The Sony a7r menu system is, well, confusing. It is almost like they took a perfectly good menu system, broke it into pieces, put the pieces in a paper bag, shook the bag, and then randomly picked out the pieces (like at a lottery drawing) and placed them back in the interface. Anyway, enough rant. I finally just held my nose and jumped in, determined to make the a7r work, warts and all.
And the long and the short of it is the Sony a7r can make a good (or reasonable) camera system for close-up and macro stacking. And IMO it is sharper (or so it seems) than my beloved Nikon D800E, so that's them apples.
I know it is hard to look at these tiny pictures posted here and see all that much, but it might give you at least some idea. This is only one session and you can't judge a camera (at least I can't, but I try) without working with it for a while, but I would say that the Sony A7r can go head-to-head with the D800E and come out smiling. It pains me to learn this, because the D800E is a whole lot easier to use, in general. And it is also strong enough to support large lenses like the Zeiss Otus 55mm APO lens used here. I had to put the Sony A7r on a nodal slide and support the lens hood on the slide with some folded foam, and so on. This was pointed out by Lloyd Chambers in his "Guide to Mirrorless Cameras" column, which has been a valuable resource.
What is shown here is a shot each from the D800E and the a7r, both with the Otus 55mm APO lens, and both stacked. Actually something went not-so-good with the D800E stack, so it is not as sharp as the a7r, but I will run that again. Still you can see that both cameras can produce a pretty good result.
Next are a couple of close-ups of the center of the Gerbera flower, in this case the stacked image done on the A7r and a single shot at f/8 on the D800. In the single D800E shot, you can see detail that I can't see in the stacked D800 shot, so I must have messed up that stack. It is easy to do.
So, what am I learning? Well, I am learning that I might just have to keep this little a7r, even though it is a pain to use. I would love to send it back and wait for Nikon to provide me with a great EVF, but I am not one to let a good camera get out of my grasp.
I should also point out that the shots taken on the D800E were all done without an adapter, since the Zeiss Otus has a Nikon mount. However, the Zeiss Otus on the a7r has the Novoflex adaptor between it and the sensor, and I have no idea how that coupling will affect the images coming from the Otus 55mm compared. Perhaps one of you reading this can enlighten me?
Sony got the sensor right, but they did not do so well with other parts of the a7r. I wish it were a pro-body, so that it could easily handle large lenses like the Zeiss Otus 55mm. I must say that the Novoflex adapter is worth every penny. It seems stronger than either the camera or the lens, so that was money well spent.
I don't like the absence of Mirror-Up (I know it is a mirrorless camera), because the shake from the shutter is obvious and has to be dealt with. I hope there is a firmware work-around coming so we can have more peace of mind, especially those of us who may have to stack 100 layers on the A7r. Ouch!
Anyway, the pesky little a7r didn't get sent back…. today. I have to play with it some more.
