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



Enjoying the A1 but mostly the XS focus option, why did it take Sony so long to add when other brands have had for years...?
 
In prep for ordering a new camera I ordered some new cf-a cards direct from Pergear the other week.

They were never shipped, chased it up with them by email their online chat and even their social media but got no reply. I had to end up raising a PayPal claim for it.

About a week after raising the claim they replied saying they were sold out (still showing for sale) and it could be next year before they have stock due to global shortages of nand. Have got a refund now

Wouldn’t recommend ordering direct from them. Sods law the cards I wanted are sold everywhere now. I could have ordered from Amazon at the time for £150 more but they are sold out now as well.

A couple of memory cards now costing more than a decent lens is lolz.

Pity their customer service is so bad their cards are a great price compared to others and I have been using them for a couple of years now with zero issues.
 
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Memory card prices are sheer madness at the moment. I was debating last year whether to treat my A7RV to some decent CF-Express A cards to replace the SDXC cards I currently used, but waited too long, and when I decided to pull the pin, prices had almost trebled. I was looking at some Nextstorage CF-A 256GB cards (they are in my Amazon list still), and when I added them they were £79.00 each, and today they are £214.48 each !!

Apparently from what I read online, memory card manufacturers aren't expecting prices to stabilize until the middle of 2027 at the earliest. I'd also wager a bet that as we would have had 18 months of high prices, that the card manufacturers will use these prices as their standard from then onwards (even if production prices do fall massively). I very much doubt we will see cheap fast cards ever again.
 
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It’s one reason I’m glad I decided to go with the a7v vs the a7rv.
I really see no need for the average person needing 67mp. Very few print now and even if they are printing wedding albums I’m sure 20mp would be more than enough.

33mp is even likely far more than I need unless I’m being lazy and cropping a lot.
Even ssd’s have gone up a silly amount, the Samsung ssd I bought last year cost me £90 with a Small discount code from Samsung the same drive is £240 now.

I’ve been having to resort to going back over older images and really culling unused raw files( I used to just save all that weren’t really terrible).
 
A little nostalgia -

The attached photo was taken by a now 26 year old Sony Mavica MVC-FD98, one of the four shots that fit full resolution on a 3 1/2" floppy disk.
This is a 2.1 Megapixel camera that I own and still use it occasionally, but had to buy an external USB floppy disk reader to keep using it with newer computers. It can produce great 8 X 10 photos, though enlarging much bigger than this causes pixelation. I paid about $1,200 US for it in May of 2000. This photo was taken in the North Carolina Transportation Museum of the engine and cars being used for the train ride around the museum property that day. The property at one time had included a full railroad service shop and roundhouse for the Southern Railroad, now Norfolk & Southern, and it was donated to the State of North Carolina for the Transportation Museum about 50 years ago. It was no longer being used, as it was designed and built for the steam railroad era, and with a little modification to handle the early 1940 and 1950 diesel engines. Fortunately for me, this museum is located about 25 miles Northeast of my present home. Although it's mostly railroad related, there are many sections of the museum inside of the former restored railroad shops for displays of other forms of transportation. Airplanes, trucks, cars, wagons, etc are all represented there.

This attached photo is straight from the camera with no post processing at all. So, is a 50 or more megapixel camera really necessary when 2.1 megapixels can do this back in 2000 ? For me, the only benefit of more megapixels has been the ability to crop small areas of photos for printing larger. My present largest camera is 34 megapixels and is a Canon 90D. Over my years as a photographer since 1952, I have owned most all of the major brand cameras both film and digital at one time or other, but right now I'm back with Canon. No mirrorless yet, since all of my 4 present in-use Pro cameras are all less than 5 years old, and I'm 84, so I may not ever own a mirrorless camera.

Experiment with this attached photo. Print it out at 8 X 10". I think you will agree that you don't need high megapixels to get good shots if you don't need to crop.

Charley
 

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pmac said:
It’s one reason I’m glad I decided to go with the a7v vs the a7rv.
I really see no need for the average person needing 67mp. Very few print now and even if they are printing wedding albums I’m sure 20mp would be more than enough.

33mp is even likely far more than I need unless I’m being lazy and cropping a lot.
Even ssd’s have gone up a silly amount, the Samsung ssd I bought last year cost me £90 with a Small discount code from Samsung the same drive is £240 now.

I’ve been having to resort to going back over older images and really culling unused raw files( I used to just save all that weren’t really terrible).
Click to expand...

The resolution difference wouldn't interest me.

However if you compare the A7V to the incoming A7R6 that is a partially stacked sensor (who cares) Vs. a fully stacked sensor. I won't ever buy another camera that doesn't have a fully stacked sensor or a global shutter.

That is just me personally though.
 
pmac said:
It’s one reason I’m glad I decided to go with the a7v vs the a7rv.
I really see no need for the average person needing 67mp. Very few print now and even if they are printing wedding albums I’m sure 20mp would be more than enough.

33mp is even likely far more than I need unless I’m being lazy and cropping a lot.
Even ssd’s have gone up a silly amount, the Samsung ssd I bought last year cost me £90 with a Small discount code from Samsung the same drive is £240 now.

I’ve been having to resort to going back over older images and really culling unused raw files( I used to just save all that weren’t really terrible).
Click to expand...
with the 60+mp sensor, what i find massively helpful is being able to crop in during post and still have all those megapixels to play with. Similarly one press of a button to put the camera into crop mode and still have 26 mp is very handy.
 
pmac said:
It’s one reason I’m glad I decided to go with the a7v vs the a7rv.
I really see no need for the average person needing 67mp. Very few print now and even if they are printing wedding albums I’m sure 20mp would be more than enough.

33mp is even likely far more than I need unless I’m being lazy and cropping a lot.
Even ssd’s have gone up a silly amount, the Samsung ssd I bought last year cost me £90 with a Small discount code from Samsung the same drive is £240 now.

I’ve been having to resort to going back over older images and really culling unused raw files( I used to just save all that weren’t really terrible).
Click to expand...
I think sometimes people misjudge what people want these high MP cameras for. Sure, you don’t need it for printing etc but it’s incredibly useful for cropping and so very handy for wildlife and sports photographers. You can choose a smaller file size/resolution for ‘regular shooting’ too.
CharleyL said:
A little nostalgia -

The attached photo was taken by a now 26 year old Sony Mavica MVC-FD98, one of the four shots that fit full resolution on a 3 1/2" floppy disk.
This is a 2.1 Megapixel camera that I own and still use it occasionally, but had to buy an external USB floppy disk reader to keep using it with newer computers. It can produce great 8 X 10 photos, though enlarging much bigger than this causes pixelation. I paid about $1,200 US for it in May of 2000. This photo was taken in the North Carolina Transportation Museum of the engine and cars being used for the train ride around the museum property that day. The property at one time had included a full railroad service shop and roundhouse for the Southern Railroad, now Norfolk & Southern, and it was donated to the State of North Carolina for the Transportation Museum about 50 years ago. It was no longer being used, as it was designed and built for the steam railroad era, and with a little modification to handle the early 1940 and 1950 diesel engines. Fortunately for me, this museum is located about 25 miles Northeast of my present home. Although it's mostly railroad related, there are many sections of the museum inside of the former restored railroad shops for displays of other forms of transportation. Airplanes, trucks, cars, wagons, etc are all represented there.

This attached photo is straight from the camera with no post processing at all. So, is a 50 or more megapixel camera really necessary when 2.1 megapixels can do this back in 2000 ? For me, the only benefit of more megapixels has been the ability to crop small areas of photos for printing larger. My present largest camera is 34 megapixels and is a Canon 90D. Over my years as a photographer since 1952, I have owned most all of the major brand cameras both film and digital at one time or other, but right now I'm back with Canon. No mirrorless yet, since all of my 4 present in-use Pro cameras are all less than 5 years old, and I'm 84, so I may not ever own a mirrorless camera.

Experiment with this attached photo. Print it out at 8 X 10". I think you will agree that you don't need high megapixels to get good shots if you don't need to crop.

Charley
Click to expand...
Each to their own, but even just viewed on my iPad that image quality doesn’t cut it for me, sorry.
 
CharleyL said:
Experiment with this attached photo. Print it out at 8 X 10". I think you will agree that you don't need high megapixels to get good shots if you don't need to crop.
Click to expand...

10*8 (inches?) is fine for miniature pictures, though I suspect if that were printed for a book or zine the lack of resolution might be obvious. Nice you can still use it. (y)

That camera was good for the time, but things move on. A little after that I had use of a 2mp HP camera, and it was great compared to the VGA resolution CMOS camera I'd used before, but not really good. 8mp was about the starting point of usefulness in resolution for printing for me.
 
Croping is like groping but earlier in the alphabet.

OTOH cropping is a pleasure for amateurs.

;)
 
Your not getting the change in focal length though you are getting a crop which you could do in post.
 
f/1.2 said:
Your not getting the change in focal length though you are getting a crop which you could do in post.
Click to expand...
you're getting the equivalent focal length in camera. so its beneficial while composing the shot with the desired focal length rather than thinking "i'll crop in during post".

also for wildlife /sports to massive jump in "reach" can help with focus acquisition, tracking and panning etc.

Again, I think its a benefit to some and not appreciated/needed by others.
 
addicknchips said:
you're getting the equivalent focal length in camera. so its beneficial while composing the shot with the desired focal length rather than thinking "i'll crop in during post".

also for wildlife /sports to massive jump in "reach" can help with focus acquisition, tracking and panning etc.

Again, I think its a benefit to some and not appreciated/needed by others.
Click to expand...
It’s not the equivalent though mate as you are still getting the same distortion from the wider lens and your also changing D.O.F. You are also losing compression, creating more noise etc.

Have been down this rabbit hole before. :D
 
f/1.2 said:
It’s not the equivalent though mate as you are still getting the same distortion from the wider lens and your also changing D.O.F. You are also losing compression, creating more noise etc.

Have been down this rabbit hole before. :D
Click to expand...
Are you sure about this, that's not how I understand it? To get the same framing you'd have to be stood in the same place whether cropping in camera or in post, therefore compression will be the same, likewise distortion and DOF. I can't see why there'd be more noise, you're not changing pixel size or density?
 
f/1.2 said:
It’s not the equivalent though mate as you are still getting the same distortion from the wider lens and your also changing D.O.F. You are also losing compression, creating more noise etc.

Have been down this rabbit hole before. :D
Click to expand...

I’m not arguing that using a 24mm in crop mode is as good as using a dedicated 35mm, but it’s as good as using a 24mm on a separate APSC body.
 
I also rely on cropping with primes also one of the reason I own fast primes.

35mm f1.2 now gives close to 55mm f1.8 (and everything in between if cropping in post), similarly my 85mm f1.4 doubles as 130mm f2.1. Not quite 135mm f1.8 but close enough.

And I don't do it for penny pinching, just can't carry so many lenses, it's not my profession. If I were a professional I'd own the whole set of GM primes with multiple bodies but I'm a amateur, as @addicknchips said guilty as charged and unashamedly so :ROFLMAO:
 
snerkler said:
Are you sure about this, that's not how I understand it? To get the same framing you'd have to be stood in the same place whether cropping in camera or in post, therefore compression will be the same, likewise distortion and DOF. I can't see why there'd be more noise, you're not changing pixel size or density?
Click to expand...
You have misunderstood :D

Not comparing cropping in camera or in post comparing cropping and using the correct lens.
 
nandbytes said:
Yeah not a fan of new battery thing especially if the body is not backwards compatible with current ones.
Click to expand...

Really?

Do you not think it’s about time they brought in new batteries to cope with the demands of newer tech.

Hopefully all new release will have the new battery.
 
f/1.2 said:
Really?

Do you not think it’s about time they brought in new batteries to cope with the demands of newer tech.

Hopefully all new release will have the new battery.
Click to expand...

I'm not against new batteries, just wish they'd make current one also backwards compatible like Nikon have done as they updated their batteries
 
nandbytes said:
I'm not against new batteries, just wish they'd make current one also backwards compatible like Nikon have done as they updated their batteries
Click to expand...
Imagine the new battery is because of the EVF in the A7R6 supposed to be the best ever. Old battery prob wouldn’t last too long.

The old battery needed replaced with a higher capacity, it probably should have happened sooner

If you’re happy to pay 5.5k for a camera body can’t really grumble about paying £110 for a new spare battery..
 
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£4400 uk. So better than expected

No mention of actual readout speed speed, just says 5.6x faster so is that going to be around 18ms then? As a7rv was 100ms and again no mention of buffer size unless I missed it
 
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