Sony A7RII
- Actual 43.6MP but effective 42.4MP Full Frame CMOS Sensor.
- E-Mount with support for FE,E & A mount lenses with an adapter.
- No Optical Low-Pass Filter with Bionz X Image Processor.
- Sealed Magnesium alloy body with 5 axis image stabilization.
- 3.0″ Tiltable TFT LCD & Electronic Viewfinder.
- Fast Hybrid AF with 399 Phase Detection. High speed AF with 3rd party lenses (using Metabone Adapter)
- ISO sensitivity Auto, 100-25600 (Extended Mode: 50-102400)
- Shutter from 1/8000 – 30 seconds & Bulb mode. Continuous shooting up to 5 FPS. Buffer size in burst mode is around 23 images in Raw mode.
- Internal 4k recording from full sensor width.
- Built-In Wi-Fi. Downloadable apps. Multi-Interface Shoe. No inbuilt flash.
- Weight is merely 600-700g. including battery
Well this time Sony has outdone themselves again with their flagship Alpha series. Alpha A7R II is this year’s best Back illuminated Mirror less camera by far, most discussed, talked about & probably most argued camera.
From the beginning of 2015 Sony is in the news with their A7 series but I must say the A7R II has gone beyond my expectations. Once I received the brand new boxed A7R II from Sony Middle East for testing & review, I was fascinated with it’s fancy spec & quality.
A7R II has a magnesium alloy body with dust & moisture resistant. The body is similar to it’s A7 model, with 5 axis image stabilization featuring world’s 1st 35mm back-illuminated CMOS sensor & 4K inbuilt video capability.
As I was heading towards Oman with my friend Akhter & Joseph for a small trip it was a perfect opportunity for me to tryout the low light condition of this camera.
Sony Alpha A7R II Lens – Zeiss 28mm @28mm / Aperture – F3.5 / Shutter Speed – 13sec. / ISO / film – 6400
As I was using 28mm focal length needed to keep my shutter speed low so I could catch the stars without any movement & for the same reason I needed to bump up my ISO to 6400. To my surprise the image had very little noise in it, the details are perfectly preserved with such high ISO, was able to pull up lot of details from blown-up highlights of the tent & after editing the image I ended up with a 70mb jpeg image 🙂
While in Oman during the day time we headed out to local market & abandoned places for a quick Breakfast & sightseeing. As usual I had no issue to carry the small & rugged A7R II, it’s a perfect size for street photography.
Once back in Dubai I headed to rooftop to shoot some Cityscape of this beautiful city with this awesome camera, since I had 70-200 from Sony thought of using it. Wanted to make this image for long time & using A7R II gave me great deal of detail & was able to manipulate it to my liking (the place around the fountain is very messy as lots of construction going on & to take them off the image required lot of editing. well I could have used 200mm but the composition was not coming as per my liking.
Ended up with one of my favorite image of the Dubai Mall fountain. The camera’s capabilities are exactly as you can expect from a full frame high resolution camera.
Since I have already used A7R, the menu & the dials of this camera was much known to me. Even when new, it can be set to one’s liking very easily. I like that Sony have moved the shutter button, now it sits in front of the grip & very easy to access. Also one of my favorites, the tilt screen which is very helpful in odd position or low level shooting, with it’s 0.78x magnification one can really look into the details of the images taken.
But somehow I felt the sensor which chooses the EVF or LCD to display is very sensitive. Any slight movement of hand or shirt near to it was changing the display, specially felt it more when the camera strap was moving in front of it ( I had to open the strap as it was a windy day.)
Sony Alpha A7R II Lens – Zeiss 24-70 @24mm / Aperture – F9 / Shutter Speed – 1/160sec. / ISO / film – 160
As I said the dynamic range of this camera is very good and pulling out details either from highlight or low light is very smooth.We made this Image when Eric Pare came to Dubai for a workshop with UAE Landscapers. I really wanted to create something with him with Sony & this was the perfect moment 🙂
Sony Alpha A7R II, Zeiss 16-35 @16mm / Aperture – F2.8 / Shutter Speed – 25sec. / ISO / film – 2000
Once again I headed to UAE’s highest mountain this time with my group UAE Landscapers we hosted this Photo walk in collaboration with Sony Middle East.
Normally I don’t shoot during the event but wasn’t able to resist myself 🙂
I really miss an in-built or external intervalometer (since it’s a USB port, rather than normal jack, it’s very new to market & I did had a tough time finding it in local market. I think Sony should add that small piece of gadget in the box next time) & it’s a small thing Sony just needs to update the firmware which can add the inbuilt one. Without this it’s really hard to shoot or to do time-lapse or even star trails …
I wanted to see how fast the camera can shoot but skipped it for now later on have to explore that part more. (this is 15 shots in continuous mode)
Also I tried the 3rd party adapter (Metabone) to see how the camera’s AF system works when 3rd party lens is attached to the body with the adapter & it really surprised me the focusing is very good & spot on. (will post few images soon)
To conclude as I said earlier Sony has created one of the best mirror less camera till date & set the bar so high it’s going to be a big task for other companies to match it…
