a7 mark4

[spudhead]

So just wondering about adding the a7 mark 4 to the a9 , I am missing the 42 meg of the a99ii which I use less due to wrist problems hence weight with 300 2.8 and as a raw uncompressed only shooter I am thinking about the huge file sizes and storage issues and also burning through memory cards. please let me have thoughts from users or just advise regards gary

 

[AlphaWorld]

Do you mean the A7R IV, which is available today, and is 60Mpixel (its predecessors were 42)?

Or do you mean the not yet announced source of perennial speculation, the putative A7 IV, of which no one knows the specs (but is likely to be less than 42 - speculation generally ranges from 24 to 36)?

Yes, the A7R4 files are a lot bigger than the A9, especially if you use uncompressed RAW, but IMHO it’s worth the extra space. YMMV

 

[Reciprocum]

An High-Res body is an excellent companion for an A9, but the A7M4 will not go beyond 36mpx (or less), only 50% (or less) above the A9.
Having dual body setups is also of great added value as it saves you a lot of on-the-field lens swapping (if you shoot mainly primes).
If you slap a good 35mm (or 50mm) prime lens on a R body and a 135mm on the A9 it is as if you have a 3-body setup with you as you can convert the 35mm to 52mm (or 50mm to 75mm) with a press of a Custom button (APS-C on/off).
But if you treasure low weight and minimalistic/compact setup then the A1 is the way to go (it has lossless compression giving you ~50mb for a 50mpx RAW), sell your A9 and upgrade to A1.
I manage to carry 2 bodies (A1, 7M3) and 4 prime lenses (35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm) with a PeakDesign EveryDay sling 10L bag (acceptable for a few hours, never tried that for whole week-ends yet, probably will leave the 85mm at home on those longer outings).

Initially I thought having 50mpx on a high fps body was not needed but I have since completely changed my mind about this:
1) Gives me 900mm reach with the 200-600mm in APS-C mode (much needed for bird and sports where both high reach and high fps are needed)
2) Several times I got away with a crop of a tiny (<20%) region of the original frame and still get a useable 4K image.

 

[spudhead]

Thanks for replies I did mean a74r and the a 1 would be nice but the price is crazy, sony have made a fortune from my self over the years I have the a9 and a7 3 and a99ii, and thousands of pounds worth of lenses, I have the 200-600 but would for sure want a 400 2.8 if I spent the money for the a1as I shoot wildlife mainly and birds.

 

[TerryL]

Thanks for replies I did mean a74r and the a 1 would be nice but the price is crazy, sony have made a fortune from my self over the years I have the a9 and a7 3 and a99ii, and thousands of pounds worth of lenses, I have the 200-600 but would for sure want a 400 2.8 if I spent the money for the a1as I shoot wildlife mainly and birds.

Wouldn’t that be nice, Gary?

 

[Boojum]

I am going to be the contrarian here starting with who the hell really needs huge file sizes? If you are not printing billboards, or back in the real world some humongous prints, like two feet by three feet, no one will ever know. And if and when there is a noticeable difference you will be standing very close to the print. Who does that outside of a gallery? So what's the point? And, likewise, today's JPG's come out of the camera just wonderfully. As an example the 55mm Zeiss f/1.8 JPG is free of distortion. Not so with the raw file. Why buy the extra work? My A7M III has all sorts of AI firmware to gussy up a raw into a nice JPG. I suppose I could take both the raw and JPG and see just how much better I can make the raw than the JPG. Maybe I could make it better, maybe not. And I could try to change the reality of the scene that both the camera I and saw. But wasn't it the scene as I saw it that attracted me in the first place?

Raw files are just not what taking photos are about for me. My day-to-day needs are well covered by a 24 meg sensor and the JPG's it produces. Of course, as always, YMMV. Even my little Leica M8.2 with its 10+meg sensor cranks out some very fine JPG's. Example below. It was a Leica M8.2 with the Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II MC Lens f/5.6.

• M8 Digital Camera
• 2000/1000000 sec
• ISO 160

 

[AlphaWorld]

I am going to be the contrarian here starting with who the hell really needs huge file sizes? If you are not printing billboards, or back in the real world some humongous prints, like two feet by three feet, no one will ever know. And if and when there is a noticeable difference you will be standing very close to the print. Who does that outside of a gallery? So what's the point? And, likewise, today's JPG's come out of the camera just wonderfully. As an example the 55mm Zeiss f/1.8 JPG is free of distortion. Not so with the raw file. Why buy the extra work? My A7M III has all sorts of AI firmware to gussy up a raw into a nice JPG. I suppose I could take both the raw and JPG and see just how much better I can make the raw than the JPG. Maybe I could make it better, maybe not. And I could try to change the reality of the scene that both the camera I and saw. But wasn't it the scene as I saw it that attracted me in the first place?

Raw files are just not what taking photos are about for me. My day-to-day needs are well covered by a 24 meg sensor and the JPG's it produces. Of course, as always, YMMV. Even my little Leica M8.2 with its 10+meg sensor cranks out some very fine JPG's. Example below. It was a Leica M8.2 with the Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II MC Lens f/5.6.

View attachment 13556

You are far from the first to make this argument, so I'm sure you are familiar with the equally hackneyed replies, but I'll just make one of them:

• it's easy to crop a detailed image from a high resolution source - I often crop my images heavily, and 24Mpixel is not enough for me

And here's one I have not seen often:

• 8k screens have started to arrive, and they will give us the ability to display images with around 33Mpixel of detail. Most of the current crop of 8k screens are quite large (55" is small, 65" is common, but so is 75") - we'll be able to appreciate that level of detail in images on display.

 

[Boojum]

You are far from the first to make this argument, so I'm sure you are familiar with the equally hackneyed replies, but I'll just make one of them:

• it's easy to crop a detailed image from a high resolution source - I often crop my images heavily, and 24Mpixel is not enough for me

And here's one I have not seen often:

• 8k screens have started to arrive, and they will give us the ability to display images with around 33Mpixel of detail. Most of the current crop of 8k screens are quite large (55" is small, 65" is common, but so is 75") - we'll be able to appreciate that level of detail in images on display.

No, I have not seen this argument before so I am not used to seeing the rebuttals. I am sure the process works for you. Great. But the amount of folks looking at 8K screens will be a small slice of the market as will be folks cropping images severely. So as I wrote initially it is just not something I have a need to do. I have a few editors and avoid them like the plague. Maybe because I spent a very long time with film I make a little extra effort to frame what I photograph and spare myself what was once darkroom time. And that small sensor in the Leica can take a reasonable amount of enlargement from 10 Meg. You can't cover the wall with it but it will make a large print. I made the effort to frame it well as I saw it so that cropping and manipulation would not be necessary. That JPG is a straight export from a DNG with no manipulation. So there was not even in-camera enhancement.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Cheers

 

[spudhead]

Wouldn’t that be nice, Gary?

for sure

 

[AlphaWorld]

No, I have not seen this argument before so I am not used to seeing the rebuttals. I am sure the process works for you. Great. But the amount of folks looking at 8K screens will be a small slice of the market as will be folks cropping images severely. So as I wrote initially it is just not something I have a need to do. I have a few editors and avoid them like the plague. Maybe because I spent a very long time with film I make a little extra effort to frame what I photograph and spare myself what was once darkroom time. And that small sensor in the Leica can take a reasonable amount of enlargement from 10 Meg. You can't cover the wall with it but it will make a large print. I made the effort to frame it well as I saw it so that cropping and manipulation would not be necessary. That JPG is a straight export from a DNG with no manipulation. So there was not even in-camera enhancement.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Cheers

Fair enough. Thank you for understanding that we can have different needs and wants - it’s the photographers who think everyone must do what they do because it’s the ONE TRUE WAY that really annoy me Apologies if my reply was overly harsh, but it felt like a repeat of older arguments.

I am not a highly skilled photographer, and my reflexes are not what they once were (and even then, they weren’t great!) so I often don’t get it right in camera. I am not into heavy photo manipulation (watching someone make theur subject thinner disturbed me), but I have no problem cropping my images, because the crop is still what was visible, if that makes sense.

I suspect we will see more images displayed on screens as time passes, partly because printing tech does not seem to be moving very fast (has dmax changed at all in the last 5 years?), but screens are: 10 bit colour and HDR, plus 8k screens, means I can display more detail with deeper blacks. Sure, these displays are not common today, but they are coming. I am already tempted to get an 8k screen to display my images at home, but I will wait a bit for the price to come down and for calibration to be integral to the screen.

I never used an M8, but I used an M9 for a while - I think that was the camera which encouraged me to use sensors without AA filters. Very glad Sony omits AA filters from their higher resolution sensors.

 

[Boojum]

Fair enough. Thank you for understanding that we can have different needs and wants - it’s the photographers who think everyone must do what they do because it’s the ONE TRUE WAY that really annoy me Apologies if my reply was overly harsh, but it felt like a repeat of older arguments.

I am not a highly skilled photographer, and my reflexes are not what they once were (and even then, they weren’t great!) so I often don’t get it right in camera. I am not into heavy photo manipulation (watching someone make theur subject thinner disturbed me), but I have no problem cropping my images, because the crop is still what was visible, if that makes sense.

I suspect we will see more images displayed on screens as time passes, partly because printing tech does not seem to be moving very fast (has dmax changed at all in the last 5 years?), but screens are: 10 bit colour and HDR, plus 8k screens, means I can display more detail with deeper blacks. Sure, these displays are not common today, but they are coming. I am already tempted to get an 8k screen to display my images at home, but I will wait a bit for the price to come down and for calibration to be integral to the screen.

I never used an M8, but I used an M9 for a while - I think that was the camera which encouraged me to use sensors without AA filters. Very glad Sony omits AA filters from their higher resolution sensors.

Oh no, no harm, no foul. I admit to being a pompous ass but I am willing to acknowledge that there are a number of solutions to the same problem with a camera. I do not understand how Cartier-Bresson was able to come away with his good photos but I do understand his dislike of darkroom work. For image quality I do believe that Vivian Maier is unmatched. There are a few in-camera options which can make the image more interesting. The M9 is a nice camera but sometimes I think the M8/M8.2 has the edge in color. I will add a link in a few minutes where you can compare images taken of the same thing at the same time with three other cameras and my old A7M II. An interesting four images. The M8/M8.2 has a weak IR filter. That's OK for B&W but for color an IR - UV filter really helps.

Here is the link to a comparison of four cameras. Note how well the little Pentax Q-S1 does. That little puppy punches well above its weight. I am always impressed at how well it does with a miniscule sensor. But the link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sandynoyes/albums/72157716739415061

I do not want to stray too far from the Sony Alpha path but it is interesting to see how the four cameras "see" the same thing.