subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 21 March 2020 15
p roved?
JAMES borrowed a Sony Alpha 7R, which
you can currently pick up second-hand for
about £500 to £650, depending on
condition. He used a range of lenses with
the body, including the 16-35mm f/2.8 GM
and a 70-200mm f/4. ‘I was immediately
struck by how small the A7R is. In fact, it’s
not much smaller than newer Sony
models, but it just felt more compact. The
whole idea with mirrorless cameras was
that they were going to be so much smaller
than DSLRs but that doesn’t seem to be
the case any more, even with Olympus.’Image quality
‘Considering the camera is seven years old,
the image quality is really good. You can
push and pull the raw files and although
the dynamic range could be wider, image
quality is still impressive. I didn’t notice a
huge difference between its 36MP sensor
and the 42MP chip in the A7R II. In some
ways the A7R is easier to use than the
newer cameras as the menus are a bit
simpler. There are fewer options so it’s
easier to find key settings.’Autofocus and ISO
‘Higher ISOs generate noticeably noisier
images than the A7R III, as you’d expect,
but it’s not that bad. The AF however is
definitely slower. It doesn’t lock on as
snappily and changing AF points was hard
work, with lots of button pressing and
moving AF points up and down.
Fortunately, I mostly focus manually for
landscapes, so it wasn’t a major issue. If
you were shooting action, wildlife or even
portraiture, were you to want to move the
AF point to the eye closest to the camera,
it could be a bit of a fiddle. Returning to
ISO, I pushed one shot, up on Derwent
Edge in the Peak District, to ISO 800 at
f/4 and the results weren’t too bad. It may
have been the subject, but the image did
have blue sky in, and blue is the noisiest of
three RGB channels. The image was taken
in near pitch darkness except for the
moonlight hitting the rocks.’Handling and battery life
‘The A7R is well built, but there are some
handling niggles. When using the virtualhorizon it’s only available in the camera
settings view, so you can’t see your
composition when levelling up – it makes
it tricky but not impossible. Also, the LCD
didn’t feel as accurate as those on newer
cameras. When using exposure
compensation, the histogram wasn’t
moving as much as I expected, but again
that might just have been the conditions.
‘I reviewed this camera when it first came
out, and the position of the shutter button
still bugs me – it’s too high, positioned on
top of the camera. Battery life, meanwhile,
is not great. We are talking about half a
day of shooting on a full charge, compared
to two days with my A7R III.
‘I would still recommend the original
A7R for landscape photography, though
the sluggish AF performance makes it less
suitable for other genres. Still, if you put a
gun to my head and said I could only use
this camera for the next few years, I
wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Sony lenses
are not particularly cheap, but they are
exceptionally sharp. There is also a good
choice of glass from third-party makers.’