The Sony A73/A7R3/A7S3/A9 Thread

[sHo0sH]

There's a 10% off all of ebay code today for anyone interested. Expires at 8pm, max £50 discount.
Anyone know if this will work ok on the A7III - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SALE-Sam...rentrq:defca66f1630a9cc5d452018fff5b4be|iid:1

 

[willems]

the comments on hotukdeals would suggest not

 

[Greebo]

There is a list of categories it applies to and photography doesn't come under sports and hobbies though

 

[sHo0sH]

Ahh thats a shame - should have looked into it a bit deeper. Sorry boys.

 

[Greebo]

Not your fault it's mean eBay UK. Us gets 20% off everything and we get 10% off limited categories

 

[Greebo]

Loving this camera. Went out to try and get a shot of the local barn owl. It was after sunset around 9.45pm and I was at 560mm handheld f8 at ISO 20,000 and around 1/400th shutter and it managed to track and focus about 8 out of 10 shots.

The olympus would have got me nothing and I never went over 3200 ISO with it and mainly stayed well below.

Okay, not the best quality pics but its a usable shot for example. This is with a 100% crop as well from memory.

Spoiler

 

[Raymond Lin]

Loving this camera. Went out to try and get a shot of the local barn owl. It was after sunset around 9.45pm and I was at 560mm handheld f8 at ISO 20,000 and around 1/400th shutter and it managed to track and focus about 8 out of 10 shots.

The olympus would have got me nothing and I never went over 3200 ISO with it and mainly stayed well below.

Okay, not the best quality pics but its a usable shot for example. This is with a 100% crop as well from memory.

Spoiler

That's what I mean.

Other cameras might have more "features" but this camera (and all the latest Sony generations) just nails the fundamentals so well, then takes it up a few notches.

 

[Greebo]

Better conditions tonight

Spoiler

 

[divuk83]

Is talking about the original A7 acceptable in here or will I be killed/banned? Just swapped my D7000 and various lenses for one (which has yet to arrive) and I have a few questions about Sony stuff seeing as I only understand Nikon things!

Cheers

Dave

 

[sHo0sH]

Fire away, I’m sure someone will help if they can

 

[divuk83]

Thanks. It's more about the lens mount adapters. Are the cheap (Sub £20) ones any good? I can't really see much point in the posh ones that offer AF as they are so expensive, also I would rather get some older manual focus lenses. Do any of the slightly more expensive manual focus adapters have any kind of aperture feeler to allow any kind of metering? Can anyone recommend any specific ones? I was looking at old Canon FD or Minolta? Is there a good resource for older lens recommendations? I'm probably looking at a 50mm prime and a fairly wide angle prime.

I have also ordered one of the cheap Duracell batteries from amazon as a backup as the battery life is not meant to be that great so don't want to just have the 1. Are they half decent? Or are any of the other aftermarket ones any good? (Perhaps I should have asked before I bought it!) I'm too cheap to shell out for the Sony ones which are probably no different inside. Also can I run it off a USB powerbank for timelapse stuff?

It's an original A7 with the 28-70 kit lens that I have ordered. I traded in my D7000, 50mm f1.4, 12-24 f4, 70-210 f4 and Samyang 8mm f3.5 and with the current Sony cashback I will have be slightly up on the cost of it. I didn't use the D7000 as often as I would have liked to and I'm hoping a slimming down on kit will make me take it out and use it a lot more. Also I only take photos, so the elderly A7 seemed like a good buy on a budget.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Raymond Lin]

If they have no electronic connection then there won’t be any metering.

 

[Greebo]

Seems it’s best if you can stretch to ones with electronic connectors.

For canon the https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...ex_pn_canon_ef_lens_to.html/BI/6784/KBID/7355 is highly recommended. Their manual Nikon version is as well.

I reckon either you should be able to get second hand for under £50.

http://briansmith.com/sony-a7-a7r-lens-mount-adapters/

 

[divuk83]

Thanks, I think full manual is the way to go, something like this:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1150786-REG/fotodiox_fd_nex_p_pro_lens_mount_adapter.html
I like the idea of getting inexpensive older lenses so spending loads on an adapter seems daft.

Dave

 

[Greebo]

They seem to be the best of the none branded ones.

 

[jonneymendoza]

Is talking about the original A7 acceptable in here or will I be killed/banned? Just swapped my D7000 and various lenses for one (which has yet to arrive) and I have a few questions about Sony stuff seeing as I only understand Nikon things!

Cheers

Dave

fire away, Although if we start discussing different sony camera's , the mods have said they will merge all together to create one "The official A7/A9 series thread sort of thing"

Thanks. It's more about the lens mount adapters. Are the cheap (Sub £20) ones any good? I can't really see much point in the posh ones that offer AF as they are so expensive, also I would rather get some older manual focus lenses. Do any of the slightly more expensive manual focus adapters have any kind of aperture feeler to allow any kind of metering? Can anyone recommend any specific ones? I was looking at old Canon FD or Minolta? Is there a good resource for older lens recommendations? I'm probably looking at a 50mm prime and a fairly wide angle prime.

I got the Canon fd mount adapter , a cheap one from ebay and it does the trick. AM able to set the appature fine on my canon fd lenses

I have also ordered one of the cheap Duracell batteries from amazon as a backup as the battery life is not meant to be that great so don't want to just have the 1. Are they half decent? Or are any of the other aftermarket ones any good? (Perhaps I should have asked before I bought it!) I'm too cheap to shell out for the Sony ones which are probably no different inside. Also can I run it off a USB powerbank for timelapse stuff?

Yea those batteries should be fine. plenty cheap on amazon. i dont think you can run off USB power on the 1st gen a7 cameras but i may be wrong

It's an original A7 with the 28-70 kit lens that I have ordered. I traded in my D7000, 50mm f1.4, 12-24 f4, 70-210 f4 and Samyang 8mm f3.5 and with the current Sony cashback I will have be slightly up on the cost of it. I didn't use the D7000 as often as I would have liked to and I'm hoping a slimming down on kit will make me take it out and use it a lot more. Also I only take photos, so the elderly A7 seemed like a good buy on a budget.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

what do you normally shoot?

 

[Richdog]

fire away, Although if we start discussing different sony camera's , the mods have said they will merge all together to create one "The official A7/A9 series thread sort of thing"

They should have already done this because it makes logical sense to have one thread for all A7 3rd gen / A9 due to the similarities. If they don't so it in the next few days then I will create a new thread because having separate ones with mixed discussion is confusing. It would be a shame to lose all this historical discussion though.

 

[jonneymendoza]

They should have already done this because it makes logical sense to have one thread for all A7 3rd gen / A9 due to the similarities. If they don't so it in the next few days then I will create a new thread because having separate ones with mixed discussion is confusing. It would be a shame to lose all this historical discussion though.

Maybe worth you sending them a request to do so like I did A while ago ?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

They should have already done this because it makes logical sense to have one thread for all A7 3rd gen / A9 due to the similarities. If they don't so it in the next few days then I will create a new thread because having separate ones with mixed discussion is confusing. It would be a shame to lose all this historical discussion though.

Bit of mis-information there @jonneymendoza ... you requested that we merge them all and I pointed out that one of the threads is 19 pages deep, whereas the others are relatively small.

Is it really necessary at this stage? Would the same logic apply for merging a 5D MkIII / MKIV / MKV thread as each camera is released? What if I merge all Canon threads? Bit of an over exaggeration but you get my point. Some users won't want to read about specific models which is why dedicated threads get created... I appreciate these are similar but you could argue the incremental updates to most bodies are similar enough to discuss in one thread.

Threads naturally die as new tech is released, keeping mega threads hanging around forever is messy. I'm happy to merge them if you really want but it cannot be undone.

 

[Richdog]

Bit of mis-information there @jonneymendoza ... you requested that we merge them all and I pointed out that one of the threads is 19 pages deep, whereas the others are relatively small.

Is it really necessary at this stage? Would the same logic apply for merging a 5D MkIII / MKIV / MKV thread as each camera is released? What if I merge all Canon threads? Bit of an over exaggeration but you get my point. Some users won't want to read about specific models which is why dedicated threads get created... I appreciate these are similar but you could argue the incremental updates to most bodies are similar enough to discuss in one thread.

Threads naturally die as new tech is released, keeping mega threads hanging around forever is messy. I'm happy to merge them if you really want but it cannot be undone.

Hi EVH. Thanks for merging the threads. I take your point but I think in this instance there is an unusual amount of crossover because the Sony 3rd generation cameras are fundamentally very similar in so many respects, more so than Canons or Nikons. So many principles can be applied for each camera that the various threads just ended up with mixed discussion. At the very least this thread should now serve as the central discussion thread, and then if people want to create sub threads for anything else they are free to do so. Thanks again.