A7s for stills

M

Mestizo Devon

Well-known member
New to A7 platform for stills, the camera seems to hunt a lot with canon eos mount and canon glass. Any tips you guys may have or it is what it is and manual focus. I've just started using the 50mm 1.8 so far...

Thanks
 
I would invest in at least one native lens, the AF will be far superior to any adapted EF lens. The 28-70 kit can be had cheap and AF is really fast.
 
Yeah I'm looking for suggestions too. I would love something small and compact like a pancake lens. I hate lugging around my EF lenses for casual outings.
 
get the 55mm f/1.8 FE lens. Don't count on AF with your canon lens via metabone adapter. There is no real tips for this since it is the limitation of the adapter.
 
Anyone have a suggestion for a lens with OSS? Keep hearing mixed things about the 24-70mm f4. Would love to have a lens that doubles as a stills and stationary handheld lens.
 
As far as I can tell there are only 4 native full frame e-mount lenses with AF that you can by. I have always been a video guy first and foremost but ever since I bought the GH4 I have a growing interest in stills. The major problem with the GH4, as has already been discussed, is it's not great in low light situations.

I became interested in the A7S because I thought it might give me an alternative for a hybrid camera that can operate in low light situations.

I recently came across Brian Smith's review of the A7S. Brian is a Sony talking head so take his review with a grain of salt, but he did manage to shoot some very nice stills with the A7S

http://briansmith.com/sony-a7r-field-test/

From what I can gather so far, if you are shooting in environments and settings where you can get by with manual focus then the camera can shoot some nice stills.

However, if you are shooting in low light situations where continuous auto focus is required then I think you are SOL with this camera. Your best AF option on this platform is to get an LAEA4 Adaptor and buy A-Mount lenses but you are reduced to 15 focus points and I can't see the focus time being very fast. I'm not all that thrilled about investing in A-mount lenses and using this camera for stills for my needs is not really feasible. I might get it anyways for video only.
 
i have 24-70 and it work just fine. Those complains you see on the net are from people that don't actually own the lens. go figure on that.
 
That's good to hear! I loved the build quality and feel of the lens when I was shopping around.
 
Mestizo Devon said:
New to A7 platform for stills, the camera seems to hunt a lot with canon eos mount and canon glass. Any tips you guys may have or it is what it is and manual focus. I've just started using the 50mm 1.8 so far...

Thanks
Click to expand...

Canon lens will not have usable AF on E-mount cameras.

For faster AF in still, you will either need

(1) Native E-mount lenses (FE)

or

(2) LAEA4 (not LAEA3) adapter and A-mount full frame lenses (that includes Sony, Zeiss, and Minolta A mount lenses from 1980s and 1990s)
 
Being a prime-lens lover, for me the obvious choices are the Sony 55mm f/1.8 and 35mm f/2.8 FE lenses: you want a native lens if you're going to use AF, and both of these are optically very nice, with the 35mm being really small too.
In any case, don't expect the a7s to give you awesome AF performance with any lens: it doesn't have phase detection, just contrast detection, which (usually) is good for a portrait but not for sports or wildlife.

Sharpness test with the 35mm on the a7r
And you can compare it with the 24-70 and 70-200 zooms using this this this.
 
Last edited:
The 35mm is not that awesome... I will suggest to look for other option in case you want and only accep the best.
but the 55mm is an outstanding lens for sure
 
I see the FE 35mm beating the Nikon 35mm f/1.4 handily here, and here I see that this Nikon is not a soft lens at all. There's more to IQ than sharpness, maybe the FE 35mm is bad in some other area?

I asked Roger from Lensrentals to do a Sony FE 35mm and 55mm vs Sigma Art 35mm and 50mm shootout. He's much into the a7r, I hope he's interested...
 
Here is the first still photo taken with my copy of the new Sony A7s, with one of the new Zeiss APO series lenses, in this case the Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4 APO lens with 8mm of extension, the Nikon tube PK-11A.

I also include a shot of my camera setup. I tried just hanging this lens on an e-mount>Nikon-F mount adapter and it worked, but it made me nervous. I have a more substantial (perhaps) adapter on order. In the meantime I am using a set of rails to get some lens support. Here the Zeiss 135mm f/2 APO lenses is pictured on rails.

I am a close-up and macro photographer who also does documentary films. I am used to using the Nikon D800E for this work and am not used to 12MP, but it looks like the A7s can do the job.

DSC00007-Edit-2.jpg

EGI_0554-Edit.jpg
 
You don't really need monster lenses with the A7S. Anything that resolves 30 lp/mm is plenty with its resolution.
 
I think that a better lens will still show a visibly sharper image. What you don't need to do is look at 80 lp/mm MTF data, because this sensor can't resolve such fine detail anyway. But you still want a high MTF score at 20 lp/mm, and not all lenses are going to give you that.

The a7s sensor has 60 lp/mm, even with a 70% reduction because it's a Bayer pattern, you still care about contrast at 40 lp/mm (30 lp/mm if you are shooting 1080p video: you divide by half but you don't have to fight the Bayer thing anymore if you do the downsample in a smart way, which I believe this camera does).
 
Are you sure of this?
Even with the Sony’s LA-EA4 lens adapter which adds full-time continuous Phase Detection AF?


Samuel H said:
Being a prime-lens lover, for me the obvious choices are the Sony 55mm f/1.8 and 35mm f/2.8 FE lenses: you want a native lens if you're going to use AF, and both of these are optically very nice, with the 35mm being really small too.
In any case, don't expect the a7s to give you awesome AF performance with any lens: it doesn't have phase detection, just contrast detection, which (usually) is good for a portrait but not for sports or wildlife.

Sharpness test with the 35mm on the a7r
And you can compare it with the 24-70 and 70-200 zooms using this this this.
Click to expand...
 
LAEA4 does have phase AF, its very fast with A mount and Minolta AF lenses. It has the SLT mirror and the AF module from the a mount bodies. The metabones doesn't even compare.

Its not all rainbows and puppy dogs, A mount lenses are bigger - the fast zooms and Zeiss lenses are awesome, but really heavy. Plus A mount bodies have steadyshot inside, E mount uses lens based stabilization. So you get great optics and fast AF, but you lose stabilization.

That being said I'm getting one and the Zeiss 24-70 for my workhorse video lens.

There are plenty of samples on YouTube showing the AF.
 
I am amazed that Sony released 3 full frame mirrorless cameras using a lens mount where there are only 5 native full frame lenses with auto focus available. Of those 5 lenses, 3 are zooms, none of the zooms are below F4. What photographer would leave their full frame platform for this, I just don't get it.

I totally understand the high levels of interest in the A7S to videographers, but I just don't understand the appeal of the A7 and A7R to photographers.
 
True North said:
I totally understand the high levels of interest in the A7S to videographers, but I just don't understand the appeal of the A7 and A7R to photographers.
Click to expand...
An A7 is 20% of the price of a Leica M camera and takes the same lenses. It also mounts pretty much any FF lens ever made. Also, size.

Samuel H said:
I think that a better lens will still show a visibly sharper image. What you don't need to do is look at 80 lp/mm MTF data, because this sensor can't resolve such fine detail anyway. But you still want a high MTF score at 20 lp/mm, and not all lenses are going to give you that.

The a7s sensor has 60 lp/mm, even with a 70% reduction because it's a Bayer pattern, you still care about contrast at 40 lp/mm (30 lp/mm if you are shooting 1080p video: you divide by half but you don't have to fight the Bayer thing anymore if you do the downsample in a smart way, which I believe this camera does).
Click to expand...

Ok, I'll give you 10 lp/mm more. ;)
Btw, high results at lower spatial frequencies (10 lp/mm and lower) seem to affect perceived sharpness way more than high results at nominally relevant spatial frequencies (30+) unless you excessively magnify the image on display.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top