I don't have interest in keeping around a bunch of different filter sized nd filters and lugging them with me. I want something that just works as often as I need, when I need it.
EB-1 wrote:
I'm sure people can find some unusual usages, but that's easily avoided if you went with longer lens/smaller apertures or a simple ND filter. Action typically doesn't need the high IQ an a7R delivers. You could get by with lower quality and higher speed for most customers of dog ability.
shadow9d9 wrote:
I don't have interest in keeping around a bunch of different filter sized nd filters and lugging them with me. I want something that just works as often as I need, when I need it.
Then the A7r6 is not the camera for you if 1/8000 is too slow. Why were you even looking at the camera…what about its other features.
shadow9d9 wrote:
I don't have interest in keeping around a bunch of different filter sized nd filters and lugging them with me. I want something that just works as often as I need, when I need it.
Lugging filters around is only relevant if you don’t use any filters, because the ND filter goes on in the morning and gets swapped for a UV filter when the sun goes down. Now, lugging multiple fast lenses might be a serious challenge.
It’s an issue. If you’re using fast primes at 1.2 or 1.4 you’re going to hit it in daylight. What’s frustrating is that it is likely an artificial limit Sony has placed on the camera for market segmentation. It’s the same limit that was on the A7rV for a sensor 5x slower. Maybe some users will never need that, but there are many times others are going to hit it. It’s not some extreme scenario to be trying to use f 1.4 in daytime.
A7V supports up to 1/16000 with ES, while A7IV limit is 1/8000. I don't see why it would be set as an artificial limit for market segmentation in A7RVI. There could be some technical reason.
chez wrote:
Then the A7r6 is not the camera for you if 1/8000 is too slow. Why were you even looking at the camera…what about its other features.
Probably some people don't read all the specs. If you had to preorder there is not much time.
I did not even notice until today that I had a camera already 100 weeks that does 1/32,000. I dumped extracts and did find one at 1/6400 well underexposed.
Looking around at specs it's not unusual for the fast reading sensors to achieve higher shutter speeds, but the a7R VI is for high IQ rather than fast reading so that should not have been a surprise.
nhmorgan wrote:
It’s an issue. If you’re using fast primes at 1.2 or 1.4 you’re going to hit it in daylight. What’s frustrating is that it is likely an artificial limit Sony has placed on the camera for market segmentation. It’s the same limit that was on the A7rV for a sensor 5x slower. Maybe some users will never need that, but there are many times others are going to hit it. It’s not some extreme scenario to be trying to use f 1.4 in daytime.
Just to be clear, it isn't f/1.4 in daytime. It is f/1.4 in full sun. If you shoot in the shade, in most instances you will not need a faster shutter speed than 1/8000 even at f/1.4. It isn't as though you can't shoot at all in the daytime at f/1.4 unless you have a shutter speed that is faster than 1/8000 or an ND filter. Clouds depending on how thick they are will often be enough as well to lower the light and allow you to lower the shutter speed. Time of day depending on location can also have a pretty big impact. Morning and evening sun in many places is not going to require a shutter speed faster than 1/8000 even with no cloud cover at all. That said full sun can vary in how bright it is (closer to the equator it can be brighter) and targets that are white or highly reflective can require higher shutter speeds. So there are a number of factors determining if 1/8000 will be limiting or not.
I... never was. But the OP was. I simply chimed in about how 1/8000 is kinda an obvious need for it out there...and that nd filters for everything is not really a solution or reasonable at all.
chez wrote:
Then the A7r6 is not the camera for you if 1/8000 is too slow. Why were you even looking at the camera…what about its other features.
EB-1 wrote:
Probably some people don't read all the specs. If you had to preorder there is not much time.
I did not even notice until today that I had a camera already 100 weeks that does 1/32,000. I dumped extracts and did find one at 1/6400 well underexposed.
Looking around at specs it's not unusual for the fast reading sensors to achieve higher shutter speeds, but the a7R VI is for high IQ rather than fast reading so that should not have been a surprise.
EBH
I would think if the max shutter speed is that important to someone, they’d look for it. Heck he sold the camera because the max shutter was 1/8000.
Steve Spencer wrote:
Just to be clear, it isn't f/1.4 in daytime. It is f/1.4 in full sun. If you shoot in the shade, in most instances you will not need a faster shutter speed than 1/8000 even at f/1.4. It isn't as though you can't shoot at all in the daytime at f/1.4 unless you have a shutter speed that is faster than 1/8000 or an ND filter. Clouds depending on how thick they are will often be enough as well to lower the light and allow you to lower the shutter speed. Time of day depending on location can also have a pretty big impact. Morning and evening sun in many places is not going to require a shutter speed faster than 1/8000 even with no cloud cover at all. That said full sun can vary in how bright it is (closer to the equator it can be brighter) and targets that are white or highly reflective can require higher shutter speeds. So there are a number of factors determining if 1/8000 will be limiting or not....Show more →
Let me giver you a real world example. I clear out my Lightroom catalog weekly, so right now I just have one shoot from last Tuesday that I did for a running store at a track from 6-8pm. It was a sunny day, but that's an evening in the south. This was a small shoot so I only delivered them 230 images. I shot with a Nikon 85mm 1.2, 28mm 1.4, and 200mm f2 that day. Out of the 230 images, 43 of them were at shutter speeds faster than 1/8000. 13 of them were at 1/8000. I was shooting in aperture priority most of the time.
My point: if you like fast primes and like to shoot them wide open for that look, you are going to hit this limit and will need at least a 1-stop ND.
nhmorgan wrote:
Let me giver you a real world example. I clear out my Lightroom catalog weekly, so right now I just have one shoot from last Tuesday that I did for a running store at a track from 6-8pm. It was a sunny day, but that's an evening in the south. This was a small shoot so I only delivered them 230 images. I shot with a Nikon 85mm 1.2, 28mm 1.4, and 200mm f2 that day. Out of the 230 images, 43 of them were at shutter speeds faster than 1/8000. 13 of them were at 1/8000. I was shooting in aperture priority most of the time.
My point: if you like fast primes and like to shoot them wide open for that look, you are going to hit this limit and will need at least a 1-stop ND. ...Show more →
Exactly. Having this ability really unlocks new exciting possibilities with f/1.2 glass (and even things like the Voigtlander 50/1). It's one of those "if you know, you know" situations, and so many crusty boys in this thread simply don't know.
Jul 13, 2026 at 09:27 AM
Steve Spencer Online • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
nhmorgan wrote:
Let me giver you a real world example. I clear out my Lightroom catalog weekly, so right now I just have one shoot from last Tuesday that I did for a running store at a track from 6-8pm. It was a sunny day, but that's an evening in the south. This was a small shoot so I only delivered them 230 images. I shot with a Nikon 85mm 1.2, 28mm 1.4, and 200mm f2 that day. Out of the 230 images, 43 of them were at shutter speeds faster than 1/8000. 13 of them were at 1/8000. I was shooting in aperture priority most of the time.
My point: if you like fast primes and like to shoot them wide open for that look, you are going to hit this limit and will need at least a 1-stop ND. ...Show more →
Thanks for this example. It is helpful. Can I ask what camera you were using and the ISO on those shots? I ask because most Nikon cameras have a base ISO of 64, which should get you by the sunny 16 rule shutter speed a good exposure even with f/1.4 lens at 1/8000. So if you were shooting over 1/8000 and ISO 64 I am wondering why the camera was selecting such a high shutter speed. Maybe all the faster shutter speeds were all with the 85 f/1.2. Then there is the question of what would have happened if you had set the shutter speed to 1/8000 and kept the aperture wide open using manual. Would any important highlights have been blown or would the shots turned out fine just exposed a bit to the right?
It is indeed an interesting real world example. We know that of the 230 images, for just a little more than 80% the camera selected a shutter speed of 1/8000 or less and presumably these turned out ok. What we don't know is in that just less than 20% of shots if the shutter speed maxed out at 1/8000 and the camera was forced to select that shutter speed would the shots have been ruined or even affected much. We all know our cameras have some head room in the highlights and we can at times push them farther than the camera would select for shutter speed. Sometimes we do that intentionally when we shoot in manual mode or use exposure compensation. Sometimes our choice of exposure is even a better choice than the camera makes. It seems likely that you would not have lost all the shots or even had all of them effected in a meaningful way if the camera had a max 1/8000 when the camera picked a higher shutter speed. Just how many would have been affected negatively, however, is probably hard to determine after the fact. It could be sorted out in testing, however. Maybe someone will do that.
For me, it would be a non-issue because I prefer to shoot my f/1.2 and f/1.4 lenses at f/2 when the light is bright. So a lot of this comes down to style and preference for how you shoot. I am not saying that this won't be an issue for anyone. If you shoot f/1.2 and f/1.4 lens wide open in bright light a lot and you don't want to use ND filters it could be an issue for you. I am saying, however, that for me it would never be an issue.
RoamingScott wrote:
Y'all need to stop being so hung up on the Sunny 16 rule, which was derived in a time of very heavily vignetting lenses.
Modern lenses like the 85/1.2 have an insane T-stop and VERY little vignette wide open and don't follow the rule at all.
Nobody is hung up on the Sunny 16 rule. It is an interesting baseline and that is all I am arguing and I think all any one else is arguing. And have you examined the vignetting on lots of modern fast lenses for mirrorless wide open. Vignetting is still very high for fast lenses wide open. And I don't see much in terms of differences in T-stops either, which as you know just like f stops has nothing to do with vignetting because it is measured in the center of the frame not as a average across the frame.
It is not that the optics have changed dramatically. Rather the sunny 16 rule has always been an approximation that gets you close to good exposure, but not necessarily the best exposure. I would argue it is still a good approximation, but just an approximation and in practice the best exposure could easily be a stop different. I don't think that is any different than it always has been.
RoamingScott wrote:
Exactly. Having this ability really unlocks new exciting possibilities with f/1.2 glass (and even things like the Voigtlander 50/1). It's one of those "if you know, you know" situations, and so many crusty boys in this thread simply don't know.
It must be so nice to know everything.
If you need to shoot at greater than 1/8000, then there is a solution…ND. People who know…know…others just bitch.
Would I love to handhold my landscape exposures that go into seconds…sure. But I have a work around called a tripod.
Creative photographers figure out how to get the shot…others just whine.
