Just bought a lightly used A7Rii, still on FW 1.00, is there any reason I shouldn't upgrade the FW?

As the subject line suggest, I just bought a really lightly used A7Rii, only ~750 actuations. It's on firmware 1.00. Is there any reason  I shouldn't upgrade to FW 4.00?

Unless you are an astrophotographer, there is no reason I know of not to install the latest firmware.  As another option, if you don't update the firmware, you might be able to sell your A7RII at a premium to one of the astrophotographers on this forum.  Some of them have been complaining bitterly about the "star eater" phenomenon that arrived with a more recent firmware, so they might jump at the chance to acquire an unsullied A7RII.

Well the caveat is that FW doesn’t shoot uncompressed RAW. I doubt I’ll be able to get more than I paid for it. I’ll probably just update the firmware tonight.

dannytang wrote:

Well the caveat is that FW doesn’t shoot uncompressed RAW. I doubt I’ll be able to get more than I paid for it. I’ll probably just update the firmware tonight.

Danny,

You might want to wait before making the decision to update, Give the thread a little time, and others will give you the plusses and minuses.

There are several reasons to update (uncompressed RAW, and Focus Standard) and one major reason not to (if you want to shoot the night sky) - the Star Eater bug.

Wait a day or two, and then you will be better educated on which way is best for you.

Kevin

JerseySailor wrote:

dannytang wrote:

Well the caveat is that FW doesn’t shoot uncompressed RAW. I doubt I’ll be able to get more than I paid for it. I’ll probably just update the firmware tonight.

Danny,

You might want to wait before making the decision to update, Give the thread a little time, and others will give you the plusses and minuses.

There are several reasons to update (uncompressed RAW, and Focus Standard) and one major reason not to (if you want to shoot the night sky) - the Star Eater bug.

Wait a day or two, and then you will be better educated on which way is best for you.

Kevin

Kevin,

I haven't updated the firmware yet, I'm in no hurry since this is my second/backup A7Rii body anyways. I suppose another "plus" is the older firmware allows for the zoom lenses to focus wide open, but I shoot primes so it may be a null point. I don't shoot much astrophotography so the star eater issue doesn't concern me too much. But you're right, I'll wait a few more days to see what others have to say.

Cheers, Danny

I think it was FW 3.30 that introduced the Star Eater issue, if I could find a copy of an older FW, say FW 3.00, would it be advisable to update to that for the time being? To be honest, I don't a lot of astrophotograhy, once a year max, so I'm not too concerned but hindsight is always 20/20 so I want to get more opinions before I irreversibly update firmware.

dannytang wrote:

I think it was FW 3.30 that introduced the Star Eater issue, if I could find a copy of an older FW, say FW 3.00, would it be advisable to update to that for the time being? To be honest, I don't a lot of astrophotograhy, once a year max, so I'm not too concerned but hindsight is always 20/20 so I want to get more opinions before I irreversibly update firmware.

You can download Sony A7RII firmware v.3.20 from here (click)

It's Sony's Chinese site, but the firmware works just fine.

This is for windows (but there is MAC version too)..

Ari

Navman wrote:

If you ever want to do night stuff, you should be able to find a copy of 3.2 on a non-sony site, and I would go to that, but not to 3.3 - the latter gave little marginal gain, but wrecked the camera for astro - and its non-reversible.

-John

At this point it's choosing between keeping the FW at an older version to gain uncompressed RAW while retaining astro capabilities and updating it to the latest FW to gain Focus Standard and File Naming capabilities.

I only shoot astro once a year max, so it's not a big concern for me, but I know there's a significant difference for astro work in the different versions of the FW, my shots from this year are terrible compared to last years shots. I'll probably update to FW 3.20 for the moment to gain uncompressed RAW and give the star eater issue a bit more thought.

Ari Aikomus wrote:

dannytang wrote:

I think it was FW 3.30 that introduced the Star Eater issue, if I could find a copy of an older FW, say FW 3.00, would it be advisable to update to that for the time being? To be honest, I don't a lot of astrophotograhy, once a year max, so I'm not too concerned but hindsight is always 20/20 so I want to get more opinions before I irreversibly update firmware.

You can download Sony A7RII firmware v.3.20 from here (click)

It's Sony's Chinese site, but the firmware works just fine.

This is for windows (but there is MAC version too)..

Ari

Thanks, I found this link earlier as well. I'll probably update it to FW 3.20 for now to gain uncompressed RAW capabilities and think over the star eater issue. I really wish Sony would just fix the star issue problem they created in the first place!

Star eater is present since some early firmware. I think it was 2.0.

But up to and including V3.2 it was only on exposures greater than 30 seconds in bulb mode.

V3.3 introduced star eater on exposures >3.2 seconds.

Also the stop down to focus to compensate for focus shift on some of the GM lenses was introduced in V3.3. Some who mainly use the camera in a studio say that wrecks using it in a studio as they can't see the subject in a studio lit situation.

Uncompressed RAW though is a nice inclusion. I have that on mine and I use V3.2.

So I would go V3.2 and forget V4.00. V3.2 also updates the firmware for some GM lenses as well.

Greg.

Astrophotographer 10 wrote:

Star eater is present since some early firmware. I think it was 2.0.

But up to and including V3.2 it was only on exposures greater than 30 seconds in bulb mode.

V3.3 introduced star eater on exposures >3.2 seconds.

Also the stop down to focus to compensate for focus shift on some of the GM lenses was introduced in V3.3. Some who mainly use the camera in a studio say that wrecks using it in a studio as they can't see the subject in a studio lit situation.

Uncompressed RAW though is a nice inclusion. I have that on mine and I use V3.2.

So I would go V3.2 and forget V4.00. V3.2 also updates the firmware for some GM lenses as well.

Greg.

Thanks for the insight, I didn't know the star eater issue went back that many versions of FW! v3.20 seems like the way to go for now; leaves room for the rare work and gives me body that makes the GM zooms usable again if I decide to use one again. Though I'll probably be tempted to jump to 4.00 for the Focus Standard function.

BBQue wrote:

dannytang wrote:

Thanks, I found this link earlier as well. I'll probably update it to FW 3.20 for now to gain uncompressed RAW capabilities and think over the star eater issue. I really wish Sony would just fix the star issue problem they created in the first place!

They will NEVER fix it, cause they do not consider it a problem. There was a great chance for them to do something with the firmware 4.0 which appeared well after all the furor over "star-eater" appeared.

I would also be cautious about upgrading to 3.2 - there is, I believe, no consensus in the community, when exactly this issue appeared. I may be mistaken, I have not followed it closely.

Same with UNCOMPRESSED RAW. Use the camera for a while and decide if you really need that feature. The vast majority of photographers do not. (How often do you take images of very high contrast edges, then lift the shadows about 5 stops in post processing, at which time the minor artifacts become apparent?

BE CONSERVATIVE. Firmware 1.0 is not bad at all. And you will never be able to go back to it.

Part of the dilemma is that I already have an A7Rii running FW 4.00 and I have mostly gotten used to Focus Standard and though I don't need it for most of my work, uncompressed RAW has saved my butt a few times over the last 2 years. So on the one hand it would be nice to have 2 cameras running different firmware versions to take advantages of having the new features on one body and having a clean firmware on the other. However, this means that I always have to be conscious about which body has uncompressed RAW and "Focus Standard" and which has compressed RAW and just "Standard". There are few other differences in the settings for the Function Menu and what, I can already see being an annoyance.

The points of contention for most people seems to be the star eater issue and that the fact the zoom lenses focus stopped down. As I mentioned earlier, I don't shoot much astro (once a year max) and primarily use primes, have the 24-70 GM but it says home 99.9% of the time, so the only reason to keep FW 1.00 would be for the resale value? Would someone really pay a (small) premium for a like new, A7Rii, with less than 1000 actuations and has 1 year of warranty on it? I'm having a hard time seeing anyone paying more than I paid for it (USD ~1900) [I'm in Canada where a new body is USD ~2800 after taxes at the moment].

Two issues you need to research.

One is the star eater which the others discussed. I don't know which version introduced the problem.

Two is the Openmemories hack. This hack allows you to unlock ulimited Recording limit. In addition to that you are allowed to change between NTSC and PAL freely without the nagging screen at camera startup (Normal camera configuration will call up an incredibly annoying nagging screen every time you turn on the camera if you use NTSC on a PAL camera, and if you use PAL on an NTSC camera). I don't know if the latest firmware disables the hack though. It might be an issue, or it might not be.

Waipingqi wrote:

I don't know if the latest firmware disables the hack though. It might be an issue, or it might not be.

As far as I know the firmware updates thus far haven't disabled the hack, at least it doesn't seem to do so on my orginal A7Rii, but have had to go back into the menu/app to reenable the features which get turned off with the FW updates.

dannytang wrote:

Waipingqi wrote:

I don't know if the latest firmware disables the hack though. It might be an issue, or it might not be.

As far as I know the firmware updates thus far haven't disabled the hack

That's good to know. I got scared for a moment when Sony began to make threats against the hacks, but it looks like they haven't done anything yet.