Sunday, 30 October 2022

First Real Outing with the OM-1

 


OM-1, 12-40 f2.8 Pro mkII


First off, I didn’t realize that I actually bought my OM-1 on OM System Day, OMDS’s apparently annual celebration of the OM System on October 27th. Just a neat coincidence.

One of the things that made me seriously reconsider sticking with Sony was Nick Page’s recent musings about his experience with his A7RIV’s robustness in difficult conditions, as well as quality of life items. He’s currently testing out an EOS R5 system as his A7RIV is pretty much dead from sealing-related failures and he doesn’t see a major upgrade on this aspect for the A7RV. Given I never quite trusted the Sony body in this aspect, I tend to agree with him here and I also wonder if in the back of my mind a lack of trust in the robustness of the body was been an inhibitor for me in getting out more with the A7RIV. Nick noted that for all the pre-release content for the A7RV, there was a serious lack of Landscape shooters involved in the launch and postulated that this group had increasingly left the A7R series behind because of a lack of robustness in the field.


Getting back to my actual shooting, I shot around 350 shots yesterday with the OM-1, all over Eastern Ontario. Got both a sunrise and sunset, I do like fall and winter for making that practical without noon naps. Sunrise was in Cobourg and Sunset near Portland, ON on Big Rideau Lake. The shot above was on Highway 2A east of Cobourg as I made my way towards the Bay of Quinte and the Loyalist Parkway. 

I tested out LiveND mode, got High-Res (regular, not Hand-Held), HDR and AE bracketing all sorted the way I wanted and just played with the camera a fair bit. Overall the first impressions were decidedly positive, with minimal fighting of the camera once I figured out that LiveND mode required the camera to be set to M mode (in true Olympus fashion, it told me clearly I was in the wrong Shooting Mode, but skipped the ‘set to M mode’ info I needed). I do wish that bracketing modes could stack with computational modes though, especially High-Res, as I do want to bracket those when possible.

LiveND works very well on a tripod, but is not really a handheld mode right now unless you have a 12-100IS, because you NEED SyncIS to be able to viably handhold these exposures. The IBIS is really good on the OM-1, but it’s not ‘reliable 2S exposure’ good without SyncIS. Note SyncIS is the linked IBIS+Lens IS mode available on mostOlympus IS lenses (pretty much any Oly/OMDS IS lens except the 100-400), however there’s only one wider lens with IS, the 12-100, all the others currently are long telephotos. The other thing I found with LiveND is the results don’t HDR stack well, although I suspect that’s a Lightroom limitation more than anything else, it’s not handling in-frame blur well.

The other modes worked as expected. I was happy to figure out that AE bracketing was burst by default (what I prefer), which makes bracketing wildly easier than on the A7RIV. Push a button, get the burst. Hold down the button to change settings. That beats the already good Sony experience of selecting a drive mode (from the approximately 672 drive modes available, on Sony practically everything is a drive mode), drilling down if you want to change the settings, then confirming and shooting. The Sony experience is better than it sounds, the OM-1 is literally press a button and shoot, allowing me to switch back and forth instantly. I had no idea life could be this good (I don’t think that was possibly on my older bodies, aside from maybe the E-M1.2 which I had only briefly). The E-M5.2 let me select HDR this way, but not AE IIRC, although I could just have never figured it out.

I’ve actually assigned specific buttons to each of the 4 main functions I use (AE bracketing, HDR, High-Res and LiveND). Two are on the front (HDR and LiveND) and two on the top (AE Bracketing on the +/- button, as I put Exposure Comp on a dial for AE modes, HR on the Movie button which I essentially never use). 

The much hyped Menu update both is and isn’t a big deal. It’s cleaner for sure and super easy to navigate, but the excessive use of obtuse iconography to reduce the need to localize, the often lousy descriptions and the lack of any real touch integration all rankle a bit. I haven’t found the 1 fish/3 fish setting yet…. It’s pretty, but some language improvements and adding real touch integration would be nice. On the flip side the command dials are really well integrated, which makes using the menu extremely fast once you figure out that the front dial pages though categories and the back dial between tabs in each category.

Otherwise I really do like the camera overall. I would have swapped Delete/Play and Menu/Monitor though, the left side of the body is over-supplied with buttons that I’d like the option of triggering one-handed. 

Card performance is excellent, I was never waiting unlike on the A7RIV, although file sizes are also about 1/4 of the A7RIV sizes which simplifies things and makes my high-end UHS-1 cards more viable and largely eliminates the need for UHS-II cards unless you are shooting high-end video or action/wildlife. There probably will be a 128GB UHS-II V90 card in my future at some point though, just to make 4K video and 50fps continuous modes viable.

The OM-1 EVF is remarkably better than the A7RIV, despite the specs being almost identical. Chalk that up to Sony’s generally poor EVF implementations, they almost always end up with the worst results from a given panel. However it’s not blackout free unless you are using the high-speed drive modes (20+fps), even with electronic shutter enabled there’s blackout at low drive speeds.

Other little things: The grip is a nicer shape than the A7RIV, I still prefer the left-side lens release of Nikon/Canon/m43 over the right lower release of E, X and K mounts. The selectable lock for the mode dial is nice, I still don’t like the left-side power switch that dates back to the film OM’s, but Quick Sleep makes up for that, I just don’t have to flip the power switch anywhere near as much on the OM-1 as I did on older bodies (aside from the E-M1.2 which had Quick Sleep too). Battery is huge (both physically and in capacity) and charges fast on USB-C PD so long as your adapter does 27+W, that almost makes up for no included charger. It’s  nice to have flip/twist back. I still need to sort my focus assist setup. Probably going to drop the HDR mode for peaking on a button. I still don’t know why OMDS just doesn’t allow you to have Peaking always on when in MF mode rather than tying it to a button or focus ring movement.






Thursday, 27 October 2022

And I’m Back, with a switch




Olympus OM-1, m.Zuiko 12-40 Pro f2.8 II

This year has been pretty dead for me in terms of shooting, not because of a lack of desire, but a combo of too busy with work (I was pretty much flat out from May onwards), high gas prices, actively RC flying in my rare free time (the field is close, good landscapes are not) and just a general desire to hole up at home rather than go out. 

That said, I did get out a couple times and got a small selection of good shots. 

I’ve got my brain going off on gear again as well. I do miss a lot from the m43 system, especially the 12-40 Pro, the IBIS and the automation, LiveND especially. I do really like the A7RIV, but the two real gaps in the Sony lens lineup are a compact and close focusing 24-xx zoom and a good 70-200/4 options. There are alternative solutions though, the Tamron 70-180/2.8 can mostly replace a 70-200/4 in terms of size, weight and cost. But there’s only one small 24-xx option and that’s the thoroughly mediocre and ancient ZA 24-70/4.

Sony just launched the A7RV and Oly the OM-5. Both are fairly minor updates on paper, mostly processing and firmware improvements. Both kind of interest me, but one is WAY too expensive and the other really could only be a second body for me. 

The other aspect is something I touched on in my last post some months ago. Most of my best work has been on the Oly kit. The exception really is that one set of shots from Algonquin last February, and I could have done that with an OM-1. I simply don't really take advantage of the A7RIV's true power beyond the Dynamic Range, and I miss the OM systems quality of life features. 

In looking over my work over the last few years, and especially since February, I'm just not taking advantage of the A7RIV's insane megapixels, and while the AF is really nice, otherwise it's merely good.

So it went into the store, along with 3 of my lenses (18/2.8, 28-60 and 70-300) and an OM-1/12.40II kit came home instead. I really regretted selling off the E-M1.2 in March 2021 and this gets me back to where I was then, just with a lot more capable body and a mildly improved lens (the Mk2 12-40 has better sealing, better coatings and 50fps AF support). 

The initial take is the ergonomics are something I missed as well. The A7RIV was the best Sony I've shot with, but the OM-1 is significantly nicer in the hand. The EVF is better as well, somewhat surprising since it's the same basic hardware. AF is something I'll need to get a handle on as it works differently from either the A7RIV or the older Oly's I've used. IQ is very good, not FF good, but the files are way less crunchy than the E-M1.2, let alone the G9 or the 16MP m43 bodies.

Oh, and I have the 12-40 back. That alone is worth it, I've missed this lens a shocking amount over the last 8 months. The combination of compact, well built and crazy good close focus make it the single best normal zoom I've used over the years. 

 

Monday, 11 July 2022

Gear Musings


E-M1 Classic, m.Zuiko 75/1.8

 
Looking at shots like the above makes me second-guess my choice to go all-in on Sony.

The reality is that I would probably be completely happy with the results from a modern 20MP Oly body and 2-3 Pro lenses. IE the setup I had almost put together before I got the A7RIV.

I'd probably also be perfectly happy with a Z7 and a 14-30/4 S, 24-70/4S and 70-300E

The real challenge remains finding a paired light carry body and setup that I was happy with. The first option gives me the E-M5.3 or upcoming OM-5 as the obvious choice. It's an easy one. 

The Nikon gives me the Z50/Z fc/Z30 options. Limited lenses and of course 2 sensor sizes, but the lenses would be fine on a Z7 in DX mode.

Sony gives me the A6x00 line. Same basic problems in terms of sizing as the DX options, but WAY more lens selection. Worse EVF's and ergonomics though. 

This is a frustration to me. Especially because my brain starts pulling me in various directions even though I'm perfectly happy with the A7RIV itself and my lenses too. It's times like these I wish my brain would let me go dual-system and be happy, I'd get another X-T2 and use that as a light carry camera, shooting Fuji in the city and Sony elsewhere. 

Monday, 4 July 2022

800Km and 229 Images

 


A7RIV, Tamron FE 70-300
Chickory Flower along the road at Snake Creek


Yesterday was a good day. I left just after 7AM and headed eastwards on the 401. Jumped off the 401 onto the backroads midway between Belleville and Napanee, headed to Buttermilk Falls, which is a neat little spot, quite pretty, then went north on 41 to Denbigh, west on 28 to Hardwood Lake, then peeled off onto backroads and went north by north east to Killaloe on 60. West to Barry's Bay , southwest on Siberia Rd and Panineau Lake road until I met up with 62, crossed and went down Boulter Rd to McArthur's Mills where I met up with 28 again and headed west through Bancroft to Paudash, where I turned onto 118 and drove up to Tory Hill, then south on 503 to Kinmount with a brief stop at Furnace Falls, West on 45 to Hwy 35, south through Coboconk to the turnoff for 8, west to 12, south to 48 and home. Got home a little after 9pm, for a 14 hour day.

All in all, about 800Km though some of the prettiest country southeast of Algonquin Park. 

I stopped regularly for photography, with the last stop at McArthur's Mills. Furnace Falls was a washout as there were folks picnicking right where I wanted to setup and rather than bother them, I just had a break then headed onwards. Ended up with 229 shots, although most were 3 shot brackets (my standard when shooting landscape).

I also stopped to assist some stranded motorists on 503, they had a blowout and didn't know how to change a tire. Got them sorted and on their way and headed onwards. That does remind me that I do need to start putting together a recovery kit for the BWT, their situation could easily have required a pull (they were on the soft shoulder, luckily not soft enough for their car to get stuck and need a pull out).

Driving like this is a major stress relief for me, at least once I get off the major highways. There's nothing like the calm of an open road to carry my troubles away. Yesterday was mostly about this, although Photography was also part of it. I deliberately didn't do any hiking though, that's for another time.

In terms of photography, I came home with a bunch of river/wetlands shots. I do love shooting these subjects and they do well in regular daylight, at least before noon and after 3-4pm. 

I'm still thoroughly enjoying the A7RIV, the more I shoot it, the more I find it just fits. It really doesn't get in my way and aside from the LCD articulation and function lockouts when writing files, there's just not much wrong with it. And the files are amazing. I'm closing in on 3k shots on it, and it's just doing the job without complaint. 

I need to get out more, especially for golden hour shooting. The work from that Algonquin outing last February remains the absolute best work I've shot. If I want to produce more work of that level, I need to be there when the light is that good. 

Thursday, 30 June 2022

Been Away for a While

 


A7RIV, Tamron SP 90mm f2.8 Nikon AF

So it's been a good while since I've posted. That's because I haven't really been doing much in the way of serious photography since the end of February, a 4 month drought.

I should break that drought in the next few days, finally getting out for a photography-dedicated trip over the long weekend.

What has been going on? A little local photography and some other stuff, I'm actually up over 2500 frames on the A7RIV just from around the nieghbourhood shooting and taking pics at a few RC events.

I have already failed goal #2 for 2022 though, just have spent a lot of time hermited up this spring, there's been weeks where I didn't leave the house except for groceries. 

Overall, I'm still happy with the Sony, and short of an A1, there's really nothing on the market that would make me look elsewhere right now. 

I do expect to slowly grow my lens collection though, but I'm going to try my hardest to end 2022 shooting the A7RIV, and I think that's very achievable even with my brain's odd behaviour.

Monday, 28 February 2022

2022 Goals

 


Olympus E-M5II, m.Zuiko 12-40mm f2.8 PRO

I've not yet published a review of my 2021 Goals or a new set of goals for 2022.

First, 2021 in review.

1. Goal 1 - 10,000 frames on one camera. Miserable failure, I did 3300+ on 2 different bodies and broke 10,000 total frames, but there were too many bodies and while I shot half the year with a single body for the most part, the E-M5II, I didn't get close to it.

2. Goal 2 - Get out at least once a week with the camera. Mostly successful. I did pretty well at this until October, but I really hermited up in Nov/Dec and wasn't leaving the house much at all. When I did, the camera usually came with me.

3. Goal 3 - Post an IG post for every deliberate photography outing. This I succeeded at and I'm pretty happy with that.


For 2022 My goals will be similar. In fact I'm going to try goals 1 & 2 all over again.

1. Goal 1 - 10,000 frames on one camera. The A7RIV puts me in a much better place to achieve this. For the first time in a long time I can realistically see myself shooting the same camera in December that I did in February.

2. Goal 2 - Get out at least once a week with the camera. This is quite achievable if I don't hermit up for an extended period this year.

3. Goal 3 - Raise my posts to likes ratio to 70% or higher on Fred Miranda. I've been active there for years, but because I mostly am active in gear threads historically, until recently my post to like ratio was under 50% until recently. I'd like to get that up to 70% in 2022. That's a stretch goal (I'm at ~12400 posts and ~6400 likes right now)

Friday, 18 February 2022

Lenses and Rumours


A7RIV, SLR Magic 18mm f2.8 Cine

Picked up a couple cheap but good manual lenses this week. 

First one is the one used above, the SLR Magic 18mm f2.8 Cine. It's a compact and medium speed UWA with a low price and reasonable performance. And it takes 62mm filters, so it can use the filters I'd bought for my now-departed 12-40 Pro.

It won't win any awards, but it's also not going to generate much in the way of complaints. A thoroughly competent lens as far as I've seen so far. As such, it will be the core UWA for hiking for now.

Handling is the one thing I'll have to get used to, as a cine lens it has a declicked aperture and geared focus and aperture rings, instead of a rubber focus ring and ribbed aperture ring. That does give a more positive grip when gloved, but it's a tad rough on the fingers otherwise. I'm good with the physical handling, but I've never been a fan of declicked aperture rings even though I understand the benefits for video.

The other lens I picked up is something of a re-acqiusition. I've owned at least 3 variants of the Tamron 90mm macro before, in Adaptall-2, Nikon AF and Pentax AF forms. I bought a Nikon AF one, but the older version rather than the late screwdriver version I had last time. This will be a macro/compact telephoto for me. I know it works well for me on both FF and APS-C and expect I'll use it a lot in the coming months.

That gives me both a good hiking kit of the 18, 28-60 and 70-300 and a compact 3 prime kit of the 18, 45 and 90. With the latter I can use APS-C mode to make it an 18/28, 45/68 and 90/135 setup.

Oh, and SonyAlphaRumors just noted an interesting rumour for a refreshed A7C, with the A7RIII's 42MP sensor instead of the 24MP it currently has or the 33MP in the A7IV. That makes a lot of sense to me, the 42MP sensor is excellent and a lot of folks like it, but the only body options are both aging. Going with this sensor in the A7C refresh would both give the A7C more differentiation from the regular A7 line and give a modern option for those who like the mid-40MP sensors. It would become even better at being the hiker's landscape camera, especially if the A7RV grows in size & weight again, which I expect. This would be the perfect pairing with Sony's compact G primes, especially if they extend the line (I'd like to see an 85/2.8 or 135/2.8 and a 16-18mm option from Sony).

 

Wednesday, 16 February 2022

A Few Thoughts on the A7RIV

 


A7RIV, FE 28-60mm f4-5.6, sunset in Western Ontario


After two weeks with the A7RIV, there's a lot I like about it, and a few things I don't like.

I'll start off with what I don't like.

1. Dust. The bloody sensor is an absolute dust magnet and I'm doing a lot of spotting in post. This is a huge change from the Oly stuff which was almost immune to sensor dust, and the Nikon and Panasonic stuff did pretty well too. Endemic Sony issue they need to fix.

2. Poor handling of manual lens data. The workflow is pretty much a. Set Steadyshot focal length. b. Set minimum shutter for Auto ISO (if you use it). c. Wonder which lens you used when doing post. The gold standard here is the newest Oly bodies which not only let you set a menu of manual lenses which you can select from and which both IBIS and Auto ISO respect, but a custom text name for the lens as well, useful when you have multiple lenses at one focal length, such as my 2 135mm options. This has been a complaint since the A7II and Sony really should address it. Nikon should as well, as while they do a lot better than Sony, in fact they do everything right except the fact that if you aren't using an electronic adapter, Nikon Z bodies don't write EXIF data from non-CPU lens data.

3. LCD Articulation. My usual complaint for any body with no articulation or only single-axis articulation. A7RIV is single-axis and should be 2 axis like the X-T2 or Z9. 

4. Invalid Operation Button - really annoying pop-up messages when you accidentally hit a function that's disabled in the current setup (AF when using an MF lens is the most common for me).

Now on to what I do like:

1. Battery life. I shot 512 shots last weekend over about 14 hours. Came back with 76% battery. That's DSLR-level life. Impressed. Plus I can charge on the go easily thanks to USB-C and USB Micro B ports that are charge capable (yes, the current Sony bodies have both a Type C and a Micro-B port, the latter is also the remote release port). I'll buy an extra battery, but I don't see it being critical in the field unless I'm doing long-exposure work.

2. IQ. Yeah, it's immense. More per-pixel noise than some other high-MP bodies, but with so many pixels it's not an issue. DR is great, the colours are nice and wow, 3shot/1 stop brackets to mild HDR delivers so much IQ it's crazy. I prefer shooting bracket sets when shooting winter scenes due to the huge DR of these scenes.

3. Handling. I actually really like the ergonomics of this body. Not perfect, the body would benefit from an extra 5-10mm between the mount and grip, but very good and I'm not missing the G9 or Z5 when I hold the A7RIV. Button layout is excellent, I can always find anything. Biggest complaint is that like the G9, I can't re-assign the Record button.

4. EVF. Marginally better than the Z5 in practice. I still think Nikon has the best EVF display profiles, but the better display on the A7RIV offsets the better profile on the Z5.

5. AF. I've never worked with AF so good. The tracking is so excellent that I just use AF-C in Flexible spot mode, lock on and recompose and let the camera sort out focusing. Works brilliantly. I'm actually surprised about how quickly this became part of my workflow. I treated the Z5 like a DSLR for AF, it worked, worked well but I mostly stuck with AF-C and ignored the tracking modes aside from using face detect a few times. I didn't even bother with tracking or AF-C on the m43 bodies. Sony has been a breath of fresh air, although I suspect an Z6II or Z7II would be pretty similar for tracking today.

Things I'm ambivalent on:

1. Card usage. No lossless compressed and 61MP 14 bit files means the A7RIV absolutely chews through card space. I shot an entire 64GB card last weekend for 512 shots. I'll need to acquire more cards, my current set was doing fine with the low-MP bodies I've been shooting since I sold the D800 a couple years ago.

2. Write speed. Those big files take time to write to my UHS-I cards. Time to move from cheap UHS-I to more expensive UHS-II cards. A couple 128GB cards will do for my uses though and I only need 1 in the short term. That's good because these aren't cheap. I'll pass my now obsolete 32GB cards to my partner for her A7II. Note that a lot of camera functions lock out when the buffer is writing, so fast cards benefit all users, not just those who hammer the buffer.

So far I'm really liking the A7RIV if you can't tell. It's well suited to the way I work, and the few issues I've encountered I can work around pretty well.


Tuesday, 15 February 2022

OM-Wow - The OM-1 is Launched

 


E-M5II, m.Zuiko 12-40mm f2.8 Pro

So the new OMDS 'Wow' camera has been announced. It's called the OM-1 and it's a real nice set of upgrades.

But very few of the changes would have benefited my work and the price increased over 20% as well vs the E-M1.3 that this replaces as the flagship camera (I expect the E-M1X to just fade away like the Pen-F did)

It's faster, better sealed and upgraded all around, but only performance changes to the computational features that interest me (LiveND and High-Res). LiveND now can do 6 stops and High-Res post-processing is twice as fast. Oh and a claimed 1 stop better DR from the new sensor.

That's nice, but frankly I'm getting a bigger boost for my work from the A7RIV, so I have no desire to reverse course on my switch to Sony. 

That said, this is clearly the best crop camera on the market by a fairly large margin. While some have claimed the D500 still held that crown, IMHO the E-M1.3 was already in that position in most regards.

Tuesday, 8 February 2022

Oot and Aboot


 Sony A7RIV, Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD FE

Got out for a long drive Saturday for the first time since mid-fall and did some shooting with the A7RIV as I went. I mostly was wandering around back roads south-west of Barrie and I did see some delightful sights as I went. Came back with a bit of landscape and even one good wildlife shot, of a wild turkey alongside the road.

All shooting was with the Tamron 70-300 or the 28-60. I left the focus in AF-C Tracking: Expand Flexible Spot which I'm really liking as a default mode. I can pick a focus point, hold down AF-ON then recompose as I need and it just sticks. Only fail to stick I had was shooting the wild turkey heads, they just had nothing for the AF system to grab onto due to lighting (AF needs contrast to lock on).

Shooting was as usual mostly in A, with some landscape in M where I wanted more control over the chosen shutter/aperture. I also did bracketing sets, which I had to figure out on the fly (forgot how Sony selects between bracketing configs). I will note that I do have a huge preference for continuous bracketing (where the set is shot as a burst). Sony is the one system that lets me flip between single-shot and continuous for bracketing without menu diving, not that I'd ever actually do that. 

Overall, I'm quickly getting comfortable with the camera. I've set no records in terms of usage (274 shots in the first week), but that's more a case of lack of opportunity than anything else, I've only had a couple hours of serious photography time and it's been rather dreary for walking in the city.

I do need a new UWA (shouldn't have sold the 16-35 last fall) and some new cards (61MP = Card Hog, my 64GB card can hold just over 500 images)


Sunday, 6 February 2022

A Little Surprise


A7RIV, Samyang 45mm f1.8, cold and clear morning in Toronto.


Two of them actually. The first is 4:3 crop mode on the A7RIV. It's a mere 53MP, which is pretty wildly useful to me. One thing I've always missed when I inevitably go back to FF or APS-C from m43 was the more-square aspect ratio of m43. It's closer to how I see the scene and I prefer it. The A7RIV lets me keep doing that, have a more than respectable resolution and as it's just a metadata tag, I can flip back to 3:2 in post if I have to (or just flip the camera back and forth between the two in the field, it's rather quick)

The second is this lens. It's small. It's cheap. It's quite good. Unlike Sony's overpriced and underwhelming FE 50/1.8, which would be acceptable if it was priced the same as Nikon's 50/1.8D or Canon's EF mount 50/1.8 STM, the Samyang 45 is actually good enough for its price and makes a pretty good inexpensive walkaround lens. I'm also kind of digging the wider 45mm focal length vs the usual 50mm. 
 

Saturday, 5 February 2022

Do I Really need 61MP?


A7RIV, FE 28-60 f4-5.6, Approximately APS-C crop for 90mm-e

The short answer? No, I do not need 61MP in any way, shape or form. It's massive overkill for me, but it brings capabilities with it that I do want or need.

What do I need?

1. ~32MP in FF

This is the margin for visibly better resolution than the various 20-24MP bodies deliver. I was looking for a step up in resolution from what I had, in terms of landscape shooting. In short, I missed the D800's IQ for landscape work. High-Res mode on the m43 stuff addressed this, but was more situational than I was really comfortable with. 

2. 20MP or better in APS-C crop. Yes, I want to use crop mode, for 3 things: 

    i. Cheap and fun manual APS-C lenses. I missed this from my Fuji days. They're cheap to buy and lots of fun to shoot with, plus they're small.

    ii. Action. I prefer composing with the full viewfinder rather than cropping in post when shooting any sort of action. Crop mode lets me do that on mirrorless as the display is full-sized unlike on DSLR's.  

    iii. Turning 1 prime into 2. Since I can get away with 20+MP APS-C IQ for my around-town shooting unless it's really dark, I can use crop mode to lighten my kit. For example a 24mm lens can double as a 35mm equivalent by flipping to crop mode. Same way a 55mm can double as a 85mm equivalent, and a 135mm can double as a 200mm. So 3 lenses in the bag cover 6 focal lengths. Alternatively I could go 15/24, 35/50 and 90/135 for a wider 3 lens, 6 fl set. This also works to turn my wee 28-60 into a 28-90 equivalent, a much more flexible range for walkabout shooting.

The Crop requirement is one big reason I was looking at the Z7 and A7RIV (the A7RIII doesn't quite meet my 20MP or better requirement for crop, Z7 hits just over 19MP and is on the cusp) . Unfortunately Nikon has badly crippled the Z7 in terms of crop modes vs the D8x0 bodies, especially in the case of forcing DX Crop when using a DX lens. The A7RIV lacks the nice 1.2x crop mode, but can defeat auto-APS-C crop which is a big win (a lot of APS-C lenses cover more than APS-C, sometime even being quite usable on FF as is (both the Nikon 35DX and the Sony DT35 SAM are somewhat usable on FF).

My experience with 24MP and lower bodies is that for my uses, APS-C crop mode wasn't really workable for anything other than street work. The A7IV and A7RIII would be mostly usable, but not quite where I wanted to be, much like the E-M5II was in terms of resolution (in fact they'd basically straddle the 16MP E-M5II with 15 or 18 megapixels)

 The good news is that I'm going to be very hard-pressed to consider any camera within my price range as a real-world upgrade over the A7RIV for the foreseeable future. It's by far the most capable camera I've owned, and even at 3 years old it's still one of the most capable bodies on the market. Yeah, there will be a A7RV later this year most likely, and I expect a Z7III in the fall as well, but it will be years before those hit my price range. Note my outlay on the A7RIV was the same as I paid for the Z5 this time last year, after trade-ins.

Thursday, 3 February 2022

Switched Again

 


Sony A7RIV, FE 28-60mm f4-5.6

So both the G9 and the E-M5II are gone, along with all the m43 stuff including the MMF-3 and the 12-40 Pro that was much of the reason I got rid of the Z5 and bought back into m43

There was nothing wrong with this kit. It generally worked well for me unless the light got low. So why did I sell it?

There were a couple reasons. 

1. Yeah, I still like shooting in the dark around the city. Especially in the winter and when I'm stuck close to home. m43 stuff just wasn't great for that unless you bought the f1.2 lenses, which are spendy and largish, defeating what is for me the biggest advantages of m43

2. If I was going to stay shooting m43 seriously, I needed to invest in a quality telezoom and UWA. That was going to cost me FF money

3. The rumours on the next-gen bodies which I would be looking at for long-term usage are all around a $2K USD price point. That's a hard sell when you are seeing A7RIV's coming in lightly used around $2300

Note I already own a pretty good but slowish telezoom in Sony mount, the Tamron 70-300 I acquired last fall. Should have kept the 16-35 ;-)

And yes, I got the A7RIV. Because the deal was insanely in my favour after the trade-in. Also picked up the tiny but excellent 28-60 for a good deal. It will be a bag lens and cover most of the gap between the 70-300 and the 16-35 I will inevitably be re-buying shortly. Cheap plastic, but sharp.

Why the A7RIV? 

I looked seriously at a few options. Most notably the Z7, the A7IV and the A7RIV. The Z7II was too much money and I wanted a body with more than 24MP for reasons I'll get into.

The Z7 was the best deal on paper. A used Z7 with the excellent 24-70/4 S cost less than the bare A7RIV did. But the Z7 came with at least $300 in additional cost due to the card setup (CFE-B card is $180 minimum, plus at least one USB reader, maybe 2 as I need both a USB-A 3.1 reader for my desktop and a USB-C for my iPad Pro in the field) and delivers less performance in a number of areas over the A7RIV. Not so much in terms of IQ (the Z7 is more than adequate there) as AF, multi-shot and several other areas. The end result is that the Z7 would have cost me almost the same as the A7RIV did for less camera, but more lens.

The A7IV is a newer camera and in most regards somewhat more refined than either the A7RIV or the Z7. It also has a flip/twist display, which I prefer to the single-tilt display on both the Z7 and A7RIV, but the EVF is trash compared to the Z5, let alone the Z7 or A7RIV. But it's the most expensive of the lot as it would have been a new body. I could have swung the deal, but it just didn't make as much sense to me as a low-mileage A7RIV given the latter offers better build, better EVF and a higher-resolution sensor. I give up the faster responding UI (the A7RIV is already pretty good there), the CFE-A slot and the better AF tracking. Oh, and the A7IV is a little bit more money than the A7RIV I was looking at (I could have got an even lower mileage A7RIV for the same price as the A7IV)

Why not the A7RIII? They are a little cheaper than the Z7 used, but the UI and EVF updates to the A7RIV are enough to swing the difference for me, especially if I manage to keep this body long-term.

One reason why the A7RIV appealed was the possibility of keeping it for a long time. It's well known as one of the best landscape cameras on the market today, it's also for the most part Sony's best APS-C camera, I can run it in crop mode and get class-leading IQ, speed and the ergonomics that are lacking on all their actual APS-C cameras. Plus the body is reasonably sized (slightly smaller than my G9 was in fact), the ergonomic niggles on the Mark II bodies are mostly solved as well. Big buttons, better button layout, a joystick and a better grip with more finger clearance. Ditto for the battery life, the A7RIV is on the Z batter that's twice the capacity of the W battery in the Mark II's. Responsiveness is also improved, it's faster all around (AF, FPS, UI), the menu's are improved, even if they are still Olympus-level disorganized.

So for now I have the A7RIV, the 28-60 and 70-300 as well as all my manual lenses from 24-300mm. I'll add a replacement UWA shortly and my hiking kit should be covered then.