HopeIsEternal wrote:
The drastic performance difference between A7 and A7r when shooting with wide/ultra-wide M-mount lenses show that lack of seriousness with which Sony engineers tackled this particular problem. They hope that the press gives a lot of attention to the more expensive A7r and it's "new range finder friendly sensor" while most people actually pay for the cheaper A7 which is a dog.
I suspect the percentage of A7 owners who plan to use M-mount lenses is in the low single digits at best. For those the A7r is their solution. For everyone else Sony offers a cheaper alternative in the A7 if they don't need 36MP.
HopeIsEternal wrote:
I don't care if Leica is correcting the images coming off the sensor. What I want is sharp, smear free, color shading free RAW and JPG images straight from the camera. I don't care how it is achieved. Why would anyone want to spend a good amount of time in Photoshop correcting *every* single picture taken with range finder wide lenses on their new "state of the art" Sony A7 or A7r?
Also it is not as if Sony was not aware of the big demand for a compact camera that worked well with range finder wides. They've been aware of this demand and expectation for a very long time but then they go and just cheaply reuse existing sensors for DSLRs while claiming that they "fixed the wide-angle problem"?? Did they think that nobody was going to eventually conduct side-by-side tests with Leica Digital M?
The other paid Sony photographer, Brian Smith? was out there at Camera launch, showing off photoshopped and cropped images taken with some wide angle M-mount lenses and the Sony A7(r). Why do you think that was? Because Sony was trying to give the impression that this was the camera for range finder lovers and collectors of range finder lenses.
The drastic performance difference between A7 and A7r when shooting with wide/ultra-wide M-mount lenses show that lack of seriousness with which Sony engineers tackled this particular problem. They hope that the press gives a lot of attention to the more expensive A7r and it's "new range finder friendly sensor" while most people actually pay for the cheaper A7 which is a dog....Show more →
We still do not know the performance of the new Sony A7r. Additionally, it may work better with some WA M lenses (Leica, Zeiss, etc.) and worse with others. This is not an exact science and will require testing for individual lenses. There are too many variables and designs to use a blanket statement that all rangefinder lenses will or will not work with the camera. Do you really think that anyone or any company can check all available lenses both in and out of production?
Additionally, you have unreal expectations that Sony can necessarily have all of the firmware loaded in their camera to make any corrections. In the case of Leica, they do it for a large number of their lenses. I can not say if they also do if for Zeiss and other makers and also lenses that have been out of production for a long time.
You may have to set things up to do some of the correction for your lenses and/or as others here and elsewhere use cornerfix and other software to correct for vignetting and color shift. Even Leica does not solve all of these issues with their own lenses using their in camera software.
Why don't you ease off on this until more information is available rather than dump all of your gloom and doom on the forum. Once we have a better idea you can make an educated decision as to whether you are interested in the camera and/or select those lenses that testers suggest would meet your needs.
If this is not acceptable to you either don't purchase the camera or be selective in any purchase or usage of any RF or SLR lenses.
One last point, the 2 Sony cameras were built for different purposes so don't complain that the A7 and the A7r cameras have very different performance for WA RF lenses and the A7 is not a dog.
Taylor Sherman wrote:
A friend of mine is a Canon SLR user. Nice guy, not really that predjudiced. But somehow he learned that all the compact Sony cameras (like my Nex-7) don't have removable batteries. He was totally shocked when I popped the battery out of mine.
I can picture how this came about - no dounbt some know-it-all, or worse, someone with a predisposition to hate Sony or anything new, was going on about how Sony now doesn't include an external battery charger with its newer cameras (available as an option); the default charging method is via USB (with supplied USB wall wart). Plug camera into USB to charge sounds like plugging one's cell phone into USB to charge and thus...
1 + 1 = 3
These are the sorts of experts that can't be bothered to look at specification lists or the photo of the underside of the camera to see the battery door. ;-)
HopeIsEternal wrote:
I don't care if Leica is correcting the images coming off the sensor. What I want is sharp, smear free, color shading free RAW and JPG images straight from the camera. I don't care how it is achieved. Why would anyone want to spend a good amount of time in Photoshop correcting *every* single picture taken with range finder wide lenses on their new "state of the art" Sony A7 or A7r?
Both C1 and LR have the ability to correct color shift easily in the raw converter, and with LR (can't remember about C1,) you can do it in a batch. It literally takes 5 seconds. In fact, I usually turned off coding with my M9, because it had such a heavy handed vignetting correction, and I corrected the shift on my own.
Smearing is the real enemy, and we still don't have a good idea as to how the A7R performs in that regard.
wfrank wrote:
Cant help thinking that the A7 with those offset microlenses would have been something. Given what we've seen. The increased pixeldensity in A7r wont help, rather equalize or ruin the potential advantage.
That RX1 rear element is a really complicated correcting element that aids in getting those light rays perpendicular, but it is essentially the size of the sensor itself. The mount for such a lens would have to be gigantic, if it were interchangeable, which is why building fixed lens cameras still has its advantages.
HopeIsEternal wrote:
I don't care if Leica is correcting the images coming off the sensor. What I want is sharp, smear free, color shading free RAW and JPG images straight from the camera. I don't care how it is achieved. Why would anyone want to spend a good amount of time in Photoshop correcting *every* single picture taken with range finder wide lenses on their new "state of the art" Sony A7 or A7r?
So if I may paraphrase, you're basically saying, "I don't care how it is achieved, I don't know how it might be achieved, yet I'm convinced the only reason Sony has not produced a small FF camera that works well with RF wides is because they're cheap." Ignoring the fact no other camera manufacturer has been able to do this either, and that even Leica can't make a camera that works consistently with non-Leica RF wideangles.
I do agree that it's premature to get too excited about these cameras, but I guess I never got that hyped up by the rumor mill in the first place. Once we find out more how various lenses perform, I'll have to see if I can put together a kit which would offer substantially higher IQ than my NEX-5N. Right now, my primary compact NEX travel kit is
CV15 (22mm)
G28 (42mm)
G45 (68mm)
I'm thinking something like this for the A7/A7R:
C/Y 28/2.8
G45
G90
The question is how much better will that lineup be compared to what I have? The C/Y 28 will definitely be sharper in the corners than the CV15, and both have a lot of microcontrast. It would be a lot more bulky, but I could live with it. I think the G45 on FF will only slightly outperform the G28 on APS, but I'd gain a stop. I don't think the G90 on FF would outperform the G45 on APS-C, and I would also find the focal length a little long for my tastes.
HopeIsEternal wrote:
The drastic performance difference between A7 and A7r when shooting with wide/ultra-wide M-mount lenses show that lack of seriousness with which Sony engineers tackled this particular problem.
That's a strange conclusion to come to, given the principle "problem" engineers of a new camera design must face is the "problem" of making the camera system work exceedingly well with the camera system's own native lenses.
For the 24MP A7 it looks like they achieved the goal. For the 36MP A7r, likewise.
They hope that the press gives a lot of attention to the more expensive A7r and it's "new range finder friendly sensor" while most people actually pay for the cheaper A7 which is a dog.
Such a categorical but unsupported statement. Your ongoing assertions do not read like you actually are trying to bring balance to the discussion over the debut of the A7/A7r, not that any rebalancing is needed here as discussions on FM, somewhat uniquely among many forums, tend to be self-balancing over time.
Is the 6D a dog? How about the D600, which can only ever use lenses designed for its native mount? Why do you hold Sony to some different and seemingly arbitrary standard?
Nikon brought out the D600 and D800 in close succession. With different feature sets and sensor arrangements, these two cameras appeal to different types of buyers. Are either dogs? If so, you can't be pleased and must explain. If not, then how are the A7 and A7r different? They even use essentially the same sensors as Nikon.
The A7 costs only several hundred more than some APS-C interchangeable lens cameras and for that reason alone can stand on its own and become a popular product offering.
The A7r can stand on its own without any tie in to Leica or alt-glass because, like the D800, there'll always be those who are willing to spend up a few hundred more for the increased resolution and the lack of an AA filter. Again, Job #1 is to ensure their own native lenses work well on this other A7 platform.
That said, if it were possible to enhance performance for adapted RF and SLR lenses, without taking anything away from native EF optics, and without radically increasing R+D or bill of materials costs, then surely Sony would see this as a marketing win of meaningful proportions. Or, as in past NEX models, it may be enough for the A7r to merely be "compatible enough" with many but not all adapted lenses in order to achieve the marketing win with zero extra engineering effort.
If that's the case, I might be disappointed but wouldn't be keen to throw stones at Sony. Coincidental support for rangefinder and SLR glass is a fairly well understood principle among those who follow alt-glass.
Additionally I'm delighted that it appears Sony scored at least a few winners in its new EF lens line up. This bodes well for future optics and the system itself.
If the A7r proves by design or by happen-stance to be a good platform for a wide variety of alt-glass, very little press will be needed to get the word out because alt-glass users will be all a-twitter about it all on their own. Just watch.
HopeIsEternal wrote:
The drastic performance difference between A7 and A7r when shooting with wide/ultra-wide M-mount lenses show that lack of seriousness with which Sony engineers tackled this particular problem.
Wow, you are optimistic
I'm still waiting for confirmation of the "drastic performance difference"
Are you on the Sony payroll? Sounds like hype to me.
It's interesting to me you have no interest in a lens wider than 24. I was watching Andrei Rublev (the movie), and thinking to myself, he is so crazy The human eye, after all, is UWA.
Then it dawned on me (I'm dense at heart), all those superb stitches you do----maybe the UWAs just distort too much for him?
What's the story, bud? (while we wait for lens reality to come crashing in)
i haven't seen the movie (having children seems to have mostly ended my movie watching, i assume that'll change when they're older), but the human eye is definitely not UWA – really it's more like a petzval lens. the brain is very good at stitching together images though. given our mostly terrestrial evolution, it tends to stitch things together in cylindrical projection that is rather panoramic (much wider than it is high). i find the rectilinear projection of ultrawides to look very very weird and does not to fit my vision of the scene very well. they're convenient if you need to capture a wide scene very quickly, but they look funny (i'm sure i'm more sensitive to this than most). i feel like their dominant use is making puddles look like lakes... anyway, when i do stitches i have a lot more control over the perspective of the scene plus i get a bunch more resolution and a better performing lens and have less to carry.
wfrank wrote:
Cant help thinking that the A7 with those offset microlenses would have been something. Given what we've seen. The increased pixeldensity in A7r wont help, rather equalize or ruin the potential advantage.
Remember, only the a7R has the offset microlenses, the a7 does not. This still leaves hope that Sony was paying atttention to the color shift issuese with the NEX-7. I still think we won't know until we are able to see tests like Ron Scheffler's performed with an a7R.
sebboh wrote:
i feel like their dominant use is making puddles look like lakes...
nah, it's making shoebox apartment interiors look like mansions in RE ads
alwang wrote:
I'm thinking something like this for the A7/A7R:
C/Y 28/2.8
G45
G90
This makes sense to me .. using SLR for the WA/UWA to avoid the steeper angles of the rangefinder glass, then using the closer proximity of rangefinder glass at focal lengths that aren't too steep for the microlens ... at least until we see what Sony/Zeiss bring to the table for the wide end of things.
wfrank wrote:
Remember the protruding and enormously sized back element of the RX1? Compare it to a WA ZM or a Contax G21, G28 or so.
On the other hand, it proves that the exit pupil has nothing to do with where the rear element is. I bet that if you look into that lens from behind, the aperture will look like it is infront of the lens itself. So we cannot judge the angles of light coming from M lenses just by how far back the rear element protrudes (unless it's smallish).
HopeIsEternal wrote:
Why would anyone want to spend a good amount of time in Photoshop correcting *every* single picture taken with range finder wide lenses on their new "state of the art" Sony A7 or A7r?
Because it could let us use very small and very sharp lenses, with minimum total effort compared to lugging around heavy SLR gear to do the same thing. I shoot like ~10 pictures per time I'm out, so it doesn't matter at all.
I shoot like ~10 pictures per time I'm out, so it doesn't matter at all.
That's kinda interesting ... it's how I feel about size/weight (and pp) for most outings (which can range from none-to-many). I'll gladly mount my TS-E II instead of something much smaller. I guess it just illustrates how we have different strokes for different folks regarding the burdens we choose to bear and how we purport to achieve our IQ.
Production shooters might have a very different opinion @ both (size/weight & pp) burdens.
My own road, if Ron's table of results is to be believed as representative of what is the actual output of the A7R, is that I will use my Elmar 24mm as a 28mm lens. 28mm is my preferred wide angle focal length, and my guess is that, by discarding the outer part of a 24mm shot, I will be just fine. And I will still have enough pixels to go by.
Hardly ideal, but is should give me what I want, meaning tremendous IQ (colors, resolution, contrast, DR) in my preferred focal length in a sall, light, stealthy package that I can take anywhere.
Then I can take my G28 and use it as a 35mm lens... nah, just kidding. That Zeiss Sony-Zeiss FE looks really nice.
philber wrote:
My own road, if Ron's table of results is to be believed as representative of what is the actual output of the A7R, is that I will use my Elmar 24mm as a 28mm lens. 28mm is my preferred wide angle focal length, and my guess is that, by discarding the outer part of a 24mm shot, I will be just fine. And I will still have enough pixels to go by.
Hardly ideal, but is should give me what I want, meaning tremendous IQ (colors, resolution, contrast, DR) in my preferred focal length in a sall, light, stealthy package that I can take anywhere.
Then I can take my G28 and use it as a 35mm lens... nah, just kidding. That Zeiss Sony-Zeiss FE looks really nice....Show more →
I was thinking along the same line, even if I have to crop out some of the frame I would still have plenty enough of pixels to work with. The main problem with this approach would be framing, specially for landscapes where I want to use as much as possible of the frame. Well, the A7r has been ordered so hopefully I will find out myself in about a month.
sebboh wrote:
i haven't seen the movie (having children seems to have mostly ended my movie watching, i assume that'll change when they're older), but the human eye is definitely not UWA – really it's more like a petzval lens. the brain is very good at stitching together images though. given our mostly terrestrial evolution, it tends to stitch things together in cylindrical projection that is rather panoramic (much wider than it is high). i find the rectilinear projection of ultrawides to look very very weird and does not to fit my vision of the scene very well. they're convenient if you need to capture a wide scene very quickly, but they look funny (i'm sure i'm more sensitive to this than most). i feel like their dominant use is making puddles look like lakes... anyway, when i do stitches i have a lot more control over the perspective of the scene plus i get a bunch more resolution and a better performing lens and have less to carry.
Andrei Rublev, you may know, was a russian icon painter in 1400s. Movie by the same name, about his life, shot in USSR mid 60's. I'd never heard of it, but TCM has been showing alot of unusual films. It's 3:30 I've seen way too many movies in my life, but nothing like this thing. I can see why some people think it's the best movie ever made. It has the most incredible photography from start to finish. The beginning and the end are really spectacular, but the whole thing is awesome. Citizen Kane has nothing on Andrei Rublev, I promise you.
Funny enough, the plot in the third and last segment really echos for us. Tartars, famine and plague have killed about 75% of everyone (second segment), and they start making a huge bell, led by the sole surviving son of the old bell maker, who claims is dad told him all the secrets. We see the process in incredible detail. The kid takes months just find to the clay, and of course alot can go wrong in 15th century Bell making. Anyway they finally cast the thing, and it looks pretty good. The unspeakably evil Prince and an visiting Italian Doge, with a train of soldiers, and a thousand or so peasants all come to see one thing: will it ring? The Italian and is sidekick are scoffing and predicting catastrophe. The kid and alot of others are going to die if it doesn't.
philip_pj wrote:
Hope, many people (99% is a good estimate) do not give a rat's rear about a small niche of older superwide angle lenses, let alone their compatibility with a new camera that is yet to appear. Maybe ask elsewhere.
Sure, it's a niche market, but maybe not as small as you might think. While I don't know how many individuals this represents, since I posted the images on Flickr, they've received just over 600K views. Kind of surprised me.
