I’m in the same boat, but I have some reservations personally…
The hardware is ridiculously nice, there’s no denying that.
I’ve seen reports that Sony has crippled the hardware by utilizing a lossy compression on the RAW files themselves…
I haven’t seen if this is still the case with the R2 yet (hopefully not).
Also the lens selection isn’t quite mature yet, and I worry about their abandoning support for the mount before too long…
Of course, there’s always adapters.
I think mirrorless is the future. I was going to get a Nikon D810, D750 or Df, but then I decided to get a Sony A7RII instead. Equally awesome sensor, much lighter and easier to carry up a mountain. I will probably get Voigtländer lenses for it.
Currently have an aging 450D and thinking about replacing it with a 700D (so I have a fairly weak fetish when it comes to camera bodies). Lens-wise, eyeballing the Canon 300mm F/4 and the 100mm macro with IS.
I’ve a good old Nikon D300, and I’m impatiently waiting for a true successor (the D7200 doesn’t seem to be really able to double the success of the 300).
With respect to lenses, I’ still “surviving” with the kit 18-55 VR and 55-200 VR lenses… however, for its price the 18-55 was a true bargain: it’s light, reasonably sharp for a 12MPx sensor, and if I break it the cost is rather ridiculous. On the other hand, the 55-200 is a bit disappointing, and I would love to get a good 70-300 lens.
The third lens I own is a glorious 60mm micro-nikkor, but often I feel the need of a longer focal length. The 105mm would probably be the best compromise, since I fear that a 150mm would be too difficult to use handheld.
By the way, does anyone out there have some experience of macro potography with a mirrorless body? Are modern digital viewfinder fast and accurate enough for manual focusing at very short distances and high magnification?
I mean that all EVF I had the chance to try had a small, but noticeable delay in displaying the image… in other words, they did not have a very “fast” response.
When I do macrophoto with manual focus I works with a tripod, otherwise the slightest longitudinal move is going to shift the plane of focus. And in that configuration the response speed of the EVF isn’t going to be a determining factor.
My main concern with EVFs (on a Lumix FZ-8, so that was 7-8 years ago) is that they made it hard to follow a moving object while shooting in burst mode because you get a black display while the picture is taken and the sensor data is collected. So you just get short glimpses of your target. With a DSLR, you just get a blink while the picture is taken… But maybe modern EVF do not have this problem…
On a related note from a recent interview with Kimio Maki, Sony Corp. over on Imaging Resource:
DE: Oh, interesting. I would have though it would be, just… it would be faster, I didn’t realize it would improve your noise levels as well.
This next question is more of a request maybe, but we’ve had a lot of questions asking about raw format. And…
KM: Ah, raw. 14-bit.
DE: Yeah, well 14-bit is OK, but many people are asking “could we please have uncompressed RAWs?”
KM: Sony RAW is compressed, not uncompressed. But if we’re getting a lot of requests for it, we should make such a kind of no-compression raw. Of course we recognize that. But I cannot give you a guarantee when we’re going to fix or not fix.
DE: Right. When you’re going to address that, yeah.
KM: Sure, sure. And so we recognize the customer’s requirement, and actually we are working on it.
DE: So it’s something that you’re aware of. I’m sure that the image processing pipeline is optimized for the way that it is now, but it seems to me that, while it might involve some trading off some performance, that it could just be a firmware change. Could it? Would you be able to provide uncompressed raw as a firmware update, or would it require new hardware?
KM: Right, yes. So… not hardware.
DE: It is firmware. OK, good! I think people would be willing to accept a slower transfer time or lower frame rate in an uncompressed mode. Some people really, really want that.
Emphasis mine. I’d be willing to bet that’s corporate-speak for: “maybe in the next iteration of hardware so we can get even more sales”.
OTOH, if they are willing to address it, the good news is that it appears to be software/firmware based and not a hardware limitation…
On my Oly E-M5, there’s actually two modes available for the viewfinder, “fast” and “slow”.
The fast has a very quick refresh rate, at the cost of a slight bit of resolution, while slow is the full resolution, iirc.
There is a slight blanking of the screen when actuating the shutter, but I can’t say that it’s really felt any longer than a typical SLR when the mirror is up (the blanking is no longer than the shutter speed I think).
I’m not sure what Sony is compressing in their RAW files that others, like Canon, are not doing themselves as well? Are we certain they’re not talking about uncompressed video RAW or something like that?
The reason I ask is that my Sony A6000 RAW file sizes are appropriately larger than Canon’s 5D MkII. I used Canon CR2 for many years and never thought about “compression” in still CR2 images.
And… where would “compressed” vs “uncompressed” be important? There is SOOOoooo much information in these Sony files that it blows me away.
Having said that: At the Photo Salon last Fall I looked at very very large prints from the micro 4/3rd’s camera and they easily rivaled anything Canon had on display of similar size. There was no way of telling which were jpg and which were RAW originals, either.
Which leads me to this: Peter Turnley gives (rather pricey) classes here in the City of Light. He notes that people who take his courses are well-heeled and come weighed down many times with brand new gear of very high quality. The first thing he tells them is to put a 24 or 28 or 35mm lens on one camera and put all that other fancy stuff in the safe back at the hotel. The second thing he tells them is to stop worrying about jpg vs RAW. He tells his students that no one can tell the difference, so why bother?
As an engineer, that’s not very satisfying. For processing flexibilty I shoot RAW. I like the idea of being able to work with 14bits of information (compressed or not - again, whatever the h*ll that means) and be able to modify things like color temperature and luminosity curves (pretty standard stuff, actually).
… and as I went off on my little rant I forgot that GAS was the original topic and what an amazing piece of gear that new Sony A7rII is.
As for “limited” lens selections from Sony, I have to ask: How many lenses do we actually use?
Looking at other manufacturers I think I see where there is a lot of legacy gear still being made. It seems to over-lap much of the capability of the newer/cooler/funner (poor grammar intended) stuff.
Sony’s current lens offering looks like it’s plenty deep for just about everything. Maybe my “requirements” are too easy to fulfill?
For myself, I’m waiting to see what Sony does in APS-C. The older I get the heavier that full frame stuff has become. Since I seldom shoot in pitch black situations where very high ISO might be important, I see current APS-C capabilities as exceeeding my need. But it’d be awesome to have 5 axis IBIS so I could IS my old Nikkors/Zeiss/Jupiter lenses, as well as my modern Sigma Art DN trio.
Couldn’t agree more. It turns out that what Sony is doing is nothing close to 14-bits of information in the raw files, but rather 11bits + 7 offset delta bits:
Does a good job highlighting the practical issues with this. In final practice, most likely, not a thing I would probably personally ever notice. It is good to know that it’s there, though.
Now if I could just convince the wife to let me buy one, then I could really complain about it better…
Not a lot actually as I have a full bag already spanning focal lengths from 8mm through 300mm - more than I actually end up using. But I would love to try out an anamorphic lens some day, the results look very interesting.
I really like to try digiscoping with a Swarovski scope and a Panasonic camera (G7 or GH4) with 4K video and photo modes.
I see a lot of very nice photo’s with the Panasonic GH4 and Swarovski scopes on flickr these days.
