BigBabyMoses06 wrote:
Everything is relative and full of compromises, of course.
It depends on the level you are shooting at / for. For most situations, a used A1 is still a better camera for the job, and cheaper. I'm still going to try it out tho. I think it would be excellent for wrestling.
A1 or A1ii? The A1ii has the added AF processor and pre-capture which are IMHO pretty significant and keeps it in the flagship slot. Not sure the older A1 that lacks those will hold up as well against the A7R6. Maybe somebody who has both can elaborate?
Jack Flesher wrote:
A1 or A1ii? The A1ii has the added AF processor and pre-capture which are IMHO pretty significant and keeps it in the flagship slot. Not sure the older A1 that lacks those will hold up as well against the A7R6. Maybe somebody who has both can elaborate?
A1 mk1. A little long in the tooth, but the the faster readout for E shutter and the 120 AF calculations/second still make it (probably) a better camera for ball sports and panning shots. The A7R6s at most 60 af calculations per second is a real limitation when shooting fast. I have both, but haven't taken the R6 out to the fields yet. The R6 has me really excited for the A1mk3 or A9mk4, but not sure I can wait that long.
BigBabyMoses06 wrote:
A1 mk1. A little long in the tooth, but the the faster readout for E shutter and the 120 AF calculations/second still make it (probably) a better camera for ball sports and panning shots. The A7R6s at most 60 af calculations per second is a real limitation when shooting fast. I have both, but haven't taken the R6 out to the fields yet. The R6 has me really excited for the A1mk3 or A9mk4, but not sure I can wait that long.
I'd like to hear your report after actually using the A7R6 alongside the A1 mk1... The mkii I get, but I remain suspect the mk 1 will hold...
Vento wrote:
DPReview published a article about the a7R VI @ Sports.
The focus here was explicitly on sports scenarios and a direct comparison with the a1 II in Sports.
At least when it comes to sports, however, the conclusion was rather sobering.
As a person who does not yet own these cameras, my ability to weigh in is somewhat limited. However, I get the feeling that some people are confusing “the absolute best for doing X by a sometimes visible increment” with “one thing is way better and the other thing is clearly not very good.”
Back in the day I shot bicycle racing with a… Canon 5D and then 5Dii. Now I’m certainly not recommending THAT level of performance for folks today, but the fact is that even that level of technology worked really well for what I was doing. More recently I’ve done a lot of photography of birds in flight using a… Canon 5DsR, of all things!
There’s no question that faster read times, etc can further diminish the possibility for things like rolling shutter effects, that more frequently AF calculations can produce objective improvements in AF accuracy, that fast burst rates can slice time into smaller increments.
But it feels like a lot of people have to step back and ask what the real world effect on their photography is when it comes to assessing these differences and the balance of various technology pluses and minuses.
If I were primarily an action sports photographer, sure, I’d go for something like the A1ii. But I”m not, and I know that I can do do effective photography of a range of subjects, including some that move pretty quickly, on something short of that — heck, something way short of what appears to be the quite good performance of the A7r6.
There’s also a bit of the “well… your luxury sedan is not the very best off-road vehicle” here, too. (The high res system isn’t going to every beat or even quite equal a camera designed to optimize other pluses, any more than the A1ii can’t produce a 66MP image.)
My question is how important is having a perfectly straight bat compared to a slightly bowed bat, assuming both are otherwise identical and perfectly timed shots? For those of you who shoot sports professionally, how much more money does the perfectly straight bat photo bring over the slightly bowed bat? What if the bowed bat image is slightly better timed; which is more valuable? Finally, can AI straighten the bowed bat out??
Jack Flesher wrote:
My question is how important is having a perfectly straight bat compared to a slightly bowed bat, assuming both are otherwise identical and perfectly timed shots? For those of you who shoot sports professionally, how much more money does the perfectly straight bat photo bring over the slightly bowed bat? What if the bowed bat image is slightly better timed; which is more valuable? Finally, can AI straighten the bowed bat out??
For the pro level it's evidently very important and you almost never see it. Even all the high level D1 college interns appear to be using either mechanical shutter cameras, or their departments are loading them out with A1s or Canon R1/3s. Well, at least I personally very rarely see evidence of rolling shutter at those levels. I don't get paid to shoot games, but I would rather suffer with 10fps and have straight bats and round balls (or use my older A1), than to deliver something that looks like below.
gdanmitchell wrote:
There’s no question that faster read times, etc can further diminish the possibility for things like rolling shutter effects, that more frequently AF calculations can produce objective improvements in AF accuracy, that fast burst rates can slice time into smaller increments.
People's standards are higher now. I often struggle to control my sarcasm when I see folks complain about AF in modern cameras. I used to shoot cars, bicycles, and team sports on SLRs without continuous autofocus. Single cross-type AF point was enough. Prefocus, recompose, and wait. Who needs "tracking"? I met pros who used to shoot basketball on manual focus 6x6 Hasselblads. 12 shots per roll. ISO 800 pushed two stops. And now... seeing grown men moan about having "only" 10fps, "only" 24MP, and bitch about AI not grabbing a squirrel butthole from half a mile away... it's tempting to ridicule such complaints.
But when I look at my images from the 2005-2015 DSLR era, I'm surprised by how frequently the focus was slightly off. Somehow it didn't bother me at the time. And somehow the eyelash-vs-iris misfocus didn't seem important then. It does now. Now these little focusing imperfections annoy me. I became soft and spoiled. I too want me some laser-sharp squirrel butthole, with no less than 50 glorious megapixels. And if someone makes fun of it, I will understand.
