The Amazing Sony A1/A7/A9/APS-C & Anything else welcome Mega Thread!

nandbytes said:
be careful what you wish for!
RF70-200mm is overpriced for its lacklustre performance. soft corners and vignettes a fair bit in the corners. No TC support either.
Tamron 70-180mm is a better buy and cheaper imo
have look here:
dustinabbott.net

Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS Review - DustinAbbott.net

Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a thorough, real world review of the Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8L IS. The RF 70-200L is an essential.
dustinabbott.net

he compares it with Tamron down the page, just search for it.
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The canons better IME. Faster focus, better contrast, genuine 70-200, better build quality. Granted I haven’t done a side by side to test corner sharpness.

I like the Tamron’s close focus ability though.
 
gman said:
Does the mechanical shutter not go to 1/8000? How is the buffer clearing compared to the A7R iv and does it also shut down features etc whilst clearing?

EDIT: do you mean slower mechanical with regard to fps or blackout times?
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Mechanical shutter is 5fps, electronic is 20.
To be honest, I've never used the mechanical shutter or the max 20fps either.
The A9 buffer is superior to the A7Riv. The A9 is also blackout free.
You may find this article useful....
www.alphashooters.com

Sony A7R IV vs A9 - 15 Key Differences - AlphaShooters.com

The Sony a7R IV 61MP vs the 24MP super fast Sony a9. If you can't decide which camera is best suited to your needs this article will help you to decide.
www.alphashooters.com www.alphashooters.com
 
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Bobsyeruncle said:
Mechanical shutter is 5fps, electronic is 20.
To be honest, I've never used the mechanical shutter or the max 20fps either.
The A9 buffer is superior to the A7Riv. The A9 is also blackout free.
You may find this article useful....
www.alphashooters.com

Sony A7R IV vs A9 - 15 Key Differences - AlphaShooters.com

The Sony a7R IV 61MP vs the 24MP super fast Sony a9. If you can't decide which camera is best suited to your needs this article will help you to decide.
www.alphashooters.com www.alphashooters.com
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Thanks, I think I watched a video earlier which actually showed those bird shots being taken but the article was interesting. I'm sure I read that firmware updates allow the A9 to use real time eye AF with video?
 
Sony requested no reviewers to show photo and video footage until 4th Feb.


 
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decigallen said:
I shoot weddings. We take anywhere between 5-8000 images a day between myself and my wife. To shoot uncompressed RAW I'd need to replace all my cards with 128 or 256mb ones. We have 8 sets of 8 cards, so that's thousands of pounds to replace them. Then, double the amount of HD storage as well as taking longer for the photos to ingest on photomechanic. My Nikon D700 managed lossless compressed RAW back in 2008.

Different shooters prioritise different things. For example, IBIS improvement isn't high on my priorities at all.
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Something my friend (Motorsport photography) does is takes an external drive with him, along with a tablet and card reader, transfers everything between races. Is this not something you could do also, could save massively on cards?
But yeah get why smaller file size matters there.
 
robj20 said:
Something my friend (Motorsport photography) does is takes an external drive with him, along with a tablet and card reader, transfers everything between races. Is this not something you could do also, could save massively on cards?
But yeah get why smaller file size matters there.
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most of the time there is no “in between” times.
 
addicknchips said:
The canons better IME. Faster focus, better contrast, genuine 70-200, better build quality. Granted I haven’t done a side by side to test corner sharpness.

I like the Tamron’s close focus ability though.
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Canon also seems to render nicely with better bokeh. I am sure it has all the positives you mention too.
But it's twice as expensive £1300 vs £2600!
For that much money I wouldn't expect it to be "destroyed" in corner sharpness and be beaten in centre sharpness especially considering these could be used on high res bodies.
Not only the sharpness but vignetting is quite bad. 70-200mm isn't worst offender of the lot but it's still pretty bad.

I'd say Tamron's AF is just fine, would benefit greatly from a focus limited as @snerkler mentioned.
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
How come?
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MPB won't touch a grey import. If you want to sell easily they're good.

Selling privately grey seems to turn some buyers off and seems to attract lower prices. I've seen it in here. My, I couldn't give a s*** if my used item was bought at wex or panamoz but a lot will be willing to pay more for the former not the latter. For the sake of £5...
 
SFTPhotography said:
MPB won't touch a grey import. If you want to sell easily they're good.

Selling privately grey seems to turn some buyers off and seems to attract lower prices. I've seen it in here. My, I couldn't give a s*** if my used item was bought at wex or panamoz but a lot will be willing to pay more for the former not the latter. For the sake of £5...
Click to expand...

Mpb don't care if it's grey or not.
 
nandbytes said:
Canon also seems to render nicely with better bokeh. I am sure it has all the positives you mention too.
But it's twice as expensive £1300 vs £2600!
For that much money I wouldn't expect it to be "destroyed" in corner sharpness and be beaten in centre sharpness especially considering these could be used on high res bodies.
Not only the sharpness but vignetting is quite bad. 70-200mm isn't worst offender of the lot but it's still pretty bad.

I'd say Tamron's AF is just fine, would benefit greatly from a focus limited as @snerkler mentioned.
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Yeah there’s definitely an RF tax there for sure. A negative for the canon for me is it takes a good few turns of the zoom ring to go through the range.

I think the Tamron can only get 15 FPS from the a9 too.

Anyway, I like the innovation to keep them both smaller and lighter. Makes me wonder what sigma have planned for their native mount 70-200.
 
addicknchips said:
Yeah there’s definitely an RF tax there for sure. A negative for the canon for me is it takes a good few turns of the zoom ring to go through the range.

I think the Tamron can only get 15 FPS from the a9 too.

Anyway, I like the innovation to keep them both smaller and lighter. Makes me wonder what sigma have planned for their native mount 70-200.
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I'm curious what sigma has in store
I am also surprised they don't have any RF glass yet. And only say "it's a possibility" when questioned.

As Dustin Abbott puts it the Sony's 70-200GM isn't much better sharpness wise. But with the GM you still have the option of using TCs. One of the reasons I sold my tamron was because I couldn't use TCs.

Tamron does only go up to 15fps on A9 and even A1. But "only" 15fps isn't too bad if you can get all those 15 in focus ;)
 
SFTPhotography said:
MPB won't touch a grey import.
Click to expand...
How do they know it's a grey import?
How does anyone know?
Most of the camera gear I sell, I've sold elsewhere and not one person has asked about grey imports.
If I've sold anything that's a grey import on here, it's been priced accordingly and sold quickly.
 
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SFTPhotography said:
I'm pretty sure last time they did...

Good news if they don't.
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Hmmm... depends on how you looks at it. They require in their T&C that your gear is legally owned by you i.e. it's not stolen and also has all it's tax dues paid. Grey imports don't satisfy the latter but considering someone is happy lying to the tax man, lying to MPB is hardly going to be an issue ;)

It's basically camera laundering :ROFLMAO:
 
It's been a lovely morning here. Cold and frosty but a lovely sky. I can't get out to take any pictures but some of you must have taken some and it'd be a break from al this text...
 
woof woof said:
It's been a lovely morning here. Cold and frosty but a lovely sky. I can't get out to take any pictures but some of you must have taken some and it'd be a break from al this text...
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I thought the same lovely sky, but I was busy with the newborn.
Hopefully go for a walk tomorrow morning.
 
robj20 said:
Something my friend (Motorsport photography) does is takes an external drive with him, along with a tablet and card reader, transfers everything between races. Is this not something you could do also, could save massively on cards?
But yeah get why smaller file size matters there.
Click to expand...

At weddings, the only time to do this is during mealtime, so not applicable to jobs where I'm done at mealtime. But yes, during this downtime I do some of my transfers, but my preference is always to shoot on the same cards for the duration of the day unless I fill it up (which is rare). I'm of the opinion that I'm more likely to misplace a card during a frenetic wedding day than have the two in my camera fail on me.

Bobsyeruncle said:
Why so many?
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It's just how we shoot and it works for us. The technology allows us to burst shoot to get the best possible image in a decisive moment, so we take advantage of it. To be clear, it's more likely I'll have 30 shots of one moment, trying to get the best one, than 30 random shots with little thought. I know single wedding shooters that take as many as we do between two of us.
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
How do they know it's a grey import?
How does anyone know?
Most of the camera gear I sell, I've sold elsewhere and not one person has asked about grey imports.
If I've sold anything that's a grey import on here, it's been priced accordingly and sold quickly.
Click to expand...
They used to. I've been previously been asked by them to provide evidence of where I have purchased from. However based on more recent interaction with them they now seem more relaxed and I don't believe they ask this anymore
 
nandbytes said:
Hmmm... depends on how you looks at it. They require in their T&C that your gear is legally owned by you i.e. it's not stolen and also has all it's tax dues paid. Grey imports don't satisfy the latter but considering someone is happy lying to the tax man, lying to MPB is hardly going to be an issue ;)

It's basically camera laundering [emoji23]
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In theory they could tell by serial number or the labelling on the box- mine says HK on it.

I enquired a while ago about a trade in at park cameras and they were interested in where it came from and reduced their trade in amount further when it transpired it was from HK.

That said I off loaded it privately later
 
f/2.8 said:
They couldn't care less neither does W.E.X and many other vendors.
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It does seem that way as I've never been asked whether gear is UK or grey tbh. Whilst I no longer have any grey stuff I have in the past and traded it in without issue.
 
So today I've been trying out different AF settings trying to see if I can get a better hit rate of Betty running towards the camera and I'm afraid to report I'm very disappointed in the A7RIV in this scenario. I tried a whole heap of different variations of settings changing eye af on/off, eye af animal/human, real time tracking flexible spot, real time tracking expandable flexible spot, AF-C centre, AF-C flexible spot, AF-C expandable flexible spot, and EFC on/off. Admittedly this was all done using the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art DG DN at f1.4 and Betty is quite small in the frame until she gets really close.but results were generally badly back focussed. In real time tracking it was hopeless, I think it focussed right once but I wouldn't call it tack sharp. The best results were eye af on set to animal, AF-C flexible spot but even then hit rate was less than 50%. Oh, tracking sensitivity was set to high (5) for all.

I will try it again with the 100-400mm GM but from past experience that wasn't great either so I'm coming to the conclusion that the A7RIV just isn't good at this type of photography. I hope it's going to be better when I shoot the London Marathon, although that's clearly not going to be happening for a while. I am questioning whether to swap it for the A9-II but I do like having the mp for wildlife.
 
snerkler said:
So today I've been trying out different AF settings trying to see if I can get a better hit rate of Betty running towards the camera and I'm afraid to report I'm very disappointed in the A7RIV in this scenario. I tried a whole heap of different variations of settings changing eye af on/off, eye af animal/human, real time tracking flexible spot, real time tracking expandable flexible spot, AF-C centre, AF-C flexible spot, AF-C expandable flexible spot, and EFC on/off. Admittedly this was all done using the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art DG DN at f1.4 and Betty is quite small in the frame until she gets really close.but results were generally badly back focussed. In real time tracking it was hopeless, I think it focussed right once but I wouldn't call it tack sharp. The best results were eye af on set to animal, AF-C flexible spot but even then hit rate was less than 50%. Oh, tracking sensitivity was set to high (5) for all.

I will try it again with the 100-400mm GM but from past experience that wasn't great either so I'm coming to the conclusion that the A7RIV just isn't good at this type of photography. I hope it's going to be better when I shoot the London Marathon, although that's clearly not going to be happening for a while. I am questioning whether to swap it for the A9-II but I do like having the mp for wildlife.
Click to expand...

A1 and you can have both :ROFLMAO:
Clifton cameras have a 3 years interest free on it. very tempting ;)
 
SFTPhotography said:
In theory they could tell by serial number or the labelling on the box- mine says HK on it.

I enquired a while ago about a trade in at park cameras and they were interested in where it came from and reduced their trade in amount further when it transpired it was from HK.

That said I off loaded it privately later
Click to expand...

MPB don't care if you don't send them the box.
 
nandbytes said:
A1 and you can have both :ROFLMAO:
Clifton cameras have a 3 years interest free on it. very tempting ;)
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Haha, I couldn't justify £6500 on a camera even if I could afford it.
 
snerkler said:
Haha, I couldn't justify £6500 on a camera even if I could afford it.
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how much money have you lost changing camera bodies in the last 3-4 years?
I have lost around £1350 in the last 4.25 years going from A7RII to A7RIII to A7RIV.
Assuming I keep the A1 for at least as long I cannot really justify paying £4K extra to save £1.5K :ROFLMAO:
math may be different for you.
 
snerkler said:
So today I've been trying out different AF settings trying to see if I can get a better hit rate of Betty running towards the camera and I'm afraid to report I'm very disappointed in the A7RIV in this scenario. I tried a whole heap of different variations of settings changing eye af on/off, eye af animal/human, real time tracking flexible spot, real time tracking expandable flexible spot, AF-C centre, AF-C flexible spot, AF-C expandable flexible spot, and EFC on/off. Admittedly this was all done using the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art DG DN at f1.4 and Betty is quite small in the frame until she gets really close.but results were generally badly back focussed. In real time tracking it was hopeless, I think it focussed right once but I wouldn't call it tack sharp. The best results were eye af on set to animal, AF-C flexible spot but even then hit rate was less than 50%. Oh, tracking sensitivity was set to high (5) for all.

I will try it again with the 100-400mm GM but from past experience that wasn't great either so I'm coming to the conclusion that the A7RIV just isn't good at this type of photography. I hope it's going to be better when I shoot the London Marathon, although that's clearly not going to be happening for a while. I am questioning whether to swap it for the A9-II but I do like having the mp for wildlife.
Click to expand...

I had one for a little while that I bought for a project and this was the reason I sold it after the project had finished as it just couldn’t compete with the a.f performance of my A9, A7III or even my little A6400 that I had at the time. It just isn’t suitable for anything that moves fast. To be fair though that isn’t what it is for.
 
nandbytes said:
how much money have you lost changing camera bodies in the last 3-4 years?
I have lost around £1350 in the last 4.25 years going from A7RII to A7RIII to A7RIV.
Assuming I keep the A1 for at least as long I cannot really justify paying £4K extra to save £1.5K :ROFLMAO:
math may be different for you.
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Yep, I've lost a lot although I've had good use out of most of it so I don't see it as losing that much (y)
 
I'm very cautious of swapping cameras, Fuji Finepix S9500, Canon 40D, Sony RX100, Sony A7R, Sony A7C.
Hoping Sony now keep the C form factor and just improve it, I was so disappointed when they added size and weight to the original A7 series.
 
snerkler said:
Yep, I've lost a lot although I've had good use out of most of it so I don't see it as losing that much (y)
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yeah may be "lost" is the wrong word for it but I guess "spent".
if you can find a body that you can keep for 4-5 years it may just be worth it.

I really like the R5 but my most used lenses are the 200-600mm, 24-105mm (in the past when we could travel), 85mm/1.4 and 24mm/1.4. No replacement for first and last lens, the 85mm/1.2 looks like a dream lens except it costs 3 times my sigma 85mm f1.4.

So ok lets stick with Sony.... A7RIV you know the AF woes all too well.... though I don't feel its as bad you think it is its definitely seems a level behind R5 for wildlife.
 
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robj20 said:
I'm very cautious of swapping cameras, Fuji Finepix S9500, Canon 40D, Sony RX100, Sony A7R, Sony A7C.
Hoping Sony now keep the C form factor and just improve it, I was so disappointed when they added size and weight to the original A7 series.
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You've done well!
I have been through 4 times as many at least :ROFLMAO:
 
I had a D750 that I lost about £50 on, then bought the two A7iii, that I can’t see me parting with for at least another year. Although it’s tempting to swap one for a R3 or R4.
 
nandbytes said:
You've done well!
I have been through 4 times as many at least :ROFLMAO:
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I'm the same with lenses I read so much information on them it takes me a long time to decide which to get, it's rare I swap and change.
20mm definitely next that's decided then im pretty sure I want the Voigtlander 35 f1.2.
 
robj20 said:
I'm the same with lenses I read so much information on them it takes me a long time to decide which to get, it's rare I swap and change.
20mm definitely next that's decided then im pretty sure I want the Voigtlander 35 f1.2.
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Stop It!
 
robj20 said:
I'm very cautious of swapping cameras, Fuji Finepix S9500, Canon 40D, Sony RX100, Sony A7R, Sony A7C.
Hoping Sony now keep the C form factor and just improve it, I was so disappointed when they added size and weight to the original A7 series.
Click to expand...

Fujifilm S9500
Canon 450D
Canon 5D2
Sony A7

I did try Fuji a few years ago (Ex2) alongside the A7 but I only had it for a month or two.

I certainly like the size and weight of the A7. Packing in my bag would be easier without an evf hump though.. .. ;)
 
nandbytes said:
yeah may be "lost" is the wrong word for it but I guess "spent".
if you can find a body that you can keep for 4-5 years it may just be worth it.
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Yeah that makes sense, but I can't get out of my head that it's a £6500 camera. I just can't see myself ever spending that on a camera no matter how good it may be or how long I may keep it. I pushed the boat out getting the Z7 and A7RIV, I think that's my limit tbh.

So ok lets stick with Sony.... A7RIV you know the AF woes all too well.... though I don't feel its as bad you think it is its definitely seems a level behind R5 for wildlife.
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The A7RIV is still a great camera, I've had no issue with motorsports or wildlife (I don't do BIF really), I just have to accept that it's pants for Betty running at the camera ;) As long as it's OK for marathons etc.
 
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