Sony A7 IV Hand-Held Night Shooting

[cjsmall]

I plan to purchase a new A7 IV to replace my current A77. Generally, I never use any of the preset Scene modes on the A77 with the exception of the Hand-Held Twilight setting. This takes a rapid-fire set of 5-7 images and stitches them together, HDR fashion, to produce pretty good images with reasonable sharpness so long as there is little motion in the scene. I typically shoot architectural scenes with this setting when I do not have my tripod. Apparently there is nothing like this on the later A7 cameras, so I'm wondering what people are doing for hand-held nighttime still shooting. One possibility is upping the ISO. On the A77 I generally never went above 800 (1,600 in a pinch) as the grain was too noticeable, but I'm reading that pushing the A7 IV higher can still yield good results. Are there any other settings that people are using for to shoot under these conditions? I've seen cases of people using the a7 IV to shoot hand-held nighttime videos, but I'm mostly a still-frame shooter. Thanks.

 

[Brownie]

Many of us shoot at ISO 8000 or higher.

This was made at ISO 8000 on an A7-IV. Some helpful hints are to expose to the right if you can and learning how to deal with it in post.

DSC05940 by Shotglass Photo, on Flickr

This was also at ISO 8000 on an A7-IV in normal school gymnasium lighting.

DSC08451 by telecast, on Flickr

The advantage you have is that most buildings don't usually move.

Welcome aboard!

 

[cjsmall]

Thanks for the tip Brownie. The shots look great. I will be replacing most of my glass at the same time so I expect to see far far superior images to what I have been getting.

 

[Brownie]

Thanks for the tip Brownie. The shots look great. I will be replacing most of my glass at the same time so I expect to see far far superior images to what I have been getting.

Both of those shots were made on the Minolta 80-200/2.8 HS APO G and an LA-EA4 adapter on the A7M4. Not bad for a 1993 lens, eh?

For some reason the exif is gone on the first one, it was processed in Darktable, exported as a PNG and noise reduction was applied in Affinity. Somewhere along the line the exif got stripped.

 

[cjsmall]

Yes, the quality from that glass looks great.

I'm also still shooting with a couple of Minolta lenses that date back even further to my Maxxum 7D digital body, and beyond that to my Maxxum 9 film days where I exclusively shot Kodachrome 64 slide film. (But not as far back as my Minolta SRT-102 days!) They have produced great result over the years but recently I thought that they were no longer performing as well. I suspect simple wear and tear had caused some internal misalignment. The same problem developed with my more recent APC sized Sony 11-18mm lens which was not as well constructed to begin with. With the new coating technologies and digital correction profiles, it's an entirely new world, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that all plays out.

BTW, as a new visitor here, how do I look at the EXIF data for posted shots? I don't see any icon to display it. Also, is there a forum protocol when posting pictures, e.g., limiting their size, etc?

 

[GvilleRick]

This was a shot I got inside the reptile house at a zoo using my a7RV and Sony 200-600 lens at ISO 12800.

• ILCE-7RM5
• FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
• 400.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 12800

 

[cjsmall]

So it looks like the EXIF data automatically displays under the picture when it is there and the user has OKed the display of that info.
Thanks.

 

[Brownie]

So it looks like the EXIF data automatically displays under the picture when it is there and the user has OKed the display of that info.
Thanks.

My shots are usually linked from Flickr. For some reason this forum doesn't show the exif from Flickr. It's the only forum I've ever posted on that doesn't.

 

[spudhead]

A few shots of Patmos Greece at nighttime with available light only and return to ship via tender

As title shot at night with available lighting a9 Zeiss 24-70 f4

www.alphashooters.com

 

[Gaz]

I plan to purchase a new A7 IV to replace my current A77. Generally, I never use any of the preset Scene modes on the A77 with the exception of the Hand-Held Twilight setting. This takes a rapid-fire set of 5-7 images and stitches them together, HDR fashion, to produce pretty good images with reasonable sharpness so long as there is little motion in the scene. I typically shoot architectural scenes with this setting when I do not have my tripod. Apparently there is nothing like this on the later A7 cameras, so I'm wondering what people are doing for hand-held nighttime still shooting. One possibility is upping the ISO. On the A77 I generally never went above 800 (1,600 in a pinch) as the grain was too noticeable, but I'm reading that pushing the A7 IV higher can still yield good results. Are there any other settings that people are using for to shoot under these conditions? I've seen cases of people using the a7 IV to shoot hand-held nighttime videos, but I'm mostly a still-frame shooter. Thanks.

I took these last night after sunset on an A7iv. There is no “twilight” pre-set but it’s possible to shoot hard and fast. My settings are usually indicated below each image in the gallery on this forum.

Luminar Neo lets me stitch together numerous images in the method you’ve described.

 

[cjsmall]

I'll look into doing this in post-processing software. Thanks.

 

[Jeff A]

I'll look into doing this in post-processing software. Thanks.

Hello Jeffery, Jeffrey (Jeff) here. I was slow to respond to this thread because I just had major surgery and using my office and PC was on my "No can do" list for awhile. Sadly, I have not shot a single image in nearly two months.

So you might want to look at my 1st ever night, hand held shoot, as I too shoot an A7 IV. I use Adobe Lightroom Classic for Post Processing of my Raw images. When needed by high ISO shooting, I de noise using Topaz de Noise or DxO PureRAW 2, both of which do a good job. It became obvious to me pretty quickly that noise is the biggest problem when shooting at night and hand held, so de noise software is a must, IMO. On the plus side, even as a novice shooter, I have had my best, positive feedback from these night shots. As a bonus, I enjoyed shooting it very much. It took me a long time to get the nerve to try this as I had visions of me (a nearly 80 year old guy) getting mugged while carrying around a few thousand dollars worth of camera gear in downtown Sacramento at night. When I finally figured out that I would have my Wife drive the car and stop briefly when a good scene presented itself, jump out of the car, take the shot and jump back in, I might be able to survive this type of shooting. It was very enjoyable.

Here is a link to my Album on Flickr. May of the shots are duplicates because I was trying to show un-processed versus post processed photos. If you are not familiar with Flickr, I suggest you try the following viewing method:

Recommended viewing method:

1. From the Albums page, Single Click or Tap the Album you would like to view
2. Next, Single Click or Tap the upper left photo in the Album grid to expand the photo and expose the Caption which is below the photo. You may need to scroll down a little bit.
3. Most photos can be clicked a second or third time to zoom in to see more detail if your monitor supports the viewing of Ultra High Definition photos.
4. Navigate through the photos by Clicking or Tapping the Right Arrow symbol at the right side of the picture.

One more thing, what part of the States are you located in?

Jeff

 

[cjsmall]

Jeff, I also go by Jeff although it is my middle name -- but that's a story for another day.

I'm on Mercer Island, WA, just outside Seattle. Sorry to hear about your surgery. I hope you are making a full recovery.

Thanks for all the tips. I will definitely look through your Flickr website and study your pictures. I haven't ever really shot at above 800 ISO on you old A77 as the noise was just too great, so I haven't had to deal with much post-processing de-noising issues. I work on a Linux system and have been using the GIMP photo editor for years with good results, along with a program called RawTherapee for dealing with raw files. I know that they have de-noise plugins and I will take a look at those soon.

Are people using the internal de-noise camera processing for their night jpg images? I've done that in the past with the A77, but the delay after each shot can be a serious problem.

 

[cjsmall]

Jeff, I took a look at your Flickr page and those are some mighty impressive hand-held shots. Your F2 lens give a stop better performance over the F4 of the 20-70 zoom, but you are still shooting at some very reasonable ISOs. There was one shot of the Xmas tree at 20,000 ISO which was obviously grainier than the others, but still very respectable. I'm looking forward to getting out there and trying it myself! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jeff A]

Jeff, I took a look at your Flickr page and those are some mighty impressive hand-held shots. Your F2 lens give a stop better performance over the F4 of the 20-70 zoom, but you are still shooting at some very reasonable ISOs. There was one shot of the Xmas tree at 20,000 ISO which was obviously grainier than the others, but still very respectable. I'm looking forward to getting out there and trying it myself! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for looking. I spent a lot of years living in Burien & Tacoma. You have a lot to photograph there.