Sony A7R review

It's a week since I picked up my Sony A7R from Camera World in London. I was pleasantly surprised when they threw in a small tripod, 32GB card and spare genuine Sony battery as well for no extra charge. Nice folks there. So it's time for a "had the camera a week so here's a blog post" blog post. Settle down and get comfy, this is a long one...I'll tackle this in four sections: size & build quality, usability, lenses and image quality.Size & build qualityThe easiest way to demonstrate size is to show the camera side by side with a bunch of other cameras I have lying about. As an aside, I seem to have let things get a bit out of hand recently on the hardware front and have become a Sony whore.Note for these shots the Canon has a 24 1.4, the Olympus has a 9-18, the A7R has a Leica Summicron-R 2/50 and Novoflex adapter, the RX1 obviously has a fixed 35 2.0.It's pretty obvious that the large Leica R lens plus the adapter make the A7R a bit on the long side. The adapter is quite thick to get the image to register correctly on the A7R sensor (which I note is rather further forward in the camera body than that on the RX1). The M mount adapter is much thinner, making the overall package with M lenses a lot more compact though more pricey if you stick to Leica lenses.In any event, the camera will not go in your pocket - you'll need to put it in a bag of some sort regardless of what lens you put on it. So, I've traded a bit of compactness and more weight for about £2000 in additional lens cost, which I think is OK for now. More on lenses lower down.Build quality is extremely good. Anyone familiar with the little beauty which is the RX1 will feel immediately at home. The A7R is solid in the hand, has a real quality feel to it, and all the markings are engraved. The various dials are clicky and positive with no play. The buttons are all very nice as well, again much like the RX1. The paint looks thick and lustrous. The card and battery doors are solid. The accessory/connector doors on the left of the body are a little fiddly and flimsy by comparison so I think care will need to be taken with them. The articulating screen is much smoother and more precise in operation than the equivalent on the RX100 which again shows attention to detail. The A7R feels far better made than the Olympus OMD-EM5 which feels a bit plasticky by comparison.The immediate impression is of a compact, very high quality item. It is reminiscent of my (now sold) Leica M9 in terms of solidity and attention to detail. There's no way I'd look at a Leica M 240 as an option with the A7R now in the market - the M is now reduced to a quirky luxury item in my view and I now understand why the staff in the Leica shop said to me, only half jokingly, not to mention Sony in their shop ever again.UsabilityThe A7R feels nice in the hand. Not as nice as a Canon 1D or D4 in the way that they fit your hand perfectly. It feels better than the RX1 because of the grip which lets you get a better hold of the camera. I have pretty big hands so the grip is a useful feature, especially with a relatively heavy lens on like a 90mm Leica R.Being familiar with the RX1 menu, I didn't even bother reading the instruction manual, preferring to surprise and delight myself as I explored the A7R's features. Thankfully they have added another dial on the front, so now you can adjust the three major photographic parameters of aperture, shutter speed and ISO directly without pressing any buttons. I have mine set to aperture on the front dial, shutter speed on the top-rear dial, and ISO on the back dial. This is excellent - why don't more camera makers do it this way.I'd prefer a shutter speed and ISO dial with visual markings on the top like the new Nikon DF which does look lovely. Call me old fashioned, but I like looking down at the top of my camera to see immediately what all the settings are, rather than having to turn the camera on and look at the screen. Not sure how you'd fit all that in on the top of the diminutive A7R though, so at least it's easy to adjust all the settings with the camera to your eye. As I'm using manual focus lenses, I'd have like to have the ISO setting on the front dial but that seems impossible.Configuration options are myriad. I have kept things simple and have C1 set to configure the amount of focus peaking or turn it off. I have the curiously named "zebra" turned on - this is an excellent feature that puts black & white lines on the image in the viewfinder or on the screen to show you've blown the highlights. You can configure when the lines are displayed i.e. at 100% blown or getting close to blown at 90% etc. Very good indeed. C2 is set to turn the rear screen off - well, it doesn't go fully off at it still displays the settings, but the image goes away which is nice if you are using the camera in dark environments and you don't want to draw attention to yourself. I haven't set up C3 as I've run out of things I can think of configuring.The shutter button is a bit awkwardly placed, more for aesthetic reasons than usability. It doesn't fall naturally under your finger and would be better placed on top of the front dial.The tilting screen works very well and is a really useful feature, especially when shooting from very low down. Shame it doesn't work in portrait orientation though but I think that would require a hinge design that has yet to be invented.For manual focus on my R lenses, I have focus peaking set to high and red, though I can turn it off or make it lower intensity by hitting the C1 button. It is useful to turn it off when you are shooting a landscape or suchlike at a smallish aperture when everything is in focus, as all you get is a big load of red all over the screen. I have focus magnification set to the button in the middle of the AF/MF/AEL switch, which is where I'd usually have "back-button" focus on my 1D cameras.This makes manual focus quite intuitive. If peaking is on, it is on all the time rather than just being on in magnified view like the RX1. So, you can quite easily focus without magnifying if you want. When using shallow depth of field, I will zoom in once or twice by pressing said un-named button and adjust focus accordingly. With that level of magnification, it's quite easy to focus without using peaking, which is handy as the peaking strangely is less visible when zoomed in. I think this is because peaking is implemented on the whole image, rather than just the bit you are zoomed into. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. It feels a bit odd to me that you don't get the same peaking sensitivity when zoomed in, so that's something Sony may want to look at.I did a shutter sound comparison test which I uploaded to Youtube to compare the noise of the 1D, EM5, RX1 and A7R. You can draw your own conclusions from that. My opinion is that the shutter is quite loud, which will restrict my use of the camera in some of the quiet events that I cover (concerts, plays and suchlike), or dictate immaculate timing when the ambient noise allows. This is a shame and I'd rather it was much quieter. However, on the positive side I have grown to really like the noise it makes. It is very mechanical and sounds like bits of precision machined metal sliding over each other (which is exactly what it is I guess). It infers solidity and great build quality.I've got the Android version of the awfully named Playmemories Mobile app on my phone which connects to the A7R over wifi. Connectivity is simple enough once you've figured out to go to the "apps" section of the camera menu and select Smart Remote. You can trigger the shutter from the app for sophisticated selfies, and download pics from the camera to the phone very easily. It is annoying that you can't change any settings from the app - Sony should sort that out. If landscaping or suchlike you can also use your phone as a large monitor if you wanted to, and the focus magnification and peaking shows up on your phone screen just like it does on the camera which is good.LensesNative lens choice for the A7R is quite restricted at the moment. It's never really been my intention to go with Sony autofocus lenses, but instead to use the camera with manual focus "legacy" lenses. Why is this? There are a number of reasons.Partly it's to do with the shooting experience when using manual focus. This is something of a hangover from my use of the Leica M9. It makes the shooting experience more involved, slows you down, and in my opinion makes it more enjoyable. The rangefinder focusing method in the M9 is nice but compromised with long lenses and your own eyesight, and the WYSIWYG plus magnification approach of the A7R gets around a lot of the inadequacies of the M rangefinders.Partly it's the wide availability of beautiful quality older lenses at fairly reasonable prices. Before the A7R arrived, I had already acquired adapters for Canon EF, Leica M and Leica R lenses. You can get older Canon FD, Minolta etc etc lenses which are super sharp and dirt cheap, so the opportunity to play about without breaking the bank also exists.So, which lenses to get? Having the RX1, I am already covered for 35mm. I wanted short, medium and longer options so decided to go for 24mm, 50mm and 90mm. Having trawled around a number of options, I settled on Leica R lenses as they are really reasonably priced, and with excellent image quality. I ended up trawling the London second hand dealers and bought my three lenses from Aperture in Rathbone Place. I ended up with:- 24 Elmarit-R 2.8/24- 50 Summicron-R 2/50- 90 Elmarit-R 2.8/90These three cost me £1020 and are all in excellent condition, and come with a 12 month guarantee which is super. With sublimely smooth focus, very positive aperture rings, and built in hoods on the 50 and 90, they really are the sort of build quality you'd expect from Leica. Yes, I know the 24 is a Minolta design, but it is just as nicely done as the 50 and 90.Options considered include the Zeiss ZM 2.8/25, 2/50 and 4/85, Leica M 2/50 and 2.8/90 and various others. The triplet of Zeiss's would have set me back over £2000 just to give you an idea, but they would have been new and I could get the VAT back. As it is, the value of good R lenses will probably only go up with the popularity of the A7R so I doubt I'll lose anything on them when I do eventually trade up to smaller, lighter M lenses.The Novoflex Leica R adapter I picked up was just over £100, but much better quality than the eBay one I bought for £7.99. The issue with the R lenses is that the adapter is quite long compared to the M adapter, making the camera + lens rather bigger. In fact, the adapter nearly doubles the length of the 50mm lens.So, thats certainly something to consider when you are looking at lenses. Another important consideration is the focus "throw" or the amount you need to turn the focus ring from close to infinity. The R lenses have a lot more throw than the M lenses. Whilst this lets you be more precise, it prevents you from just going straight to the rough focus position you need as you would on an M lens. With my M9, I got into the habit of leaving the lens at infinity so I'd always know which way to turn it when it came to take a shot, and I got used to the rough position of the tab on the focus ring for various focal distances making the focusing process somewhat faster.As it is, I'm more than happy with the R lenses and especially their quality:price ratio, but I'd like it all to be more compact so will probably move to M lenses when funds allow.Image QualityIn a word - outstanding (with the 50 and 90 lenses). The closest I have seen to the output of the A7R is my M9 with a Zeiss ZM 2/50 which was 3x the price and, though impressive, not as good as the Sony. The A7R is way better than my sharpest DSLR combo which is a 1DIV with the Canon 70-200 2.8 IS mark II. The fine detail is really incredible.I was pleasantly surprised to see a bit of swirly bokeh action from the 50mm at f/2 which I hadn't expected. I really quite like this  - it's not overdone, but is there and I'll be using this characteristic in some of my commercial shoots to make the pictures look a bit different from the norm.I did my first paid commission with the A7R this week and whilst I can't show the full pictures, here are a couple of 100% crops. These were taken with the 90mm at f/4, with three off camera flashes triggered using pocket wizards. The A7R is restricted to 1/160th flash sync speed which is a bit of a pain, but the RX1 gives me 1/2000th sync so I'm not overly concerned. The quality and detail in the resulting pictures, with auto white balance, is quite amazing.So, wowza! The sensor on this camera is amazing. It handles auto white balance very well. The jpegs it produces are very nice, and I've upgraded Lightroom to 5.3 to get RAW support. I haven't pushed and pulled the RAW files around just yet, but initial impressions are very good.The 24mm lens is a bit of a different story. I've been reading reams and reams of internet postings about wide lenses on the A7R and I suspect that until Sony brings out a dedicated wide lens of their own this will remain a slight problem area for those of a pixel-peeping disposition.  The Elmarit-R 2.8/24 is very sharp in the central areas, but does get less sharp at the edges (in comparison to the centre). I believe this is a known quality of this lens. I did try the 2.8/28 which was better, but too close to 35mm that I have with the RX1, and I want 24mm or wider. I also did a comparison with the Zeiss 2.8/25 which is a very nice lens, but didn't perform as well on the A7R as the Elmarit at wider apertures. The Zeiss also showed distinct colour shift on the left side as well.In reality, I'll likely be shooting the 24 at f/8 or smaller for landscapes and the like, where corner to corner is perfectly good enough, and if I'm at wider apertures the corners & edges will be in the background and out of focus anyway so it's really not an issue. So, I'll stick with the Elmarit-R for the time being as it does what I need very nicely.I have a Flickr set of 100% uncropped out of camera shots if you want to compare & contrast different lenses. You'll find that here. In the meantime here's a quick Zeiss v Leica wide angle comparison:I haven't had much chance to play with very high ISO settings yet, but I can't really see there being a problem in that regard. Some have said that it's a bit noisier than the RX1 but with Lightroom's excellent noise reduction I'm not overly worried if that is the case.ConclusionFirstly, why have I got this camera? It's not like I couldn't take all the pictures I need with the cameras I've got. They have lasted well and produced outstanding results over the last few years, and will go on doing so I'm sure. No, instead I take great pleasure from a beautiful piece of technology or machinery. Whether it's my mountain bike or my watch or my camera, I simply get a lot of personal satisfaction from having something that is very well made and high performing. I also enjoy zooming into an image and saying "wow" to myself as I see the detail and crispness of it all. I work very hard and am lucky enough to be able to afford such things, so why not. It's a selfish indulgence in a way.However, I also expect all my camera gear to pay its own way and then some, and the A7R is no exception. I estimate it will have paid me back in 3 weeks as I have a lot of jobs lined up that it will be used for, and it will go on making money for me. Not a bad return on investment really. The image quality of the pictures from the RX1 has already been remarked on by customers (who have no idea what camera I've been using by the way - they just say they look amazing), and I expect the same of the A7R. Also, the ability to create something different looking with the use of older legacy lenses is also very attractive. Whilst you could do it before with adapters for SLRs for example, it just feels a lot easier, less cumbersome and more fun with the A7R.Additionally I have now opened up a new branch of photography to myself, which is the exploration of and experimentation with a myriad of older lenses. I think this will be really interesting and I look forward to trawling camera fairs and suchlike to see what I can pick up for a few pounds.At the same time I have a super-high-performing studio camera for commercial work, an inconspicuous (though slightly noisy) travel camera, and a full frame uber-quality camera that I can take anywhere for landscaping without much weight or space needed. It will really encourage me to go out and enjoy my photography more. It will be my primary camera for all my non-sports work, and my primary camera for just going out and enjoying taking pictures as a hobby.So all told, a week into ownership I'm hooked.Please leave a comment or ask questions - it makes me feel it's all worth it! Thanks.