p.1 #1 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
Reviewing lenses over on the Sony Alpha Blog and how they classify lenses (OS, EX, VG, .. ). I noticed they list Very Good as will exploit the full potential of A7IV 33mp or A7III 24mp, and Good can be recommended for the A7III 24mp.
That got me thinking, how do Very Good and Good lenses perform on the A7CR when set to MRAW or SRAW? Is anyone familiar with the downsizing process?
There are more than a couple of lenses that be handy when I don't need 61mp.
p.1 #2 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
The tradeoff between size and performance is just one of the tradeoffs that need to be balanced. I am a bit obsessed with image quality so I tend to use lenses that rank in the outstanding / excellent range. To some extent the differences between these grades is fairly small and the light on the scene and other factors will be more important than if you had a 5 star or 3 star lens. In my experience the downsizing will produce a better image than a native sensor at equivalent resolution. I'm not sure if it is because the high resolution sensor doesn't have the low pass filter or if it is because the image is oversampled.
To some extent the idea that a lens will fully exploit the full potential of a sensor is wrong. You will still be able to see some differences between a good lens and an outstanding lens at 24mp, even more so when the 24mp was downsized from 60mp.
All that being said it is fine to consider lower IQ lenses if they check other boxes for you like size, weight, or cost. You could certainly decide you want to get some casual shots and have no need for high resolution and the lens choice is more about ergonomics as well.
p.1 #3 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
I’d rather reduce the resolution by using APS-C mode since you still end up with a true raw file, not a processed file that’s raw in name only. In APS-C mode you do have the crop factor to deal with of course.
DavidZvi wrote:
Reviewing lenses over on the Sony Alpha Blog and how they classify lenses (OS, EX, VG, .. ). I noticed they list Very Good as will exploit the full potential of A7IV 33mp or A7III 24mp, and Good can be recommended for the A7III 24mp.
That got me thinking, how do Very Good and Good lenses perform on the A7CR when set to MRAW or SRAW? Is anyone familiar with the downsizing process?
There are more than a couple of lenses that be handy when I don't need 61mp.
p.1 #4 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
DavidZvi wrote:
Reviewing lenses over on the Sony Alpha Blog and [...] be handy when I don't need 61mp.
I use all my lenses in full 60 MP raw mode. As tschopp above mentions/hints there is nothing to gain with regards to image quality by using an in-camera downsizing process.
If you have a good memory card and computer/storage capacities I feel I'm better of choosing the best quality my equipment can deliver. Downgrading, downsizing, cropping and deleting stuff is for the post process, no?
BTW: The Sony Alpha Blog is nice and i enjoy his reviews. But that table... don't take it too seriously. If the tech details are important you better test your lenses yourself.
p.1 #5 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
To be exact, there is no such thing as camera being demanding on lens.
Even with a bad (not sharp) lens higher resolution produces better (sharper) images. On the other hand, a good (sharp) lens is preferable even with low resolution camera.
p.1 #6 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
Thanks for the information all. I probably should have provided some context on what I'm looking for, and why I'm looking at the A7CR. I do take those kinds of charts with a few grains of salt. But I'm not the best at testing things and they are a place to start.
Former Pro Nikon DSLR shooter picked up an m4/3 for a smaller and lighter fun system alongside my FF gear. Closed my studio and have gone back and forth between m4/3 and a couple of Fujis and Zs since. The Zs are nice, but I like the rangefinder style and the 20-70 f/4 is a very interesting range.
Last year we went to Greece, this year we're thinking Hawaii, next ?
I brought an OM-1 and the 8-25, 20, 12-100 Pro kit. All great and I got some really nice images. The kit was also pretty small. I played around with handheld high-res, I didn't have much luck with it.
Reviewing and processing the images after there were some images I would have liked a "little more". No I don't expect a night and day difference, my skill, or lack thereof would have a bigger impact.
Buy something like the A7CR and 20-70 would have covered 70-80% of all the shots I called "keepers" from the trip. And that includes taking advantage of APSC for some.
But I don't need 61mp daily and those little Sony and Sigma primes seem like a perfect fit for the small body. I am looking at the Tamron 24 as well, I 'like the idea of a wide prime with 1:2 ability.
p.1 #7 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
I think Jonas B made some really good points. It is essentially a choice of in camera vs post processing. When I switched from the 24mp a7iii to the 60mp a7Riv I liked the resolution of 24mp and felt little need for 60mp with the idea of downscaling in post and the result was significantly better than what I got on the 24mp sensor. Also because I wasn’t happy with the jpg color science I shot every thing in raw. What I had wanted was a higher mp sensor that could downscale in camera with better color science to generate 24+mp jpg straight out of camera.
The A7RV checks these boxes, but in the couple years that I used the a7Riv I began to like the flexibility raw gave me and I liked the ability to crop and recompose in post and still get an acceptable resolution file. So the irony is with the A7RV I shoot it in 60mp raw all the time. I may eventually move to shooting “snapshots” in 26mp jpg. But if I am shooting raw I might as well shot at 60mp as I will need to post process anyway and can select any resolution in post.
That said if you want to shoot 26mp then the R cameras will be a good choice. You will get an outstanding 26mp on full frame and if you change to apsc mode you will still get 26mp. I can see many reasons for doing this.
The other comment made by Jonas B about testing relates to variations in lens copies it is certainly possible to get a copy of an “outstanding” lens that performs worse than a copy of a very good lens. The table can be used as guidance for expectations. So I could see how a good copy of a sigma f/2 i series could outperform a less than perfect GM.
For travel situations the size of the lens could be more important than the optical quality. I had both the Sigma 24-70 DN and Tamron 28-75G2 for over a year. In testing the Sigma was optically a better lens. But I mainly grabbed the Tamron due to size and weight. In real world photos there was not much difference. So I sold the Sigma.
If the size of the a7RC works for you especially with I series lenses, I think it is a good choice compared to m43 or apsc. Especially if those other formats left you wanting more. The resolution demands in apsc and especially m43 demands a lot of the lens. It is much easier to pull off a better resolution performance in FF. The requirements for line pair / mm is lower because of the larger format. So I’m thinking you can go down range a bit in FF lenses and still best the performance you can get from apsc or m43.
p.1 #8 · Sony A7RV / A7CR less demanding on glass in M/SRAW?
Keep in mind the M and S Raw options lose about a stop of dynamic range in the highlights for some reason. Perhaps just bad compression algorithm from Sony? There's some threads both here and on dpreview on it. Though I'd be curious to see how the M Raw compares to something like the a9 or an APSC camera which have less DR than the A7CR but are still perfectly fine for me.
