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My Sony Sensor Trio by Rick Birt

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My Sony Sensor Trio

Written for Sony Alpha Rumors by Rick Birt of www.romeobravophoto.com

First I want to express how grateful I am to Andea for running this site. I am amazed at his dedication, and the work he does for this community. THANK YOU!!!

The fact that both my wife and I are professional photographers, allows us to try – and own – a lot of cool gear. My current camera bag contains:

  1. Baby Bear – a Fujifilm X-Pro2 with a 24MP APS-C Sony sensor
  2. Mama Bear (she’s juuuust right) – Sony a9 with a 24MP Full-Frame Sony sensor
  3. Papa Bear – a Hasselblad X1D-50c with a 51MP Medium-Format Sony sensor

I don’t actually carry all of these in my bag at once – but I might if they would all fit ;) I tend to take whatever I feel is required for the job.

The Fuji is great for travelling, events, and my two big clients that require jpg’s straight out of the camera (they just take the SD card). The jpg’s out of this thing are beautiful, and it can shoot in a jpg-bracketing-mode using three different film simulations. When shooting like this, I use Provia, Classic Chrome, and ACROS (B&W). The Fuji is also water resistant, and the lenses are small. However, over time, I started to notice that the files out of the Fuji lacked dimension compared to my full frame Sony files. There is also no IBIS.

Here are a couple of shots I took of Actress Cassi Colvin using the Fuji

The Sony is obviously the most versatile. I previously owned an a7R II’s for about a year and a half. Everyone knows how amazing those things are, but I ended up convincing Sony to take it back because I had to work extremely hard to get the colors and skin-tones and WB to look right (making me think the sensor was bad), and I thought the buffer was terrible. So I actually went a few months with just the Fuji. I thought I would just wait until the a7II or a7RIII was released for my full-frame glory days to return. However, those cameras never came.

**UPDATE** Now the a7R III has been announced, and it sounds like it’s going to be great! I have a few buddies pre-ordering it, so I’ll make sure to do a full comparison with my X1D, and Sony a9**

A7R II with Leica Summicron DR 50/2 – Model Kiersten Dolbec

A7R II with Sony GM 85/1.4 – Actress Kim Matula

 

A7R II with Sony GM 85/1.4 – Model Kiersten Dolbec

When the a9 came out. I balked at the $4500 price tag…after all, it was just a full-frame a6500 with a neat 20fps e-shutter trick. Right? How could Sony justify $4500!!!

I thought…Maybe I’ll buy a Leica SL – its price is probably more justified…

…wait…what?!?!?!?! The Leica SL that is bigger, has only three lenses, no IBIS, and is more expensive than the a9? That Leica SL?

**Brain-Fart**

So I bought the a9. I have absolutely ZERO regrets **Edit – now that I see the a7R III will have improved video features, I have a little regret. Hopefully these will come to the a9 via firmware**

I love this thing! I see about a 2% difference in image quality compared to the a7R II. Keep in mind I don’t shoot landscapes, but Jason Lanier found the same thing here. The issue with skin tones is…no longer an issue (which further confirms I had a bad sensor on my old a7rII). The buffer is amazing. The AF is amazing, and so much easier with the joystick! The 20fps e-shutter is great, but it’s more than I’ll ever need (I shoot single-shot 75% of the time). I haven’t seen any distortion, but I did encounter banding in one situation. I finally have my full-frame, IBIS, and AMAZING eye-af back!!! Speaking of eye-AF – Sony beats them all! I’ve tried different Sonys, Fujis, Olympus, Leicas, and no one else comes close!

So why would I need anything else? I really don’t. However, my wife and I have always wanted a medium-format camera. Specifically, my wife has always wanted a Hasselblad. So, when the X1D was announced, we promised ourselves we’d take the plunge and started saving for it. Soon the Fuji GFX was announced, and the Hasselblad release date got pushed back, and pushed back again, and again! So I started to look at the Fuji, and eventually bought one with the 63/2.8 lens. As luck would have it, Ming Thein arranged for Hasselblad USA to send us a demo, and promised that firmware had solved most of the woes of early production models. The Fuji unboxing, was very un-ceremonious. However, when we opened the box from Hasselblad we were wowed – my wife gasped,

“We may have to buy two of these, so we don’t fight over it!”

HAHA! Let’s make sure it actually takes pictures ok hun?

So I set out comparing, and made a blog on my findings here.

For those that would like to see comparison images, I have hi-res images in a Flickr Album

Long story short, we ended up sending back the Fuji, and buying a Hasselblad.

Then I did another blog post about using the Hasselblad, a Sony a7rII, a Leica Q, and a Canon 5DS-R on a Fashion shoot.

After writing the two blog posts, I got an email from the biggest internet troll in the photo-world…the Angry Photographer (I use the term photographer loosely):

Jesus Xrist, how did you fathom to pick that buggy POS Hassy X1d over the GFX ? hugs N Luvin*

So…at least I’m attracting all the wrong attention ;)

Overall, we are very happy with the images from the Hassy. The skin-tones are sublime, the 3D depth is noticeable, which make our pictures look a little bit more ‘lifelike’

So does that mean I think everyone with a Sony a7R II, or a9 needs to drop it and run out and BUY a Hasselblad RIGHT NOW? NO.

Even though firmware updates have eliminated all of its bugs, the Hasselblad X1D is still very expensive, and everything about it operates slower than the Sony. Plus, I could only REALLY see a significant difference when I switched to editing on a 42” 4k screen (vice the 1440p monitor I had been using). We don’t print much ourselves, but a fellow photog friend salivated at the opportunity to make large prints from the X1D and a7RII to compare. We could also see a difference in the prints. So unless you are making large prints, or pixel peeping on a 4k monitor, there isn’t that much of a difference.

However, my wife and I are fortunate enough that we don’t have to compromise, so I share these comparisons for anyone that is interested…

Sony with Sony Zeiss 35/1.4

Hasselblad with 45/3.5

Sony a7R II (sunset)

Hasselblad (shot about 2 minutes after the Sony – so same light)

Again, these images are compressed for the web – hi rez images are available here

If you like my work, I would appreciate a follow 

romeobravophoto.com

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