Sony A7r For Still Life Studio Photography - As A Replacement For Nikon D800

[Nathan Wright]

Likely, this will be an ongoing thread with updates, error fixing, and many, many grammar errors. My a7r came in yesterday. I traded a bit of money for it before the post man would leave me alone. I got it to replace my D800, a camera whose image quality I really love, but whose features do not match my needs as a still life photographer.

Why is that?

Live view.

Nikon's implementation of Live View is as bad as can be. Noise is bad at base ISOs in dark rooms, but use a closed down lens and rely only on studio modelling lights and it goes through the roof. Even zoomed in Live View to 200%, perfect focus is a guessing game.

The a7r's Live View is nearly noiseless in comparison. I've used it to shoot a nice headphone amplifier which I will hopefully finish reviewing this month. It is not a commercial project. Commercial projects guided by the a7r will start next month. And I'm nervous.

Why? The a7r is so damn complicated. So many buttons crammed into such a small place, no ability to capture grey card settings prior to shooting, extremely poor battery life, and a few other niggles. Generally, however, they are surmountable. The D800's live view is not. It is awful.

I will continue to use Nikkor lenses as well as large format lenses with bellows. Who knows, I may sell off my Nikkor macro lenses because of the added flexibility of bellows and a light camera work better for me.

Typically, I use the following for still life:

Nikkor 50/2 Ai (six bladed aperture)
Nikkor 85/2,8 PC Mikro ED
Zeiss Makro Planar 2/100 Ai

The following image shows a typical 28/50/85 Nikkor setup.

The lenses are (from left)

Nikkor 85/1,8K (Ai converted, 6 blades!)
Nikkor 28/2,8 Ai/S (20cm, 7 blades)
Nikkor 50/2,0 Ai (6 blades!)

What I am looking forward to is wirelessly live viewing through an iPhone or iPad, so that as I move around the room, change lights, place flags and mirrors and move reflectors, I can see exactly what I'm doing and the changes made in good quality live view, without relying on external battery-draining options.

My summary of the experience is up at ohm image's photophile page. Immediate post-unboxing specifics are detailed here.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Excellent - looking forward to hearing and seeing how you get on Nathan

 

[Pete Askew]

I'm really interested to see how you get on with this setup. We have similar problems and the Nikon Liveview is useless for things like fluorescence microscopy and this may be an option.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Yep, we also have the same problems ... Have been suffering with it all this week!

I'm on a quest for small and light too! If someone made a 28mm 1.8 lens for this that was as good as the Nikon I would be sorely tempted to jump ship from Nikon

 

[Dave Green]

Interesting read! I never even considered using live view - for anything.

How did still light photographers get along before live view?

 

[Nathan Wright]

Back in the day my friend, we used lights rather than strobes. Now with strobes it gets easier to make soft light and beautiful highlights, but the preparation for the image is... tedious. Live view allows us to 'see' how an image will look with lights on- of course it is all rough. It won't look exactly the same.

With film, we use polaroid backs to get final previews under the same lighting conditions. Digital has rendered that stage unnecessary, but the setup is as bad if not ten times worse!

 

[Dave Green]

Ah yes - live view as a sort of "live Polaroid" to see where the light and shadows are! Makes perfect sense now - thanks

 

[Paul Lange]

What about these small, high quality LCD monitors you can connect to the camera? I think they have HDMI connections. Is the "live view" quality still bad or are they just not very useful for still work?

 

[Hamish Gill]

They show the same dull image the back screen does ... Just bigger ... I meant to take a picture of my live view being crap today ... It's extra crap for me as all the modelling bulbs in my lights are blown. I am the chimp king!

 

[Nathan Wright]

Hey guys, I've taken a couple of comparison images of the D800 and a7r looking at the same D5000 through Live view at f/2 and f/11 for reference. The D800 is almost black in the low light of my unusually well-lit studio set for 1/160 flash sync speed (the top speed I can get from the a7r). I will post the comparison pictures later today in a full review of the a7r. The short of it is: I'm selling the D800. But if I were not 95% in a still life studio, I'd be very very hard put to work with the Sony. It is a fine camera, but in no way worth its asking price.Now, I'm not one to demand a product be worth its price as per juxtaposition against the competition. Brands carry different price realities. And I'm willing to pay more for a brand that I:

-trust (viz., I cannot ever support Samsung)
-know has better human relations in its home country and abroad (viz., I cannot ever support Samsung)
-isn't in charge of a country's government (viz., I cannot ever support Samsung)
-doesn't sell everything from groceries to life insurance and build the world's tallest buildings in addition to making electronics (viz., I cannot ever support Samsung)
-is established
-is a benchmark of its own
-is a brand that is known for quality and not dipping to the demands of quantity over holistic quality (viz., Leica is simply something else)

Sony is not a brand that falls well into any of those categories. It changes with the wind. It makes great technology but is rarely if ever invested for the long run, nor do the products it makes feel as well-made as comparable Nikons or Fujifilms, let alone Leicas. This 2.300$ camera is built to lesser standards than the typical sell-all-for-quantity Japanese camera. It is also a Sony. It should NOT be this much. However, for my work, it is a better/easier camera to use than the D800.

In no way is it a ground-up replacement for it.