I recently upgraded from the A7RV to the A7RVI and started seeing a weird issue that I’m not sure I can fully explain.
First of all, the cameras are configured identically so I’d assume that the behavior would be identical, which is unfortunately not the case.
Some of the settings worth pointing out:
- Live View Display Setting: On
- DRO: Off
- AEL w/ Shutter: Auto
- Drive: Single
- Mode: Aperture Priority
- Minimum SS: 1/125
- Auto ISO: 100 - 12800
- Aperture Drive in AF: Standard
The gist of it is that there’s a weird thing that the auto exposure is doing, where the preview (either on the screen or EVF) doesn’t always match the captured image. The difference between the two can be even a full stop or higher. Once it starts happening, I feel like I’m shooting blind as there’s no way to know how the captured image will look like and how over/underexposed it will be.
Now, I’m not completely sure what the scenario to reproduce it is, but the last time I got it was when the shutter speed was already at its minimum, leaving the ISO to fluctuate. Electronic shutter also helps to make it obvious, since there’s no blackout and the camera will “hold” the captured image for a short time, meaning that it will constantly switch between “normal” live view and e.g. overexposed images while shooting. This also means that the live view doesn’t really sync with whatever the auto exposure did when capturing the image.
I’ve uploaded 3 images that showcase this. They were taken within 3 seconds, all of them have the same composition and focus point and yet all of them have wildly different exposures.
Image 1: SS 1/125, f5.6, ISO 1250 (-0.7EV)
Image 2: SS 1/125, f5.6, ISO 400 (-0.7EV)
Image 3: SS 1/125, f5.6, ISO 1000 (-0.3EV) (not sure how it landed on ISO 1000)
The screen only ever showed the exposure of the second image, throughout the whole shooting sequence.
It all looks like a weird bug that’s hard to reproduce, but it’s driving me insane each time it happens.
Has anybody noticed something similar or is willing to give it a test and see if they are getting the same behavior?
Side note: I’m assuming A7V can also have the issue, but I don’t have it to confirm.
Updated the original post with the link to the images (but it needs to be copied and entered as a URL, not sure what this forum is doing when it’s prepending its own URL to it)
Set it to manual and use zebras to see if you at least get consistent EVF/image exposures. Gave up on auto 10 years ago because of inconsistent results. Looks tricky a face in the shadows with dark glasses and light skin.
Note that if you are not familiar with Zebras you might want check how to set specifically for ensuring something like a face is properly exposed which is not the same as the settings for highlighting over exposed parts.
I’m pretty sure manual would work fine as this only happens sometimes, but it’s very annoying. I’d say that 90% of the time it does exactly what A7RV would do, but the other 10% is an exposure juggling shit show.
Earlier I took a look at all the images I’ve taken in the last few weeks and every time it did this was when the subject was posed against a much brighter background (e.g. sky, sea). So I get that it’s a somewhat difficult situation for auto exposure, but A7RV would just transition between these changes much smoother.
It all looks like a firmware bug and that there’s a stray AE calculation that happens on full shutter press, but is never reflected on the monitor
