This past week I have been to a few locations shooting with the Sony A7R, including Rodeo Beach, Treasure Island, Golden Gate Bridge and Death Valley National Park. Here's a few field notes and images that I came away with:
• Dynamic range is pretty good, indistinguishable from the Canon 5D3 and Canon 6D
• Electronic Viewfinder is a game changer for landscape photographers, especially in bright environments. Check out the back LCD in this high elevation harshly lit Death Valley mountain peak below. Notice how you can’t really determine the exposure and composition properly, or if you could you’d be straining your eyes quite a bit? One look in the viewfinder changes all of that:
• Small size is amazing
Composition Study | 30s – ISO 64 – F18 – Canon 50mm FD 1.8
• Sensor gets quite a bit of dust on it, the shutter vibration technology is all marketing. Same performance as 5D3 and 6D
• Sony A7R bug prevented Bulb Mode:
http://youtu.be/o6pH8XWbiaMThe Sony A7R fails in bulb mode in the field. Prevented me from getting a few shots, unfortunately. After this video I tried my Canon EF lens and still no resolution of the issue. It turned out to be a bug in the camera, as resetting the entire camera back to factory defaults fixed the issue, but didn’t fix the time it took to re-configure everything as it was before resetting : (
Human Landscape | 43s – F20 – ISO 80 – Canon 50mm 1.8 FD
• Canon FD and FL lenses are resolving just as sharp as my sharpest L lenses, corner sharpness is excellent
• Battery life in Death Valley suffered. It takes about 4 hours 1/2 to charge one battery off the car USB. Needless to say I didn’t get many batteries charged, and struggled to take photographs late in the day
Face Above San Francisco | 205s – F20 – ISO 100 – 20mm – No Photoshop
• Shot with the Canon 6D half the time in the park due to low battery life on the Sony a7R, and I had 3x batteries
• Image Quality of the Sony A7R is quite a few margins above the 5D3 and 6D
Composition Study | 30s – F22 – ISO 50 – Canon 50mm 1.8 FD
Composition Study | 30s – F18 – ISO 50 – 35mm
Composition Study | 135s – F18 – ISO 100 – Canon 50mm 1.8 FD 1962
Composition Study | 20s – F18 – ISO 50 – 30mm
Composition Study | 49s – F20 – ISO 100 – Canon 50mm 1.8 FD 1962