Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Sony A7S2 or A7R2?

if you are shooting stills you don't want to use sony, period. Sony has never been able to do a decent user interface, Nikon or canon make a lot more sense. However, for a small form 4k capture, especially if you add a Ninja assassin, you can't do much better than the R2 unless you spend more. FYI, we are all red heads here but this is the accessory section.
Aloha
A
 
Poi Boy said:
if you are shooting stills you don't want to use sony, period. Sony has never been able to do a decent user interface, Nikon or canon make a lot more sense. However, for a small form 4k capture, especially if you add a Ninja assassin, you can't do much better than the R2 unless you spend more. FYI, we are all red heads here but this is the accessory section.
Aloha
A
Click to expand...

IMHO: the Japanese have never been able to create a UI. Bitchin hardware but shitty software
 
Brody_B said:
There is a lot of jazz about sony a7 series here. I just have to speak to my experience. Simply put, I got rid of my A7R2 and would rather use my 5DMK3 cause of a few what I consider to be significant problems.

First, how slow the processing is with stills. Any High speed shutter you do will bog down the camera, it literally needs a break in between shots, completely unacceptable in even a non-action photo shoot.

I don't think the Stills were any more incredible than the old MK3.

Sony glass mostly sucks, so you need an adapter which creates latency and incompatibilities with certain lenses.

S-log color science isn't really superb.

The low light on the R2 isn't near the ground breaking amount that the S2 is.


So since most of my gripes were about still use. I would say the A7S2 would get my vote between the R2 cause in my opinion the still capabilities of the R2 are worthless. With that being said, if you had a choice and were only in the $3k price range I would wait 2-3 months to see if the Canon 5DMK4 is ready, its not clear about what its new features are yet but there are rumors about shooting 4k and other solid additions.

Wait isn't this a Red forum?!

Better choice, scrape together another $4k and get a barebones Raven, if you can wait 8 months lol.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with you Brody!

And I tried every A7x around!

Did a small job yesterday with 3x 5D MK3...wonderful skin tones...fast turnaround...

Of course with limited DR and 1080P only, but I think nowadays with WEB delivery and short content life 4K is often overkill and only a marketing gimmick.

Not being 4K affect maybe 2% of viewers, but the somewhat ugly skin tones under mixed lights of the Sonys affects 100% IMHO...and "limited" DR is fixable...it's our job in the end...
 
Matt Ryan said:
You guys know the trick to shoot s35 or an A7SII right? It's pretty simple:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifM55PEFI-Y

I own the R but the S is much better for video. Let alone much better low light. The A7SII has better sharpness in video and slog3 gives you a bit more DR.

Like others say, R for stills, S for video. But you can get away with either unless your final (still) is going up on a billboard, then the R is the better choice.
Click to expand...

You know this is digital zoom right ? this isn't cropping the sensor like the s35 mode on the A7RII. And you do have this option on the A7RII too and you can make this 1.5 digital crop to the s35 sensor crop. So just here you can see how much versatile is the A7RII.
 
Brody_B said:
There is a lot of jazz about sony a7 series here. I just have to speak to my experience. Simply put, I got rid of my A7R2 and would rather use my 5DMK3 cause of a few what I consider to be significant problems.

First, how slow the processing is with stills. Any High speed shutter you do will bog down the camera, it literally needs a break in between shots, completely unacceptable in even a non-action photo shoot.

I don't think the Stills were any more incredible than the old MK3.

Sony glass mostly sucks, so you need an adapter which creates latency and incompatibilities with certain lenses.

S-log color science isn't really superb.

The low light on the R2 isn't near the ground breaking amount that the S2 is.


So since most of my gripes were about still use. I would say the A7S2 would get my vote between the R2 cause in my opinion the still capabilities of the R2 are worthless. With that being said, if you had a choice and were only in the $3k price range I would wait 2-3 months to see if the Canon 5DMK4 is ready, its not clear about what its new features are yet but there are rumors about shooting 4k and other solid additions.

Wait isn't this a Red forum?!

Better choice, scrape together another $4k and get a barebones Raven, if you can wait 8 months lol.
Click to expand...

I worked with Canon for years, if you think the A7RII is not better than the MK3 , i can agree with you with the slow buffer, but the reason is you are writing 42mp photos in raw to an sd card, not 24mp. A7RII is a very good reputation in stills world, and has better DR and overall best IQ than Canon Mk3. I think battery life is the biggest weakness of this camera. And if you don't believe me i am willing to share some photos from my A7RII. I just can't believe you said the stills capabilities of the A7RII are worthless.
 
Filipe Abreu said:
I worked with Canon for years, if you think the A7RII is not better than the MK3 , i can agree with you with the slow buffer, but the reason is you are writing 42mp photos in raw to an sd card, not 24mp. A7RII is a very good reputation in stills world, and has better DR and overall best IQ than Canon Mk3. I think battery life is the biggest weakness of this camera. And if you don't believe me i am willing to share some photos from my A7RII. I just can't believe you said the stills capabilities of the A7RII are worthless.
Click to expand...

Worthless might be taking it too far, let me rephrase that to useless for stills. lol sorry man, I have been in too many shoots where I lost too many shots and opportunities due to the buffer problem, that alone like I said up top is unforgiving. I was overjoyed when I finally sold it on ebay. And thanks for reminding me about the battery life, forgot to mention that ridiculousness. I kno there are more pixels with the R2 over the MK3 but there is a reason that most professional photographers still use there Canons.
 
Brody_B said:
Worthless might be taking it too far, let me rephrase that to useless for stills. lol sorry man, I have been in too many shoots where I lost too many shots and opportunities due to the buffer problem, that alone like I said up top is unforgiving. I was overjoyed when I finally sold it on ebay. And thanks for reminding me about the battery life, forgot to mention that ridiculousness. I kno there are more pixels with the R2 over the MK3 but there is a reason that most professional photographers still use there Canons.
Click to expand...

If it's frame rate you want then buy a Canon 1Dx. The 7R was never presented as that. It's more of a thinking man's tripod camera than a gun sllinger cam
 
Filipe Abreu said:
You know this is digital zoom right ? this isn't cropping the sensor like the s35 mode on the A7RII. And you do have this option on the A7RII too and you can make this 1.5 digital crop to the s35 sensor crop. So just here you can see how much versatile is the A7RII.
Click to expand...

The difference is the A7RII video in full frame is garbage... aliasing, softer image, etc... So zooming in on that means exaggerated issues. Not so with the A7SII..
 
Zeb B said:
If it's frame rate you want then buy a Canon 1Dx. The 7R was never presented as that. It's more of a thinking man's tripod camera than a gun sllinger cam
Click to expand...


Haha I typically used mine as a hand warmer on cold locations, just open it up full burst for as long as I can. No. But in all seriousness it wasn't ever a frame speed issue, it was the 15-20 seconds you have to wait randomly when it has to buffer, not even after full burst triggering, but medium speed manual repetitive triggering, of the normal kind you do when you have a model doing multiple poses that you want to keep up with. The camera literally cant hang.
 
Brody_B said:
Haha I typically used mine as a hand warmer on cold locations, just open it up full burst for as long as I can. No. But in all seriousness it wasn't ever a frame speed issue, it was the 15-20 seconds you have to wait randomly when it has to buffer, not even after full burst triggering, but medium speed manual repetitive triggering, of the normal kind you do when you have a model doing multiple poses that you want to keep up with. The camera literally cant hang.
Click to expand...

You must have had the worst copy ever... I've used an A7r for the past 3 years and never had such a terrible experience as you and the A7rII is improved on the A7r. So you must have had a really bad copy or your SD card was too slow...
 
Matt Ryan said:
You must have had the worst copy ever... I've used an A7r for the past 3 years and never had such a terrible experience as you and the A7rII is improved on the A7r. So you must have had a really bad copy or your SD card was too slow...
Click to expand...


Ya it was a bad experience no joke. I tried different sd cards and got the same results. All the research I did led to many other users experiencing the same problem. At that point I decided to sell it off.
 
Posted this somewhere else in reduser, but here it is again- I know its not related to A7sII vs A7rII, but I think the ups and downs to each have already been stated on this thread.

Some I like about the A7sII
1) Size and weight are great. I can put two cameras and lenses in a shoulder sling bag, really good for running around setting up multiple time lapses and general run and gunning.
2) APSC mode. Love the ability to pop into APSC mode and get two focal lengths per one lens. Although it makes photos half the file size.
3) A7sII has the ability to be powered though its usb port. Very nice for time lapse, although the power port takes up the interval timer port so your forced to use sony's time lapse app. Its an ok app, super slow to load and move around in...but set ael to LOW and it amazing for day/night night/day transitions!!!
4) Of course the low light capabilities are awesome, but I dont find them to be insanely better then the 5d III.
5) Flip out screen, don't care what people say, its a necessity for video. Very bummed that canon does not incorporate it into their DSLR cameras on some bull shit stigma that its not professional.


Some things I really don't like about the A7sii cameras:
1) The menu system is just about as bad as it gets on a camera (other then perhaps gopro). Its really crazy to me, I could sit down and in 30minutes organize the menu system to make some sense. As of now its all but random and takes forever to get a grasp on.
2) I have tried three canon adapters two are total junk and the Sigma one that just came out is decent. The commlight one I tried has a very loose connection to the lens itself and the communication with the lens broke about a week in. The fodox adapter is more solid, lighter weight, and all around better, but it also tweaks out sometimes and I have to reboot the camera to get lens to communicate with camera. Never tried the metabones one, but I am confident the sigma is better and half as much $
3) The native video out of the sony crushes my fully decked out Imac 5k. The 5dIII uses a far superior codec that is much better to edit IMO.
4) Battery life = CRAPtastic, but if you get one of these cords you can power the camera forever off vmounts- http://www.switronix.com/products?p...age=flypage.tpl&product_id=260&category_id=58 (just make sure to order that cable directly from switranox, they updated it recently and most other vendors have the old one, which can fry your camera)


IMO this camera is a great cam as an intermediate between the 5D3 and 5D4. I will surely be picking up the 5D4 when it arrives to replace A7sII as my down and dirty vid cam. I will, however be keeping the A7sII for time lapse as it does awesome day/night transitions in the app...for me that priceless.
 
Last edited:
Big fan of the A7s II. That said, an A7rII with a Speedbooster will get you close to the A7s II effective ASA but also have the benefits of better facial detection and close to Full Frame optics.

I use the A7s II as a scout camera, doc work, personal projects, etc. It's not ready for high end client, unless they love the look. The S Log on both cameras is dead to me. A hot mess of noise and skinny flesh tones. I stick with the baked in Cine Profiles for better results. I lift the toe on the contrast if I want a more log style grade. Turn detail all the way off - always.

Here's a no budget short I made in the Blizzard of 2016. From learning of a storm approaching to wrap we had 72 hours. We had a window of 12 hours of snowstorm to shoot it in. With a skeleton crew and no lights, the A7s II made it possible. Could not have been done on a Red, Alexa, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FStP14syyS8
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top