tsdevine wrote:
My white K&F batteries ddn't give a warning, and still doesn't give a warning.
That I good to know, but I'm not buying any more generiatric NP-FZ100 batteries with USB ports since getting the BC-ZD1. With a PD power supply or power bank it charges two real sony batteries faster than one basic battery with USB port.
EB-1 wrote:
That I good to know, but I'm not buying any more generiatric NP-FZ100 batteries with USB ports since getting the BC-ZD1. With a PD power supply or power bank it charges two real sony batteries faster than one basic battery with USB port.
EBH
I'm using the ISDT NP2 Air to charge. Not sure it's really any quicker than using the USB port on the battery though (I do use that in a bind.) The NP2 Air is also slower than your BC-ZD1.
Maybe I'll go that route when my stable of batteries wear out.
tsdevine wrote:
I'm using the ISDT NP2 Air to charge. Not sure it's really any quicker than using the USB port on the battery though (I do use that in a bind.) The NP2 Air is also slower than your BC-ZD1.
Maybe I'll go that route when my stable of batteries wear out.
Do you know how much faster it is? I'm interested now in BC-ZD1, if it's visibly faster. Though I recall reading it doesn't show 100% charge accurately...
j4nu wrote:
Do you know how much faster it is? I'm interested now in BC-ZD1, if it's visibly faster. Though I recall reading it doesn't show 100% charge accurately...
From what I've been able to gather, 2 batteries in 155 minutes where the NP2 Air is probably closer to 180 minutes. So it's not a huge difference. But I imagine there is variability in both those numbers. I do like that the NP2 Air seems to get my batteries to 100% when I put them in the camera, and the app is kind of nice. I assume though the Sony would work just as well.
tsdevine wrote:
From what I've been able to gather, 2 batteries in 155 minutes where the NP2 Air is probably closer to 180 minutes. So it's not a huge difference. But I imagine there is variability in both those numbers. I do like that the NP2 Air seems to get my batteries to 100% when I put them in the camera, and the app is kind of nice. I assume though the Sony would work just as well.
Thanks!
I recall reading Sony's manual stating that it kinda lits up when approaching 100%. Maybe the time to reach actual full capacity is closer in reality (or I remember wrong )...
I got about 2:20 or so with the Sony BC-ZD1 and two batteries (one a few minutes earlier than the other). It gets a bit warm but has a heavy heatsink inside to distribute the heat.
Both the Sony USB and AC chargers are not completely finished charging until all lights are off.
The charging states can be a bit confusing, so I made 25x50mm (1x2") graphic labels to affix to the chargers.
AF got XL spot..., golden ratio grid...,
Well Sony gave us a new firmware, but not something really spectacular!
Is this to show it's "good willing"?
Think they could and should do better.
bdbits wrote:
I too hoped for auto subject recognition, alas... nope.
There is a touch menu overlay if you swipe to the side that is a duplicate of the Fn menu. It tells you about it when the camera restarts after the update. At first I did not like this, but it is growing on me. What you have assigned to Fn will probably greatly affect whether you like this or not. e.g. I have AF recognition type on there and now it is simple to change with a swipe and tapping through the options. Swipe up should make the menu overlay go away, but I find this a bit buggy. ...Show more →
Same here... At first I could not get rid of the Fn menu. Swiped up up up...
It is buggy!
Up to firmware 4.1....
My A7RV (I've owned since release day) is still on FW 1.0, . Never saw a need to chance bricking the camera with a bad update, until now. I'm interested in the improved focus bracketing, so I might give it a try.
What is the most reliable method (least likely to brick) to update the FW these days? I've got a Mac desktop and an iPhone with Sony Creator's app.
Chaliel wrote:
AF got XL spot..., golden ratio grid...,
Well Sony gave us a new firmware, but not something really spectacular!
Is this to show it's "good willing"?
Think they could and should do better.
Aside from about 37MP, something else that my A7Rv can do that my A9iii cannot is the Golden Ratio grid. No more guessing! I’m really quite excited about this improvement.
Plus, since I am coming from version 2, I am quite happy to get display change in portrait mode. Something that Fujifilm has only had for oh… 10 or so years.
Does someone have the Neewer batteries with USB-C ports? Do you get a warning message after updating the firmware, or do they still work without message?
chrisd999 wrote:
What is the most reliable method (least likely to brick) to update the FW these days? I've got a Mac desktop and an iPhone with Sony Creator's app.
Updating via memory card is pretty much foolproof as long as your battery is charged (same for any method).
chrisd999 wrote:
What is the most reliable method (least likely to brick) to update the FW these days? I've got a Mac desktop and an iPhone with Sony Creator's app.
The method of updating doesn't matter. A card or the app, those are options to copy firmware. Even if the file gets damaged in transit, the checksum won't match and the camera will refuse to accept it.
The "bricky" part is writing to the internal memory, when a power loss results in a corrupted (half-written) state. But even that should not be a concern for many modern devices, as they can hold two versions of firmware (N and N-1) at the same time, and roll back to the previous one in case of an update failure. I do not know whether Sony engineers use this approach though.
Erictator wrote:
Wow, that seems like the biggest new feature and fix list I've seen for this body so far. Yeah, any brave souls who go for it, let us know how it goes. The new xl spot tracking sounds interesting... I've experienced the focus bracketing stopping short of infinity, so that could be a legit reason to upgrade as well. So much stuff here it almost makes me nervous like this might be the last fw update we'll see for this body for a long time, if ever... but that is probably just my paranoia showing, heh.
Eric
fun things I've found so far:
There's a new overlay menu (referred to in the manual as "Touch Function Icons") that covers part of the shooting screen with some random unchangeable action icons. You activate it by swiping left or right on the shooting screen. The help guide says "To hide the touch function icons, swipe the screen in the opposite direction from when you made the icons appear." but this does not work - the only way I can find to hide them again is to go into setup -> touch operation -> shooting screen and disable the swipe actions or turn off the touchscreen entirely.
If you do use the overlay menu, the icons/functions presented don't mirror the ones in the Fn menu if you've changed any of those, and don't appear to be configurable. For instance if you don't want a "start recording a movie" button taking up a chunk of your still photo shooting screen, that's too bad.
in custom key settings, you can now just press a key (other than Menu) to see/set its assigned function. However the key name/number displayed when you do this doesn't match the key you pressed, seems like it's off by one.
in playback when displaying a saved photo, the icon showing the play button and a "back" symbol (i guess to show that you can press the play button to go back) is always on screen and can't be removed, even in the "no info" playback screen which used to be just the picture and nothing extraneous. (you can return to this behavor by disabling touch for the playback screen entirelty, but then you lose all touch functions.)
After updating and rebooting, the remembered menu positions (i.e., go into Play mode, press Menu, you normally end up at the same menu page, for instance Delete, that you were in last time) are randomized, so instead of Delete i found myself in some other random Playback menu, i think the settings for slide show mode, which I've never used. This isn't a big deal but seems careless.
Various screen touch operations seem to now cause the whole screen to back out for a half second or so, inexplicably.
If you go to a particular settings page, leave settings mode to take pictures, then press menu again, you find yourself in a different settings page from the one you were in before. This is actually quite annoying.
There's a new overlay menu that covers part of the shooting screen, which you activate by swiping. But swiping to remove the overlay menu doesn't work. Once you get rid of it by swiping randomly for 15 minutes and getting lucky, you can go into setup -> touch operation -> shooting screen and disable all the "swipe" actions to prevent it from happening again accidentally. It does also go away if you disable the touchscreen entirely.
If you do use the overlay menu, the icons/functions presented don't mirror the ones in the Fn menu if you've changed any of those, and don't appear to be configurable. For instance if you don't want a "start recording a movie" button taking up a chunk of your still photo shooting screen, that's too bad.
in custom key settings, you can now just press a key (other than Menu) to see/set its assigned function. However the key name/number displayed when you do this doesn't match the key you pressed, seems like it's off by one.
in playback when displaying a saved photo, the icon showing the play button and a "back" symbol (i guess to show that you can press the play button to go back) is always on screen and can't be removed, even in the "no info" playback screen which used to be just the picture and nothing extraneous. (you can return to this behavor by disabling touch for the playback screen entirelty, but then you lose all touch functions.)
After updating and rebooting, the remembered menu positions (i.e., go into Play mode, press Menu, you normally end up at the same menu page, for instance Delete, that you were in last time) are randomized, so instead of Delete i found myself in some other random Playback menu, i think the settings for slide show mode, which I've never used. This isn't a big deal but seems careless.
Various screen touch operations seem to now cause the whole screen to back out for a half second or so, inexplicably....Show more →
To get rid of the overlay menu, I’ve found I have to place the camera in a position where I can safely use two fingers. Then take the two fingers to use the “zoom in” motion you use on your smartphone. That gets rid of the overlay menu. Seems to work the same on my A9iii as well as the A7Rv. Personally, I really like the overlay menu for shooting video and hate it for shooting photos.
I took the plunge and did the update earlier than I normally would. So far so good. I like the golden ratio overlay and I'm 50/50 on the Fn swipe deal. I need to give the Fn button a new purpose and see how I do with the swipe feature. Have not really noticed any performance issues prior or really much difference now.
)...
. Never saw a need to chance bricking the camera with a bad update, until now. I'm interested in the improved focus bracketing, so I might give it a try.