Need a Guinea pig to test out the comparability with that combo. Any a7rv owners shed some insight if the combo works better than the riv did. I’m ready to buy but can’t seem to find the answer to this anywhere. Thanks guys.
Did you have an RIV and have issues or did you just hear about them? Sony was aware of the issue on the RIV, can't imagine that it would carry over to a new body. A buddy of mine has the RV, so far with 200-600 he tells me it locks on faster to target than his A1.
Karl
I had the IV and now the V. The 200-600 didn’t work great on the IV unless stopped way down and high shutter speed. I tested it on the V today and image quality doesn’t seem any better. Can’t speak to it locking on faster. Initial testing is unremarkable image quality. My friend has a Canon R5 w/ Sigma 150-600 and it crushes my 200-600 on the Sony bodies. Would need to test more copies of the 200-600 to say anything definitive. Was hoping for better.
adamcornwell wrote:
I had the IV and now the V. The 200-600 didn’t work great on the IV unless stopped way down and high shutter speed. I tested it on the V today and image quality doesn’t seem any better. Can’t speak to it locking on faster. Initial testing is unremarkable image quality. My friend has a Canon R5 w/ Sigma 150-600 and it crushes my 200-600 on the Sony bodies. Would need to test more copies of the 200-600 to say anything definitive. Was hoping for better.
Sounds like you have a bad copy of the lens. Mine is tack sharp at least near the center, as were 5 out of the 6 copies I have had my hands on so far. Only when pixel peeping (or cropping a lot) is the lens noticeably sharper at f7.1 compared to f6.3. But f8 hardly does anything to sharpness (other than increase DOF) and by f10 sharpness suffers significantly due to diffraction. All this at 600mm on high resolution bodies (A7R2, A7R4 and A1).
So I'd suggest checking your lens for being de-centered, e.g. using this method: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1534737/0. Of course user error may also be an explanation?
It seems like the combo works pretty well for stationary wildlife, including focusing in difficult circumstances. AF-C single shot and each shot hit focus, AFAIK, or very close.
Before you get too critical, please note that these were all OOC jpegs (hence, some pasty looking feathers), underexposed, handheld, at 1/640 sec and all at f6.3. I included one uncropped image so you can get an idea of the distance.
The focus features are all still at default (I am at a cabin we own in NC and have not had any time to dive in and photograph, other than these first few quick shots).
[b[I own (and use heavily for birding) an A1 and I was very pleasantly surprised when the 7Rv focused immediately on the Blue Jay behind branches and leaves.
I am quite confident that when I am back in Florida, I will get great results with raw files and more light, although the body will mostly be used for macro and landscape. Love the focus bracketing.
Again, please don't get too critical. Handheld at 1/640 sec, in camera jpeg and only a total of 33 shots on the body, including 26 that were playing with the focus bracketing while eating dinner
ILCE-7RM5FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/6.31/640s800 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM5FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/6.31/640s800 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM5FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/6.31/640s800 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM5FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/6.31/640s800 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM5FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens600mmf/6.31/640s800 ISO0.0 EV
I plan on finding out next week when a A7RV, Tamron 35-150 and Sony 200-600 show up. I've very curious to see if the Sony lens more then keeps up with my OM-1 and 100-400 (eq: 200-800 in FF). We shall see.
dcisive wrote:
I plan on finding out next week when a A7RV, Tamron 35-150 and Sony 200-600 show up. I've very curious to see if the Sony lens more then keeps up with my OM-1 and 100-400 (eq: 200-800 in FF). We shall see.
For fast action the AF is rather unlikely to keep up with an OM-1, which uses a stacked sensor after all. But as long as the AF is fast enough, the IQ should be better.
I'll give this to the OM-1, it acquires immediately no waiting and stays on a flying bird like white on rice. perhaps I'm hoping for too much with the A7RV but it should do much the same. Some say it's similar to the A1 and some owners of the A1's egos get hurt and say it's not in that league. It sure should be.
All those samples of the 200-600 look great, as one should expect.
I should mention that I've used the 400 f2.8 w/ and w/o the 1.4 extender with great results on the RIV. The 200-600 has been tested handheld and gimbal mounted on static subjects at varying distances, all without big temp differences, and with similar results. My friend got far sharper images with a Sigma 150-600 on a Canon R5 on the same scenes, albeit with 45 Mpx vs 61. I suspect my 200-600 may be a suboptimal copy. I really should try another copy, though I'll likely get a 600 f4 to replace it anyway.
kimknapp wrote:
Again, please don't get too critical. Handheld at 1/640 sec, in camera jpeg and only a total of 33 shots on the body, including 26 that were playing with the focus bracketing while eating dinner
They are nice examples that show the new AF capability. I have to use MF with my A7RIII (+70-200GMII and 1.4x) to focus on birds behind branches.
Received my a7rv two days ago. Gave it a run today with my 200-600 with teleconvertor 1.4. Results have been very promising so far. Had my basset hound running at me at full speed and the animal eye af was able to keep up and hit rate was very impressive. Mind you my basset hound isn’t known for speed but the riv with bare 200-600 the results were horrible. The rv was night and day better. The eye Af for animals and humans is extremely sticky. More so than the a1. So far I am impressed. One area I did notice the a1 was better was when I had my boy run at me very erratically. When he was close (less than 10 yards) the a1 Definately latched on more consistently. At longer ranges I saw no difference.
I would be interested to see where this discussion goes for sharpness, especially at distance. I have what I think is a good copy of the 200-600 that performs well on A7 III, A7R III, A9 and A1. It was always a bit hit and miss on A7R IV. Near min focus distance it would be good, but still with a lot of slight misses. Much better performance on A9 and A1 for same shots.
If A7R V can just be consistently sharp and better at mid to long distances that could be a game changer
I started with the A7Riv and 200-600 combo when they first came out and after over 33,000 images I have been quite happy with this combo's performance in primarily shooting birds and BIF. I never experienced any of the issues some have cited with this combo, with a 90%+ hit rate of sharp focus, when i didn't screw something up on my own. I attribute my success to the research I did on why people seemed to be having issues and using settings that maximized my chance of success and made it easier for the camera and lens to perform at its best. Despite this success, the A7RV offered an upgrade opportunity in several areas that appealed to me, including the faster processors, better viewfinder, and the dedicated AI chip for subject recognition and tracking. i have found the A7RV/200-600 combo to be an exceptional pairing at all focus distances, with even faster acquisition, great BIF tracking, really good bird eye focus performance, and great exposure control. I am very impressed and could not be happier with this combo. It works for me.
I swapped my A7R IV for a V and there is improvement in it picking up initial focus and locking in on eye. There is still variability as to how sharp the eye will be in the shot. Sometimes good, sometimes just a little off. Not nearly as good as the A9 or A1. Electronic shutter is too slow to be useful on small twitchy birds like finches, sparrows, warblers and the like. The V and 200-600 is OK but not great. I am sure the IQ will meet some people's standards, but if you are going to use 200-600 I would still recommend A9 over the A7R V even if you don't need 20-30 FPS, and I would never trade down from A1 for the V.
I had a bad copy of the 200-600. Unfortunately, I have never gotten a sharp image using that lens on the Sony A9, so I sold both the camera and lens. So now I'm using another A9 and the 100-400mm with the 1,4x Extender with better results.
dcisive wrote:
I'll give this to the OM-1, it acquires immediately no waiting and stays on a flying bird like white on rice. perhaps I'm hoping for too much with the A7RV but it should do much the same. Some say it's similar to the A1 and some owners of the A1's egos get hurt and say it's not in that league. It sure should be.
I don't have an A7RV yet but will get one to test as soon as swallow season starts in late March, early April.
My best guess is it will show improvements over the A1 for subject recognition and stability to hold an eye-af lock on the subject.
However, I just can't see how it will overcome the big deficiency in AF calculations/sec and sensor scanning speed. Those two things (which I'm sure are directly related to each other) will still give the A1 a big advantage for fast action. Not to mention the 3x FPS and blackout free, smooth view in the EVF while actively firing and tracking.
Even the old A9 still bests every other Sony I've tried (other than A1 and A9II) despite having ancient hardware just because of the faster sensor scan and more AF calculations per second.
Once we tack on the slowest focusing Sony super telephoto lens (200-600) to the equation I think the overall combo will be good but not top tier. I'm interested how much the 400GM/600GM could elevate the A7RV compared to say an A1 with 200-600. A1 with 200-600 is noticeably poorer hit rate for small/fast/erratic BIF compared to the two primes with their dual-linear motors and compared to the 100-400 with its linear motor.
dcisive wrote:
I'll give this to the OM-1, it acquires immediately no waiting and stays on a flying bird like white on rice. perhaps I'm hoping for too much with the A7RV but it should do much the same. Some say it's similar to the A1 and some owners of the A1's egos get hurt and say it's not in that league. It sure should be.
