I got the A7III, primary shooting my kids and family + videos. Lots of low light.
Right now want to get into landscape photography.
I do know thathigher MP camera would provide advantages for landscapes like more cropping room and fine details.
My question is this:
a) Should stay with the A7III and just shoot landscapes with it and I'll be fine.
b) Sell the A7III and buy the A7RIII for that higher MP sensor.
c) Hold onto the A7III and buy a used A7RII, which should cost around $1300-1400.
I currently own a7iii and a7rii. My main focus are also kids, family and portraits. I rarely do landscape shots.
Just my two cents:
The finer details will only matter of you print big. The a7iii is a very capable camera for landscape shots.
I did rarely crop for landscape shots. You have time for correct framing or can switch lenses.
But I love the ability to crop for people shots. Especially if shooting with primes.
So if you are happy with your a7iii for your main work I would invest in lenses instead of a second body or upgrading the body.
While I had it I loved the A7III for landscapes and everything else. The extra resolution may be important if you tend to crop (not really a landscape shooting issue with your lenses) or print big. When I wanted more resolution, I'd just do a 3 or 4 shot pano and stitch the images. I have some wider 10-image single row panos with the A7II and A7III with amazing detail when zoomed in on screen. I pretty much never print FWIW.
People used to shoot landscape with 6mp-12mp camera just fine. Been wondering why people think 24mp isn't enough for landscape.
However, if you don't use a right lens that deliver sharpness for landscape, even on 42mp will end up worse than 24mp camera with great lens. Your lenses seems perfectly fine for the job.
zurih wrote:
I do know thathigher MP camera would provide advantages for landscapes like more cropping room and fine details.
How big do you want to print?
I print at home and on 8.5"x11" sheets, and side by side, you can't tell the difference between a photo that was taken by a 12mp, a 24mp or a 42mp camera. I tested this with my A7Sii, A7Rii and my A7iii.
So you could take a 24mp photo and crop it down to half and still get a very nice 8.5x11 print.
And if you want to print bigger, you can always get the appropriate tripod heads and the best stitching software, which are cheaper than the A7Riii.
Stitching is fine...but stitched images look well, stitched. You will have a hard time stitching anything that moves. You have a hard time stitching very wide lenses thus being forced to a prescribed near to far relationship.
Personally I don’t feel stitching is a replacement for more pixels.
I would choose A or B. 24 mp can get you nice sized prints. Going back to a gen 1 or gen 2 from a gen 3..... You really don't want to do that. I upgraded from an R2 to R3, kept both, and the R3 is just so much nicer to use that I don't really like touching the R2 for any reason, simply because it breaks my flow.
Due to configuration issues, and button placement, the cameras are worlds apart. If you insist on higher mp, and you have the funds, get the R3.
I definitely use my R2 for landscapes, but the R3 changes you so much, it's difficult to deal with. You might as well consider the A7R classic if you're considering the R2, it has the clearer EVF, and costs half as much.
IMO 24mp is good up to 30" prints(high def format, much larger for soft formats), above that, you want more mp's. That's a pretty respectable size. If you're going to print peep, I think around 16-24" you can start to tell them apart, but it's pretty minor.
Depends on how shoots their landscapes. I always use a tripod and the camera’s UI very rarely comes into play. The biggest enhancements for landscape shooters is a flip screen. I shoot with various cameras from my A7R / A7R2 to 4x5 film and they all work nicely for landscapes.
zurih wrote:
Do any of you find themselves cropping often?
Not with landscapes. I mean, it's not like you're taking a photo of a fast moving subject, so you can take all the time you want to compose your shot perfectly... though realistically you should be able to take less than an hour, especially during golden hour ;-)
zurih wrote:
Do any of you find themselves cropping often?
I'm afraid 42mp will be an overkill for most of my shoots, which is kids / family. But for landscapes it sure would be neat!!
I print often but never printed a landscape so I'm not sure how big I will go there. Just moved to a new place and I need to fill these walls
I crop, but mainly because I almost always shoot with primes and don't take more than three on trips. I also find if I'm shooting a pano that I over-shoot the pano and crop later. I typically don't crop a lot, but there are times I'll notice a much better crop than what I originally saw.
IMO, you don't need 42 MP for landscapes, unless you're planning on becoming a star landscape photographer. You can get plenty of fabulous landscape shots with the A7III, not to mention it's better in low light for your primary photography.
How big do you print non-landscapes? As has been mentioned, you can go up to about 30" prints with 24mp, depending on how it was shot. 20x30 is a nice sized print.
zurih wrote:
Do any of you find themselves cropping often?
I'm afraid 42mp will be an overkill for most of my shoots, which is kids / family. But for landscapes it sure would be neat!!
I print often but never printed a landscape so I'm not sure how big I will go there. Just moved to a new place and I need to fill these walls
it's overkill, my main subjects are my kids and family as well. I simply have DNG converter go through most of my raws and get them down to 10mp. The process adds 1 extra step to my process. I do landscape shooting 15-20 times a year, however I shoot nearly every day. I'm fine with the extra step as it saves me a bunch of hard drive space (40MB vs 3MB raws). I think even with a lower 24mp camera, I would still like to continue the DNG shrinking, as it does save a ton of space. Having about 7K files this year, that can certainly add up!
as far as cropping, hardly ever. Only if I get something wrong in camera or having a buffer zone intentionally.
To me it sounds like the A7III is a nice balance for you. How about you just stick with it, and then if you find you need more resolution later, upgrade? No need to do it before *you* know what *you* need.
