Albert Dros shared his “First Day” findings with the new Sony A7RIII:
The camera feels good, lot of faster than its predecessor. Sound of the shutter is different. Sounds a bit ‘smoother’, like there is less vibration going on. The resolution of the viewfinder and the screen are better. This is really noticeable if you’re used to the A7RII. Touch-focus is great Focus-magnify during AF is great, works well together with the Touch-focus. Custom menu makes me work faster not having to go through dozens of menu pages. The eye-piece sensor is better.
Marc Alhadeff posted the detailed review of the new 24-105mm lens. I did actually preorder this lens before to read any review and I was worried that once first reviewes would be released I might would be disappointed. But luckely this doens’t seem to be the case:
The Sony 24-105 F4 was longly awaited by Sony users as a key trans-standard zoom
Sony has delivered a superb lens , much better than the Sony FE 24-70mm F4 Zeiss OSS, way above the Sony FE 24-240mm F3.5-F6.3
The lens is always excellent in the center and corners are just 1 grade below but can always reach the very good grade
Bokeh is very nice, with beautiful blurry background
Very good resistance to flare, no CA
Very nice results in video with nice blurry background
Construction is very good and lens is equipped with all relevant knobs : button than can be assigned to eye AF, AF/MF switch, Optical stabilisation
The tradeoff made to sacrifice distorsion (quite important) for sharpness is a good one to my opinion as those will be automatically corrected by a lightroom lens profile very soon
With its correct price tag of 1350 euros, I expect this lens to become the standard high quality zoom lens for A7RIII/A9 if you don’t want to invest in the Sony FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM
Darren Soh from our Sony A7rIII FB group (join here) shared some more findings on the A7rIII Pixel Shift Mode (Click on images to enlarge). First let’s see that image of a jogger in the Park:
Darren writes: “100% crop comparison of one shot (left) and pixel-shifted image (right). A glitch in the matrix occurs when any changes happens between the four exposures – here, a jogger is running by. Even his shadow is recorded as a glitch.“
Of course this was expected. It’s nearly impossible to avoid such artifacts on moving objects. Maybe some future algorithm could make it possible to remove moving objects from the frame. But for now you have to deal with these kind of issues when you don’t shoot absolutely static objects.
That said the new Pixel Shift model really delivers superb results. Darren writes:
(image on top) 100% crop comparison of one shot (left) and pixel-shifted image (right). Notice the elimination of moire in the staircase grille. (image below) 100% crop comparison of one shot (left) and pixel-shifted image (right). The gain in microcontrast is astounding.
Albert Dros (video on top) tested the Pixel Shift feature and concludes:
This function is not a gimmick, it really works. Will I use it as a landscape photographer? I will definitely try. I love to shoot images with as much detail as possible. In reality I will often not be able to use this function because of moving subjects. However, as I am blending images lots of times I can definitely see this function being integrated in my photography. Think of very fine stones on buildings, churches, mostly ancient structures. I would sometimes see slight moire when shooting these. Shooting with Pixel Shift completely eliminates the moire. I could blend a pixel shift image with ‘normal’ images to overcome the moving scene issues. There are definitely possibilities in which I will use this technique. It’s super fast to activate anyway, and if you have your camera on your tripod waiting for a sunset, why not shoot a pixel shift image while you’re waiting?
Darren Soh (Click on image on top) shared his Pixel Shift test findings on our Sony A7rIII Facebook group:
A7rIII pixel shift comparison. Because of the 1 sec lag in between each of the four exposures, pixel shift imaging has unfortunately been quite limited. Once you are shooting outdoors, many things can happen in the +/-4 secs that you need to get the shot. So I decided to shoot my bookshelf instead. But even then, at 100% the differences were quite subtle. So this is what I did. I up-rezed both 16 BIT TIFF files that came from the Sony Imaging Edge software in Adobe Photoshop using the new Preserve Details 2.0 algorithm and only then (with an approximately 95 MP file) did the differences show. So I learnt something today – if you used pixel shift successfully, you’ll be able to interpolate the resulting file 100% with little loss in detail. Amazing indeed, if only Sony would cut the lag time in the future.
Eddy Hagen (Click on image on top) sent me this:
I got my A7R III yesterday and today I wanted to test the Pixel Shift Multi Shooting. I’ve taken a few pictures and there is definitely a big difference. Attached is a screenshot from Photoshop, at 200%, with at the left the regular image, at the right the PSMS. Both images were converted with the default settings in the Imaging Edge software. The subject is part of an artwork, a screenprint. I’ve just send out a tweet about it (@insights4print), by mid next week I’ll publish a full report on this at https://www.insights4print.ceo.
Dpreview added the A7rIII to their Studio Comparison Tool. SAR readers are welcome to discuss their findings. Seems like the A7rIII has more chromatic aberration and bit more sharpness than the previous A7rII. Noise handling seems to be improved too (Note the Canon in this comparison only goes up to 12800 ISO):
Josselin Cornoufrom “Untitledshot” posted this video on top and also made some RAW images available for free download here: hive.co/l/sonya7r3raw. Hew writes:
“The Sony A7r3 is coming, and it feels like an important iterative upgrade over the A7r2. After trying it, it should purely be an update around increasing your productivity, with a better AF, 10FPS, longer battery life, dual SD card and a better grip. On the image quality side, it is hard to justify upgrading to the A7r3. The image quality is so similar to the A7r2 that I was not – with the current Camera RAW processor – able to find any differences. Pixel shift may seems like a good feature, but it requires a software to edit the file. No – the camera won’t do the stitching for you. You cannot see the result right away – I think it is a big limiting factor, especially for outdoors/landscape photography. Also the lack of playmemories software might be a limiting factor for those who were relying on apps. On the other side, I was really impressed by the 24-105mm, the file won’t resolve 42mp, but still – this may be the first decent all around lens for the Sony A7/A9 series.
P.S.: I also uploaded a quick Slow motion video of the two shutters: https://youtu.be/7L1B1WqZTmU.”
