 77 in every parameter including virtual window size (the magnification figure given by Sony of 0.71X compared to the A77 1.09X is all down to using a 50mm lens on both for measurement). Eyepoint is identical despite the slightly different overall design of the eyepieces and the size of the rubber surround. If there’s any improvement, it lies in the illumination range and contrast control of the OLED unit which has been given one additional user control, colour temperature. You can make the finder warmer or cooler in colour independent of any picture style or WB adjustment.

This is a good example of where the EVF’s great clarity in low light pays off – an ISO 3200 image taken hand-held where a tripod was not appropriate, using the Sigma 12-24mm which has fairly strong vignetting. To see and align the geometry of the shot (bottom cropped off) was much easier on the A99 than it would have been on an OVF camera. Click the image for a full size file.

In full sun, the finder appears very dim compared to any good optical finder. In overcast light, it’s a good match. As the light fails or you move indoors, the EVF shows substantial benefits over optical systems. After dark, it can make accurate composition easy instead of almost impossible.

Here, the A99 has the edge over the A77, NEX-7 and all predecessors even including the NEX-5n and presumably the 6 which I haven’t tried. The larger sensor’s better high ISO performance together with its pixel count keep the coloured noise at bay for another stop or two lower light levels. This coincides with an important transition. The kind of indoor artificial light level where the A99 remains very clean using an f/2.8 lens is typical domestic light – brighter than restaurants, not as bright as stores and malls.

Anyone using the A77 will confirm that the 16-50mm f/2.8 lens brought a real benefit in this sort of lighting despite its other failings, by improving the finder experience. Combine the A99 with a good fast lens like the 50mm f/1.4 and you get a relatively natural view of the world after dark.

The A99 returns the auto eye start sensor, which switches between rear screen and EVF if you have that function enabled, to below the ocular instead of above it as on the A77. This makes viewfinder attachments work without blackout glitches, including Sony’s 1.15X eyepiece magnifier, which for me enables a full view of the screen and a truly impressive finder size.

Ergonomics and control

One of the benefits of the EVF is that you don’t need to use the rear screen at all. The Quick Navi interface developed more or less from A700/900 Quick Navi has to cope with a bewildering number of pictograms and readouts, ranging from a full histogram to digital spirit level, and a complex AF setup. With the help of carefully repositioned buttons, it succeeds. I’d say that the A99 has the best user interface I’ve seen on an Alpha since the 900. The top LCD display panel is much richer than the basic one of the 900, and does not deserve some of the criticism levelled at it for duplicating stuff you can see on the rear screen. I work with the rear screen permanently turned to face the body, unless I am actually employing it for composition or image review. The top LCD provides vital at a glance info about manual or metered exposure settings, ISO, state of ± override, battery power, drive mode, WB, file type and image remaining count.

It is, however, blank when the camera is asleep. Later in this review I’ll be comparing the A99 with the Nikon D600, which we now also own and use alongside it. Nikon’s top LCD shows some basic info (shots remaining) all the time. But it’s interesting to note that Sony gives you the correct information when Nikon does not! Both cameras have two card slots. You can set both of them to work in overflow mode, fill one card, then the next. Nikon shows you only the shots remaining on the card in use. Sony shows you the total. The Canon 6D LCD also goes blank when the camera is turned off, except for showing a GPS symbol to warn you about leaving this battery-eating function Enabled.

a99-modedial

The Mode dial has three memory positions, a Tele 10fps (1.5X crop) position, panoramic, Scene selection, Intelligent Auto, PASM and a separate Movie position. You can opt to lock the Movie button out except when the dial is set to this.

Another similarity is the mode dial, locking on all three cameras. Here, Sony goes for a more purposeful central locking action making it a little harder to adjust the dial. They also cram more on to the dial, including the invaluable feature of Memory 1 2 3 positions (as on the 900). There’s a special movie mode which not only prevents accidental movie shooting, but when used allows shutter, aperture and ISO to be set. The range for this is exceptional, you can film at 1/8,000th shutter speed if you really want to break rules.

a99-mainbuttons

The right hand buttons include Fn, your access to Quick Navi on the screen or in the EVF. There is a new AF Range button which I simply don’t seem to need – I wish this could be customised to become a SteadyShot On/Off button, something I need to do far more often when working with a tripod.

The A99 has a total of 19 operating buttons, some of which have only a single use such as LCD illumination or Playback. The manual identifies 18 primary default functions plus the Silent Controller, of which more later. One button, Fn or Function, accesses Quick Navi and its 23 adjustable settings many of which have multiple choices. Fn can direct access 18 functions outside Quick Navi.

a99-custombutton

Here is where the Custom function button has been moved to – under your left index finger, where the flash pop-up button used to be. Slightly pointless wording on the bright orange anodised lens mount bezel lets you know this camera is not actually aimed at working professionals.

The Menu button accesses six main menu tabs. Still Shooting has four menus covering a total of 20 parameters. Movie Setting has two menus and eleven adjustments. The Custom menu has a huge depth, with six menus covering 33 functions some of which in themselves cover other buttons – five of the dedicated buttons on the body can be assigned any one of 35 functions or behaviours, including their native marked use. The Playback menu has two tabs, with ten parameters. The Memory Card Tool menu also has two tabs and nine functions, needed because you can choose where and how to save raw and JPEG images and movies.

Only the Clock Setup menu remains its usual two-entry basic form. The main Setup menu has four tabs covering 24 settings or actions. If you want to try adding all this lot up, before even investigating the complexity of settings within some aspects like Picture Style, you’ll realise there are thousands of different exact ways in which an Alpha 99 can be configured.

Canon has always had a secret weapon whenever anyone failed to get the expected good results from their camera – ‘ah, you didn’t set it up correctly…’. Now Sony has the same rather weak excuse. Not setting the camera up at all should result in successful images. No buyer should experience Default Setting shortcomings out the box. Setting it up expertly should lead to wonderful, perfectly tuned, almost-impossible-to-get-easily images.

And, I am glad to say, if you get an Alpha 99 out of the box and never touch a single one of these adjustments it is more than likely you will get perfect images. That is because unlike most DSLRs, the Alpha 99 actually works like your eye. It focuses and exposes as effortlessly as you do and you can see far more clearly, through the EVF, what is happening to exposure and focus as you prepare to shoot.

The EVF looks great in dark conditions – no coloured noise like the A55 and A77 generations, as the sensor is so noise-free. This is an in-camera ISO 1600 JPEG, click to go to the original full size file. It’s not bad at all.

Real-world performance

As I’ve said, we have been using the Alpha 99, Nikon D600 and Canon 6D side by side before I started writing this review. I did not have the 6D present when making colour-checker tests on the A99, A900 and D600.

Shirley has used Minolta/Sony since 1980, when we first took over the Minolta Club. Before that she used Praktica (as many students did), Pentax and then Olympus. The OM system was her preferred camera for its size and weight, and the exceptional viewfinder.

Well, after over 30 years using Minolta then Alpha, she’s finally departed from the system because of the change to EVF. Unlike me, she finds EVF view uncomfortable. The Alpha 700 was a great camera but sensor technology moves on, and she happens to be a regular abuser of long focal lengths and low light. The A580 has proved good but the very small optical finder has been an issue from the start. The Nikon D600 with 28-300mm VR lens may not be her ultimate ideal camera – we’re planning to try the Pentax K5IIs with 18-250mm, as that has a very good large optical prism finder. But Sony is now out of the picture and we suspect that she’s not alone. However good EVF technology becomes, some users will never feel comfortable with it.

One reason is the need for perfect accuracy in adjusting the dioptre. Optical finder cameras have a certain latitude, always best with exact adjustment, but remaining sharp over a small range of error. The A99 EVF does not have any latitude. The dioptre is set in clicks, and one click either way puts the OLED display visibly out of focus. If your eyesight changes a lot or you move between spectacles and the naked eye frequently, you will need to make constant adjustments to the dioptre.

The first thing we noticed when reviewing a few hundred raw files taken in  similar conditions with the two cameras is that Nikon’s auto-ISO implementation on the D600 behaves very differently from that on the A99. The Sony metering, especially in Program mode with Auto ISO and wide potential range set, prefers the lowest ISO acceptable for the focal length in use and the available light. Nikon’s system will select higher ISO settings, and smaller lens apertures, very readily.

The Nikon meter is also calibrated out of the box to be generous in exposure, possible because the separate metering system is more influenced by light sources or high contrast and prone to big shifts in auto exposure with minor adustments to composition. At any given ISO, the D600 was often giving double the actual exposure – half of this doubling due to overexposing a bit, half of it due to Nikon’s different calibration of ISO.

dynamicrange-a99

Not only does the A99 have strikingly accurate auto exposure when confronted with very difficult conditions (Sigma 12-24mm shot above covering from deep shade to a white waterfall in sun), it also has 14-bit raw files with generous shadow detail and highlight recovery headroom. Click image to open a larger (not 100%) view.

dynamicrange-histogram

Here is the histogram and totally neutral adjustment set shown in Adobe Camera Raw before fine tuning the shot above to improve the brightness and clarity of the shaded areas. Note the excellent shape of the histo without top or tail clipping.

The A99 meters exposure off the actual shooting sensor, using a 1200-zone colour sensitive matrix and intelligent bias towards single or multiple active AF points. In practice, it proved almost bullet-proof. Anyone who can remember the consistent off-sensor exposure of the old Konica Minolta A2 will appreciate the new Sony EVF and NEX models alike. They simply meter with far better consistency than any camera which uses a separate metering sensor. Of course this can also be said of Olympus, Panasonic and all mirrorless cameras. But they don’t all have the amazing 14-bit raw files and 12 EV normal ISO step dynamic range of the Alpha 99.

When we processed the raw files, Nikon’s ISO 6400 was less noisy than Sony’s despite the very similar (not identical) Sony manuactured 24 megapixel FF sensors. The difference is a little more than we would expect from the 2/3rds EV light loss caused by the trans-flective SLT mirror. The remaining difference seems to be down to Nikon treating a gain which Sony would call ISO 4000 as one labelled 6400, but giving exactly the same exposure Sony would give at 4000. This is not very accurate, as depending on the actual ISO setting the discrepancy ranged from less than 1/3rd of a stop to around 2/3rds, but seems to increase at higher ISO settings. Thus Sony has an apparently clear disadvantage at 6400 or 12,800, but the camera is actually giving half the exposure.

Here are some small samples which, when clicked on, will lead you to our full size set of JPEGs which can be pretty large. These files compare the A99, A77, A900 and D600 at two ISO settings only – 100 and 6400. All are auto exposed under identical conditions using matrix metering, so the cameras have been allowed to give whatever exposure and apparent ISO they would do in comparison. All have been processed using identical settings with Adobe Camera Raw 7.3 – Camera Standard profile (Sony Alpha 900 profile for A900), Linear, default sharpening 25/1/25/0 and no noise reduction at all.

A99 at 100

A99 at 6400

A900 at 100

A900 at 6400

D600 at 100

D600 at 6400

A77 at 100

A77 at 6400

anglescreen-85mm-100th6p3-640

The Minolta 24-85mm at 85mm and f/6.3, 1/100th at ISO 640. A perfectly clean file, critically sharp though only one third of a stop down from wide open. Click image to view a larger (not 100%) version. The quiet shutter and articulating live view screen enabled this natural study.

Although the Nikon lens used was a consumer grade optic the £800 28-300mm VR, when it managed not to misfocus or produce a strange reverse-VR blurring due to Shirley’s initial failure to delay shooting by a tiny amount to allow the lens to settle, often produced slightly sharper results than the 1999 Minolta 24-85mm I chose to use on the A99. Subsequent tests show that the Nikon sensor seems to have a slight fine detail advantage over the Sony at ISO settings around 200-800 with Adobe Camera Raw 7.3. While Canon’s 20 megapixel 6D sensor has a similar high ISO performance, detail sharpness was generally similar to the A99 rather than the D600. Cumulative issues with AF performance, lens field flatness and sensor planarity also led to some Canon images having zones of unexpected defocusing. The A99 has no such problems and I believe it has the same very high standards of sensor flatness and body precision as the A900.

Comparing the A99 with the A900, there is a clear one stop gain in ISO related performance above 1600. But at 100 to 400, the A900 from raw has a kind of fluid quality – the pixels seem to merge and give a luminous yet crisp image. The A99 never really produces this special quality at low ISO, though at the expanded 50 setting it’s impressive. Perhaps there’s an element of illusion in this, that the exceptional optical image through the A900 finder conditions me to see the final picture differently.

The A99 has the same generous 30-lens AF Micro Adjustment calibration as the A77, though I found no need to calibrate except a very small adjustment of -2 for my 28-75mm f/2.8 SAM. I’ve not yet used every lens I own. It also corrects geometry and CA in-camera unlike the A900, for JPEGs. One benefit over the Nikon D600 which does the same is that the EVF shows the true geometry and composition after the corrections are applied. Optical finders can’t do that. This does impose a small extra load on processing and if you are after the fastest overall response should be turned off.

The A99 has one of the best 1080/50(60)p HD video functions on the market. For the bitrate involved, it captures detail three times as good as you would expect. It tends towards a soft compression like the Canon 5D MkII, not a highly detailed frame level image like Nikon’s video. You can stream pure HD video to external recorders without compression, monitor live sound with headphones including provision for lip-sync or echoless real time latency, control the stereo mic/line input with manual gain, and use the Silent Controller during filming for various functions.

silentcontroller-a99

The Silent Controller is a free rotating dial with a push button in the centre allowing you to set its function before each use if you want. The default use is AF-C, AF-S, AF-A, MF, AF-D and there are no clicks. It is silent, for use during movie shooting to change exposure or audio volume (etc).

This controller is placed where the former C/A/S/M focus mode switch was on the 900. It has a central button you can press to reassign a function to it before use. The external knurled collar is turned with one finger, without click stops. By default it changes focus mode. A typical assignment for this during video would be audio volume.

The 99 can auto-crop to APS-C 10 megapixel files when DT lenses are fitted, or if this is set by menu (needed for non-Sony lenses like Sigma DC or Tamron DiII). It can do this for raw files, resulting in a smaller raw, for raw+JPEG, JPEG only and for video. The Smart Teleconverter works in JPEG-only or video modes, giving 1.4X or 2X (4.6 megapixel) stills. In conjunction with the rear controller you get a further continuous zoom range to 4X for movies (native resolution to 3X, interpolated between 3X and 4X, with a very smooth electronic zoom effect). The EVF remains pixel-sharp at 1.4 or 1.5X, but anything more and you can see that the sensor image is being enlarged and is softer.

The 1.5X crop is also enabled if you select the 8fps or 10fps higher speed continuous mode, using the mode dial, rather than the 6fps full resolution mode using Drive settings. The actual sequence burst rates are effectively identical to the A77 and not any better in practical terms than the 4-year-old A900, which unlike the 99 can shoot 5fps Fine JPEGs without a break until the card is full or the sensor overheats. The 99 can only manage 18 frames before slowing. The use of a single Bionz processor with SD storage in the A77 and 99 seems to have been a backwards step, the dual processor of the A900 was better able to sustain a data flow to the fast UDMA CF cards accepted by that camera.

a99-carddoor

The dual card slots – SD and MS Pro Duo upper, SD only lower. The lip surrounding the card slot area is an effective waterproofing channel and the metal spring plate gives the card door a firm, unstressed action.

The 99 does away with CF despite its 900-like body size. Instead, a dual SD drive very similar to that in the Nikon D600 is fitted. Even the spacing of the two slots, and the way the upper card sticks out a little more than the lower, is the same. But the Sony has the ability to accept Memory Stick PRO Duo cards in Slot 1 as well as SD. I find this convenient, as I use a classic Dynax camera strap with a card wallet fixed to it. This can hold spare MS Pro Duo cards, and by chance, the slots for these cards also fit the plastic cover for the new hot shoe exactly – there’s nowhere else to put it, and it matters. The latest MS Pro Duo HX cards offer maximum performance, better than SD UHS-1.

But in the end, despite all its problems, the Alpha 99 simply turns in a better success rate on my sort of subjects – landscapes, street scenes, people, events – than its rivals. The metering is more accurate, the AF is either as good or better, the image quality at high ISOs is a touch lower, the GPS works well, and of course the sensor-based stabilisation is a total winner. Sigma sent a 35mm f/1.4 in Canon fit to test. This lens is quite incredible, and transforms the Sigma offering. It’s so sharp even wide open that the smallest degree of camera shake makes a shot look inferior. I forgot that with the A99, there’s hardly any situation I can not tackle hand held and get pixel-sharp results. I used speeds like the 1/30th or 1/60th on the Canon 6D and lost the exquisite jewel-like edge sharpness of the Sigma. I’m just so used to getting every single shot usable and not thinking about whether a lens is stabilised or not.

This scene didn’t work well with the un-stabilised Canon 6D – I was too cold, and hanging on to a support with one hand while standing half way up a steep muddy slope, with two cameras. SteadyShot worked well on the A99. Click the image for a full size link. ISO 1600.

The new shoe

The new Sony Multi Function Accessory Shoe looks a bit like a rather crude old single contact hot shoe, and its central contact does indeed work to sync with any plain ISO unit. It can be used with Skyport and PocketWizard or generic flash wireless triggers, and I’ve also checked it with Wein infra-red. The three holes round the main contact are locking-pin holes, so beware third party generic adaptor makers. This is a good candidate for getting adaptors stuck.

alpha99-shoe

Under the leading edge of the ‘old’ shoe there is a recess, a horizontal slot not unlike the accessory slot fitted to the first generation NEX cameras. Its gold plated contact strips are very fine, and if this slot was left exposed by failing to replace the cover, it’s easy to see that dirt of moisture could get in. Unlike the NEX slot, there is no built-in spring loaded cover to shield it.

This interface provides the flash connection – duplicating the entire contact set for the iISO or Minolta i-shoe known as the Auto Lock Accessory Shoe by Sony, which is now gone. A small adaptor ADP-MAA is provided with the camera to convert from the new ‘old’ shoe to the Minolta standard. It is as slim and firmly fitting as they can make it, but still felt a little vulnerable with an HVL-F58AM mounted on top, especially when the camera was held vertically. A new flash unit, the HVL-F60AM, has been released for the A99 and in line with current trends it incorporates an LED video/modeling light. This aims forward to double as an AF illuminator, and can not be bounced.

flashadaptor-base

The adaptor ADP-MAA shown with its connectors and the small spring loaded pins and ‘ball bearing’ centre contact to fit the new Multi Function Accessory Shoe.

Audio input is also handled by the shoe for microphone units compatible with the Cyber-Shot/HandyCam/NEX models using the new shoe. Since this shoe also appears on the NEX-6 and the DSC RX1 where it is the only way to input audio, there is some hope for a line/mic module. It is not needed by the A99 as this has a 3.5mm phantom powered stereo jack input, under one cover with a similar headphone output. Both input and output volume levels can be controlled on screen.

alpha99interfaces

This change means that there are now three generations of hot shoe in the Alpha system, and five different shoe or accessory mounts in the Sony still camera systems of the last few years – there’s the Sony CyberShot shoe in two generations used by DSC F series and the R1, the inherited Minolta Auto Lock shoe, the NEX Smart Accessory Terminal and this new Multi Interface Shoe. To say this is unwelcome would be an understatement, but the shoe provides a long-term solution for future development and if you want to create a Christmas tree, it’s still backwardly compatible.

Its 24 contacts cover two different levels of power supply to accessories, audio in and out, flash or wireless flash control and connection, add-on GPS unit (the 99V includes an internal GPS, the plain 99 does not), add-on WiFi module, and EVF or HD monitor feed. We should expect to see a WiFi module and a monitor screen option, while the regular HDMI output can simultaneously send uncompressed video to a recorder. What we don’t know yet is whether the future WiFi module will be as clever as Canon’s built-in WiFi and do more than just send files from the camera. If it has an Android/iOS app for remote viewing and shooting it will be a winner.

The flash system remains with the original Minolta digital wireless TTL protocol as found from the HS(D) guns onwards. There is no built-in flash on the A99 and thus no built-in wireless control. The HVL-F20AM fold-down mini flash made for the A900 as a wireless trigger works perfectly on the 99 with the ADP-MAA but it’s no way as neat. The one benefit is that for direct use, it’s raised a little higher and casts less lens hood shadow while causing less risk of red-eye. We would guess that a new version will appear soon enough. I’ve tested it both directly and bounced, and as a wireless controller.

Flash exposure with the A99 has been exactly as expected – not a wildcard – but short of testing every flash in every configuration, I can’t guarantee against the kind of overexposure found in the A77. All I can say is that my tests, made within the expected range of units using appropriate ISO settings and apertures, have worked well. I do not use flash often outside the studio, and given the performance of the A99 at high ISO settings I doubt I will ever want to.

Any reverse adaptor for the shoe – to allow the HVL-F60AM to be used on Auto Lock shoe cameras – will not of course provide functions other than flash. The Auto Lock shoe doesn’t have any of the other contacts.

My reservations about the Multi Interface Shoe are only that its connector strip looks delicate and each contact has a very small physical contact area. Even the Auto Lock shoe has had its problems with occasional contact failure due to wear and tear or foreign matter.

a99-connectors

There is, of course, also a studio flash PC sync cord connector, threaded, under the same cover as the DC Power Supply connector. Below these is the Remote Cord connector, and between them, a GPS symbol marked next to the loudspeaker. Sony does not give advice which way up to hold the the camera for the best GPS reception. With the Canon 6D, lying on its back face up is the recommended position.

The focus system

Because of the Smart Teleconverter, APS-C auto crop and video crop/zoom functions the A99 needs an AF module perfectly suited to the APS-C or smaller areas. It gets exactly that – the same module as the A77 uses, and that one starts off with leeway to work in Smart Teleconverter mode.

It’s a rather staggeringly tiny 6 x 12mm AF array, one-ninth of the frame area. Imagine the frame divided into thirds both ways and the entire 19-point, 11-cross point phase detect array fits within that modest central rectangle, but forms more of a horizontal ellipse shape within it. No AF points reach into the corners of that central patch.

The manual is deceptive because it frequently shows the AF area and points out of true scale to the overall frame.

a77-AFarea-ona700

This is why you come to photoclubalpha – we do the stuff the others don’t notice! Above, though rather crudely taken due to needing to hold an A55 with 30mm macro up to the eyepiece of an A700 aimed at the rear screen of the A77, is the actual AF module of the 77 (faint squares) overlaid on the AF markings of the A700 finder. This may be out by enough to make the overall AF zones similar , but it looks to me as if the A77 doesn’t quite cover the same extent as the A700, even after allowing for the 96% A700 finder view.

a99-AFarea-ona700

This is the same technique applied to showing the AF zone of the A99. As you can see, it’s the same module as the A77, floating in the middle of full frame. It doesn’t come anywhere near to the extent of the old A700 module, or the A77 in its cropped format frame. It does not even reach the ‘rule of thirds’ favoured points for composition. Coindidentally, the Phase Detect AF-D zone with its 102 tiny sensor spots occupies almost exactly the same area as the square formed by the A700’s top and  bottom horizontal line sensors and triple vertical groups.

sonyafrepresentation

Here is how Sony generally represents the AF zone within manuals. This is not a graphic dealing with AF, and there is no need to show the AF zone larger than it actually is relative to the rest of the display. From the A99 manual.

Sony may have saved some money by using exactly the same module as the A77 but it’s just not adequate. You can compose shots where not a single part of the subject you want to have in focus touches an AF point, and moving subjects can move beyond the active zone all too easily. What was needed was twice the AF area – 1.4X the linear dimensions at least – even if that meant adding further non-cross points.

This module works with all Alpha lenses, from the earliest Minolta screw drive to the latest SSM and SAM. It works down the EV-1 (minus one), the same as Nikon’s 39-point D600 module and four times less sensitive than Pentax’s latest SAFOX design or Canon’s equally tiny central AF cluster in the 6D. It’s still better than AF used to be considering its ability to work optimally with relatively small apertures.

The marked AF-D area is a larger 12 x 12mm square, and when one of the compatible lenses is used and the appropriate AF-D mode invoked with subject tracking, a square array of 102 on-sensor PDAF focus assist points becomes active. I’ve described the result as a fireworks display, though that depends on the lens and subject. Groups of these points can light up, alongside the main focus points, in brief recognition of the subject.

As to whether it works, I can’t say. It turns on and become visible. Does it make any difference? I use both incompatible and compatible lenses. I can’t say that I have been able to spot any real difference in performance, certainly nothing I can observe or measure. All I see is the points light up after the focus has been acquired; they seem often enough just to confirm what area surrounding the chosen focus point is also within depth of field at focusing aperture.

300mm-500f9-iso800-APSC

To get this shot, the surfer had to be kept within the AF area of the A99. I was using a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Apo Macro DG lens (which has replaced my Sony 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 SSM G – reasons of superior sharpness, light weight, size and close focusing prevailed over the superior colour rendering and bokeh of the big G lens). Click picture for a larger, but not 100%, size.

surferfullframe300mm500thf9iso800

Here’s the full frame, 300mm, 1/500th at f/9, ISO 800. You can see I was keeping the central AF point on target because in this case, there was going to be plenty of spare megapixel estate to crop away. I took 115 shots of surfers, mostly single frames but some short maximum speed bursts between 2 and 5 frames, in nine minutes. Not one is out of focus even when the surfers came in closer to the camera at speed. But… they are all within that small one-ninth area of the frame which features the AF grid.

This 102-point zone is also too small, and the wrong shape. It’s a cut-cornered square. I am shooting 2:3 or 16:9 ratio stills or movies. I am not shooting square images. There is a reason, and it is also the reason more lenses do not work with this on-sensor phase detect focus assist. The pixel pairs on the sensor with their differentially angled microlenses use the image forming ray cone in a specific way to detect front or back focused phase shift. To do so, they demand a specific exit pupil geometry and need to be placed relatively close to the lens axis. This on-sensor array can not be extended to cover the entire sensor, or even to extend to a echo the image format more accurately.

In theory, on-sensor PDAF should be extremely accurate, and should be able to work with contrast detection (as it does on other sensors using this technology). But on the A99, they don’t have that function. You can not opt for hybrid contrast detection with on-sensor PDAF; the system is designed to augment the SLT-fed main PDAF module only.

I’ve already observed that the perceived maximum resolution (microcontrast and detail sharpness) of the A99 does seem to be lower than the D600, despite Sony’s zonally graded low-pass filter which I can confirm does improve the performance to the edges and corners for wider angle lenses. The on-sensor PDAF zone is sufficiently populated and large to have some effect.

In case you think I’m talking up Nikon’s AF module over Sony, don’t… the D600 certainly did not focus any more accurately, quickly or reliably than the A99. Both AF modules are small in coverage, and both cameras do have an APS-C crop function including raw file saving and faster burst capture. The thinking has been alike. Ditto for the Canon 6D. That’s got a pitiful APS-C area module with only 11 AF points, ten of them plain old linear f/5.6 the centre one a mere f/5.6 cross with vertical linear f/2.8 (slightly inferior to the Alpha 700 of 2007 in all respects except low-light sensitivity). Canon doesn’t even have the excuse of APS-C or 2X capture modes, you can’t fit any Canon APS-C (EF-S) lens to the body let alone get the optional crop functions enjoyed by the D600 and A99.

So, here’s a new bunch of full-frame choices, and all three turn out to have small-area AF modules. It is Hobson’s Choice.

The A99 can never be rescued from its tiny principal AF zone by firmware updates and owners will just have to live with it. Things could have been designed differently; they were not. The same module is just about right in the A77. It’s lost in the big image of the A99.

Shutter response

One of the more surprising things about comparing the humble Nikon D600/Canon 6D with the advanced Sony A99 is the sound and feel of the shutter action. Both rivals have a low 1/4,000th maximum speed shutter, but are still capable of flash sync similar to the A99 (1/200th for Canon, 1/250th for Nikon, 1/250th for A99) which means curtain travel speed is similar and they simply chose not to permit a narrow enough slot to achieve 1/8,000th.

The D600 with its complete mirror up and down, twin shutter blind and recock action feels and sounds sweeter than the A99 which has no mirror to move and no first shutter blind. In fact, it’s louder and the dB peak for a very brief spike is about twice the volume of the A99 or the A77. But some recording with sound analysis reveals that the A99 sounds ‘louder’ because the actual duration of the sound is almost twice as long, and divided into two distinct clunks.

d600-a77-a99-200th

The D600, like the A77, has a normal single-shot shutter sound of around one sixth of a second, as you would expect from cameras which can achieve 6fps or something close. The Alpha 99 has double that. I timed it at over 300ms, and if first curtain mechanical mode was used, well over 400ms.

It took me a few days and some digging to find out that the 14-bit readout on the A99 only applies one shooting mode – single shot. Any other mode you select, including Lo 2.5fps continuous and all multishot or JPEG only modes, uses 12-bit readout from the sensor. This was already documented in the literature about the A99, but what Sony omit to say is that the 14-bit mode causes a noticeable pause between the shot being captured and the restoration of EVF viewing. This pause is around 1/10th of a second longer in single shot mode than the blackout which happens during 2.5fps or the first frame of any faster sequence, and totals 200ms or 1/5th of a second.

single-versus-lo

single versus lo

Above is an .mp3 link of single frame 14-bit capture compared to 12-bit capture in a Lo sequence setting. The green rectangle on the graphic indicates the extra time used for 14-bit processing; the overall time of the longest sound is over 400 milliseconds – nearly half a second is a fairly long duration for the audible cycle of any modern camera’s shutter actuation.

Thanks to the detailed analysis of audio recording using Amadeus Pro, followed by frame by frame time analysis of an iMac movie clip showing the actual LCD screen blackout period, I have been able to see this ‘dead period’ of blackout and image processing is longer than the entire shutter action of the A77 or D600; indeed, the shutter actions of the A99 surround this hiatus. The card writing light comes on a millisecond or two after the live view blacks out. The action of the shutter curtain being recocked, which accounts for a substantial part of the overall shutter noise, only happens at the end of the 1/5th second pause.

Short of a firmware upgrade, there’s nothing you can do about the extremely slow single-shot shutter cycle or the interrupted finder view if you want the extra quality which comes from 14-bit raw capture. Nikon offer you a choice of 12 or 14 bit, compressed or uncompressed raws. Sony does not offer a choice and makes the bit depth specific to the way you shoot. There is no doubt at all that both raws in single-shot mode, and Extra Fine Quality JPEGs created in this mode, show less noise when adjusted to an extreme. 12-bit capture is fine for lower ISOs, in good light, with correct exposure.

a99-14bitprocessing

The 14-bit raw file has great flexibility for shadow and highlight adjustment from raw without losing colour values or subtle tones. I’d rate it as one of the best raw file formats I have worked with, at normal (100-800) ISO settings. No local dodging has been used above to enhance the backlit scene – just what amount to curve adjustments.

The 3fps Lo motordrive setting was easy to use for single frames, with a light touch. This caused half the finder blackout duration and no more than a 290ms total sound envelope (including all reverberation – the main sound is not unlike the 180ms of the D600 or A77). It didn’t matter what file size and type I recorded or what card was used. This setting always produced the shutter cycle, and sound, I would have expected the A99 to have.

Having observed the way the camera works, I’m afraid I am now rather too aware of it. It makes me appreciate the Alpha 77’s much faster, sweeter action and even consider the A900’s noisy clack with affection. One effect of the longer shutter cycle is to make the relatively quiet sound – 4dB quieter at peak than the Nikon D600 which also has a higher and more intrusive pitch – seem ‘louder’ than it actually is.

What is interesting to me is just how few users, when I asked for information or tests of their own cameras, were really able to hear the differences or see the blackout period. I can thank Gary Friedman for being able to confirm my findings – he could understand exactly what I was looking for. And thanks to several posters on Dyxum forums, whose concerns were with the image quality of 14-bit versus 12-bit, for providing the information I need to put the facts together and realise that no amount of adjusting settings was ever going to make the A99 share the brief blackout and sweet shutter sound of the 12-bit A77.

Gary uses wireless flash a lot. I don’t generally use flash at all except in the studio. Gary has observed delay in wireless flash triggering which is just as long as the entire shutter cycle, and made a great short video which explains this problem:

http://youtu.be/eHrBcT51oE8

I’m not sure if this is a definitive test – there are other trigger flashes which can be used and I’d like to see the times from the HVL-F60AM, F58AM, F42AM and so on. But it indicates that it’s not just me who does not use wireless flash. Nor do Sony’s systems designers and technical team!

The LV dilemma

Sony’s camera line is now totally committed to using the sensor as the viewfinder. This means that whatever performance they can pull from that sensor, it will always be a quantum drop lower than the same sensor used in an optical viewfinder camera. The level of read noise is heavily influenced by the sensor temperature, and continuous live view makes the sensor heat up.

Sorry, I can’t measure it. No doubt someone equipped with the right tools could measure the temperature of the silicon after 15 seconds, a minute, ten minutes or any other period and also allow for ambient conditions. Sony’s handbook reveals that most performance figures and presumably most pre-production tests assume an ambient temperature of 25°C. By my standards, that’s extremely warm, even as an indoor temperature.

There are warnings that the camera may shut down if video or continuous shooting result in an internal overheat. I’m just not going to be testing the A99 to that degree. The best I could do was to set it to ISO 6400 and the highest video bitrate, and leave the camera running in low light, to ensure the highest gain levels.

I’m fairly sure all of the Nikon D600 noise level advantage can be put down to not using full-time live view, and the effect of the SLT mirror. The Sony sensor is almost certainly just as good overall, give or take whatever effect the phase detection pixels may have.

a99-base

Battery – left hand as seen (right hand grip). To the other end, a narrow covered port allows connection of a vertical grip without cannibalising the battery already fitted. The resulting three-battery configuration is the only way to get real stamina for a busy day’s uninterrupted shoot, especially if you use GPS.

LV and EVF lead to very short battery life, and this may be exaggerated if you want to do very long exposures.

So there is the ultimate dilemma – the Alpha 99 is a master of all the functions and features you could want just so long as you want EVF with it. If you don’t, then the Nikon and Canon alternatives will not only be better choices for you, they will save you into the higher hundreds of pounds or into four figures in dollars.

My choice

The Alpha 99 is currently the full-frame camera I’m working with and will stick with until the next generation arrives.

I sold my Alpha 900 shortly after the Alpha 99 arrived. I regretted it straight away, but that is just down to an attachment after four years of familiarity, and a false reassurance that this is such a solid and simple camera it would have lasted me for life. I do not make videos often, but when I do in future I want full control over direct audio input as audio overdubbing from a separate recorder is something I have found very tricky to handle (at least in iMovie, which is what I use).

I didn’t sell my Alpha 77 despite the poor performance in low light, and the lack of the audio level control. It’s far too useful, having 24 megapixels in an APS-C crop, rather than the 11 produced by the A99 crop format. Also, the general colour and grading of video matches the A99 well enough for the 77 to be a second camera. After we bought the Nikon D600, I found the colour and contrast sufficiently different to mean mixing video from Alpha and Nikon was not an option. It also has manual audio input gain – but we can’t team them up. For much the same reasons I have kept my NEX-5n and my Alpha 55.

Could I work professionally with the Alpha 99? Yes. I’m confident it would not let me down in any situation I’m likely to encounter or set up – I do not shoot sports or hard news, events or conferences. Future professional use would be likely to be public relations, corporate brochure, annual report, advertising, industrial and environmental, executive portraiture, products, architectural, building works, stock travel and landscape. Frankly, anything I could once have shot on a Hasselblad can easily be tackled with an Alpha 99.

Despite this, I would be very happy if Sony revived the highest end optical prism DSLR in future. An Alpha 900 quality version of the D600 would have been perfect. And I do not think I am alone in showing some regret for the apparent end of the single-lens reflex Alpha.

– David Kilpatrick

Footnote: elsewhere, the usual comment has been made that I’m wrong to compare this with the 6D and D600 because the A99 is competing with the 5D MkIII and D800. We have a D800E and may acquire a second one. It’s not competing with that; the D800, and especially the 800E, appeal to a different market where using 36 megapixels counts more than several other factors. It is also not competing with the 5D MkIII, which is locked into a huge Canon professional userbase as the one undisputed mainstream body. Nikon has a fragmented position; the D600 isn’t on the right level, the D800 offers benefits many users do not need and loses advantages they want to keep, the D700 is low resolution, the D3s the same and the D3X is priced beyond its specification. Nikon professionals I know all say what they want is a D700 body (and shutter, etc) with a D600 sensor – they would then have a camera at precisely the same level as the 5D MkIII. They would have the one easy no-doubts choice to make the same way Canon users have.

Like it or not, the Alpha 99 is actually competing with the 6D and D600, and it does not matter to the market that some aspects of its construction and specification are closer to 5D MkIII ‘build’. Sony is doing something in enthusiast-level photography right now that it has done well in the past in television and audio, positioning its pricing as a premium consumer brand. The DSC-RX1 specification and pricing tells you everything you need to know about how Sony sees the market.

a99processor

 

This is why the A99 doesn’t even really compete with the older A900. Single Bionz processor (that word saying ‘Dual’ refers to the memory card slot) where the 900 had two – and 14-bit data to process. The SD cards, even Class 10 UHS-1, also represent a bottleneck in data transfer. Using the highest end MemoryStick PRO Duo overcomes this. Photographed on the Sony stand at photokina.

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