Sony a7rii ( ILCE-7RM2 )

This seems to be a choice between:

weight
does it have an aperture ring
roundness of bokeh
extreme sharpness
speed

35mm lens and a 55mm lens give a pretty different field of view. That'd be the deciding factor for me. Particularly when all the lenses are equally good.

A 35mm f1.4 will be stunning for cinematic environmental portraits and versatile for snapshots / lanscapes / architecture / interior shots. It'd be my choice.

A 50/55mm will be nice for portraits and shallow depth of field. A bit tele tho.

Have you done something with your hair?

I should post some photos, but first... moar shopping. I didn't buy the Spider hand strap, wasn't totally convinced and it looked like it would be incompatible with tripods. So I've waited and researched and will now buy:

• A belt/rucksack-strap clip https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peak-Design-CapturePRO-Camera-Clip/dp/B00OY5UMD2/
  
• A wrist strap https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peak-Design-CL-2-Quick-Attaching-Quick-Adjusting/dp/B013KMGKIU/
  
  

Some photos, still just playing around with it.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w4p5kwfuum6gyno/AAAulweBZFtd5XRaN7NGMlwna?dl=0

Chosen Dropbox so you can download them to have a look at some of the details.

This photo is the one that really shows the camera and lens off:
https://flic.kr/p/V9efxf

It was taken in the evening, in a shaded room. Across the room at the bookcase.

The detail is superb, the colours correct, the grid of the book case does not deform at the edges. It is sharp throughout. Any part of this could be cropped and you'd still have a big enough file to do something with, this image is 30MB as a JPG. I took it on auto settings and the white balance is perfect and I didn't have to go muck around with the raw.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4198/34880026036_403252995a_o.jpg

That's very impressive. I'd be curious to see how much correction the jpeg engine is doing compared to a raw but yeah, damn.

How are you finding the af speed?

How are you finding the af speed?

Fast enough speed, but what it focuses on isn't always easy to get the same degree of control over.

i.e. on A and P modes I've gone for spot-centred and I hold and shift the framing to achieve the composition. This is super fast focusing but obviously takes a moment to re-frame the shot once focused.

On Auto I've left it to decide whether it wants to use continuous AF or not, doing so means if I leave the camera on Auto there's a good chance I can turn it on and get a shot off damn fast. But... sometimes it will choose a different part of the frame to be in focus than the one I want. So in those circumstances I lose the good shot.

But then, when I left it on spot AF under my control I nearly always lost the shot because this was a quick reaction thing and I didn't have the time to get the composition I want.

The choice for "shit's happening, turn on and get the shot" seems to be "AF picks the wrong subject vs you decide AF but may lose the desired composition".

This is the only time I would wish for a touchscreen. The lack of that for this one scenario is telling.

OK... so the things I used and the things I didn't use so much.

Used: Everything.

Didn't use so much: 55mm f1.8 Sonnar and the tripod.

It turns out that the vast majority of the shooting I did was more like street photography and the lightness, speed, versatility of the smaller 35mm f2.8 Sonnar was far more suited to this.

The sheer resolution of the a7rii meant that I could still take photos with the smaller lens and crop later (which I've done), but I found only a handful of occasions in which the 55mm would've been the better choice, and on those occasions changing lens would've taken too long so I stuck with the 35mm.

The tripod I didn't get to use purely because the places I wanted to use it (Alhambra in Granada and the Royal Alacazar in Seville) both prohibit the use of tripods (thousand year old tile floors do not need metal feet, and whilst I had rubber feet attached the ban is just a blanket ban on tripods).

My next problem is managing the files.

This resolution bring it's own fun, some average file sizes:

• Standard JPEG = 8MB
  
• Fine JPEG = 12MB
  
• Super-fine JPEG = 30MB
  
• Compressed RAW = 40MB
  
• Uncompressed RAW = 80MB
  
  

I have 1,726 photos, I shot most in super-fine and have 30MB files, and some in uncompressed RAW + JPEG (uses Fine JPEG, cannot be set to Super-fine).

This means I have over 41GB of photos from a 12 day vacation.

How on Earth do photographers store and manage their files?

I had been using Google Photos, and also a local NAS storage. But I like the idea of a single "system of record" that holds the master copies, and because I take some photos on my phone Google Photos was my system of record (it can retain original files, untouched, which can be extracted later via Google Takeout).

But with 41GB of photos, just uploading the originals takes ages (a day or so on a 200MB Virgin Media connection it turns out).

And for managing RAWs, what software are people using? I looked at Lightroom and the Adobe Creative Suite but it seems to all strongly want you to use their cloud storage stuff (which I won't, because I also run Linux as well as Windows).

Any advice on storage, management, RAW processing, etc is appreciated.

OK, software I'm thinking of:

• DxO Optics Pro for image optimisation and raw manipulation (the camera and both lens are supported)
  
• Google Photos
  
  

I really don't edit or 'shop photos. I just perform corrections, colour enhancements, white balance, etc.

I don't think I need a catalogue either, I have good naming conventions already.

So really it comes down to which program is best for working with raw images and the image and lens that I have. With zero need for any cloud integration, and that would not be a rental piece of software.

To me, it looks like the Photo Suite from DxO looks best: http://www.dxo.com/us/photography/photo-software/dxo-photo-suite

It's kinda: RAW processing + image optimization + filters and effects. Doubt I'll use the last, but will probably use the other two.

As for storage, I'm probably going to stick with Google Photos and have the NAS be a local backup.

I'll write my own sync utility to push to Google Photos from the NAS... so that the NAS is initially a durable scratch storage, and from there everything goes to Google Photos for long term catalogue and durable storage, but local NAS remains available should I want to pull a RAW quickly.

Google Photos storage cost is approx £8 per month, vs Amazon S3 at $23 per month.

Tried DxO Optics Pro 11.

Works for me :)

The RAW to JPEG is really nicely done, it's quick and easy enough to batch convert and I compared the output JPEG to the camera Fine and Super-Fine, as well as output 90% and 100% quality. The 90% quality export from RAW via DxO produced the second smallest file size (12MB) and no perceivable drop in quality in the various sample images I took (mix of daylight landscape and streets, vs indoor low-light detail and portrait). The 12MB export looked better than the 30MB Super Fine output.

Then there's the incredible function of knowing the camera sensor and lens details from the DxO database and auto-correcting. This is really visible on grid-like structures like buildings, bookcases, etc... where one expects a degree of pin-cushioning/distortion at the edges of the image.

The distortion map for the 55mm f1.8 is here: https://www.dxomark.com/Lenses/Sony/Sony-FE-Carl-Zeiss-Sonnar-T-STAR-55mm-F18-mounted-on-Sony-A7R-II---Measurements__1035

And DxO Optics Pro basically uses that map to digitally correct the image, to undo the distortion that the lens naturally adds.

The output of this is an uncannily accurate image. One in which if I turn my head and look at the subject, the image matches it perfectly even at the edges of the image on the screen.

So yeah... this works, I like it.

Also installed the trial of ViewPoint by DxO, and that is similarly spectacular for more major corrections. Take a photo with a skewed horizon and perspective, and this sucker just fixes that shit. It's pretty stunning. I just need to take more really bad photographs to really take advantage of it.