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New A7II Users Reports

MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
I apologize if you are tired of pictures featuring a blocky black building, but I tried some more lenses with the A7II today, and .. well ..

All pics are 100% crops. As all samples today are from the A7II, the scaling doesn't matter.

Here is the Minolta 28/2 at f/4, courtesy of Manouch Shirzad.


Wide open, the lens has character - perhaps too much - point sources have weird halos (not visible in this capture).



Jumping to the long end, here's another great Minolta lens, the 70-210 f/4. This is full zoom and wide open!



IBIS is necessary at this point. If we stop down a bit and keep the ISO from shooting up, and turn stabilization off - ok, that's a lot of work to prove a point - we get



Here is the Canon 70-200/2.8L version 1 at 170mm and f/5.6. Although AF works with the metabones adapter, it is very slow, taking a few passes. Backing off from full zoom and stopping down makes Moire appear



And finally, the Canon 400/5.6 with 1.4x. This is hand held! Recall that the building is over half a mile away...



I'll try to photograph something else now,

Matt
 
D

dandrewk

New member
Battery usage PSA:

I do street photography, and usually that means keeping the camera on all the time. When doing this, especially with "pre AF" set to "on", the addition of IBIS really chews away battery life!

So, it's important to turn the camera off when not in use, especially if you are in the habit of not immediately replacing the lens cap. I know that's usually always good advice, but even more so with IBIS.
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
MGrayson said:
:facesmack:.. gonna be hard to sneak in another m43 lens after just getting an A7II and two zooms. And I was thinking about the Sony 55/1.8 and 70-200/4, too...

One thing I'm sure of, after trying several lenses via adapters - I want to stay with native glass. It's a neat trick to shoot a Canon 85/1.2L with the A7II via metabones, but I'd never trust the setup. I'm not even sure about the A-mount 85/1.4 now, and I'd love a low f-number 85.
Click to expand...
Matt you can try all my glass on the upcoming workshop.
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
This was a restaurant interior - fairly dark - so it was a good opportunity to try the Minolta 28/2 wide open. First the whole capture:



The mural renders beautifully but the lightbulbs look strange.



And speaking of that mural, here's the Minolta 70-210/4 at 210mm, wide open, and 1/10 second (thank you, IBIS!).



Dark room, long lens, long exposure, hand held. Yay!

--Matt
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Not much to show for pictures - I bet you're all as tired as I am of corners and motion blur. But I tried a bunch of M lenses. Really just confirming what has been widely reported:

CV 15/4.5 It's great. Since C1 v8.1 processes the A7II, I shot an LCC and that cleaned up the vignetting perfectly. Wider than the 16-35/4. And much smaller!

CV 21/4 Works better than I expected. Really good into the corners. Very similar to the

Zeiss 21/2.8 Biogon. Quite useable. Not quite as sharp in the corners as the CV.

Aside: It's easy to talk about a lens in the abstract, but it's the lens/sensor/software chain at work. You actually see people saying how bad the WATE is by its performance on a non-Leica camera... :loco:

Leica 28/2. Yep, it's corners are bad on the Sony. Great in the middle, nice look close up, but NOT for sharp everywhere landscape.

Leica 35/2. I have a type 1 from an M2. Weird bokeh near the edges, but a fine lens on the A7II.

CV 40/1.4 Nokton. Lovely look wide open but with slightly harsh bokeh near the edges.

Leica 50/2 Really sharp! Some vignetting at f/2, but sharp everywhere. Will have to compare this to the 55/1.8 someday.

Leica 50/1.4 pre-ASPH Beautiful, but not as sharp as the Cron in the corners.

I have a 50 Lux v1 and a 75 Cron, but not with me. Will try those soon. Also a bunch of Pentax 645 glass that I *could* mount with stacked adapters.

--Matt
 
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MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Thanks, Tom.

The minolta lenses are on loan. I'm still debating the fancy A mount adapter and A lenses. I got the Canons working with metabones, but the focus is really too slow to get the best out of them. The big hole for me is the 85/1.x. I'll have to play with the Sony Zeiss 85/1.4 and adapter to see how well it works.

--Matt
 
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
MGrayson said:
Thanks, Tom.

The minolta lenses are on loan. I'm still debating the fancy A mount adapter and A lenses. I got the Canons working with metabones, but the focus is really too slow to get the best out of them. The big hole for me is the 85/1.x. I'll have to play with the Sony Zeiss 85/1.4 and adapter to see how well it works.

--Matt
Click to expand...
The 85 1.4 ZA works really nice with the Lae4. Remember though it is a screw drive so not as fast as the SSM
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Guy Mancuso said:
The 85 1.4 ZA works really nice with the Lae4. Remember though it is a screw drive so not as fast as the SSM
Click to expand...
The adapter and lens gets expensive, especially if it's my only A lens. If Sony releases a native 85/1.8 that might be perfect. The roadmap suggests something like that for early 2015.

Probably end up with both.

Matt
 
scho

scho

Well-known member
Trying out my non-native, MF lenses on the A7II using the Phigment adapter M to E mount. New firmware allows creation and addition of custom lens profiles for correcting vignetting and color casts and also outputs lens info to exif. Focal length, max aperture, and shooting aperture used (latter must be set on camera and with lens aperture ring) are all written to exif. Can use lens coding for auto lens identification when mounted. Stacking adapters (e.g. Leica R to Leica M adapter to Phigment M to E) also works well.

Sample image using the CV 15mm f/4.5, click to open image and type (Mac) command-E for exif data:

 
P

Paratom

Well-known member
scho said:
Trying out my non-native, MF lenses on the A7II using the Phigment adapter M to E mount. New firmware allows creation and addition of custom lens profiles for correcting vignetting and color casts and also outputs lens info to exif. Focal length, max aperture, and shooting aperture used (latter must be set on camera and with lens aperture ring) are all written to exif. Can use lens coding for auto lens identification when mounted. Stacking adapters (e.g. Leica R to Leica M adapter to Phigment M to E) also works well.

Sample image using the CV 15mm f/4.5, click to open image and type (Mac) command-E for exif data:

Click to expand...
What one can see at this size looks fine IMO - even though this subject is not really demanding for the corner resolution. Thanks for posting this! I checked the 15CV on the Leica T and it didnt look so great.
 
B

benroy

Subscriber Member
Pardon me...I'm an old fartographer and get easily confused...re: 100% crop: when I crop 100%, I have reduced the image to nothing...how can you display 100% crop images?

Roy Benson
 
V

Vivek

Guest
Paratom said:
What one can see at this size looks fine IMO - even though this subject is not really demanding for the corner resolution. Thanks for posting this! I checked the 15CV on the Leica T and it didnt look so great.
Click to expand...
This has been known since NEX-5N days. The T uses that very same sensor in an expensive monobody.
 
V

Viramati

Member
scho said:
Trying out my non-native, MF lenses on the A7II using the Phigment adapter M to E mount. New firmware allows creation and addition of custom lens profiles for correcting vignetting and color casts and also outputs lens info to exif. Focal length, max aperture, and shooting aperture used (latter must be set on camera and with lens aperture ring) are all written to exif. Can use lens coding for auto lens identification when mounted. Stacking adapters (e.g. Leica R to Leica M adapter to Phigment M to E) also works well.

Sample image using the CV 15mm f/4.5, click to open image and type (Mac) command-E for exif data:

Click to expand...
Hi I see some corner colour problems here so am wondering if you have tried the correction tool in LR5 for voigtlander lenses. The 12mm one works pretty well but overdose the vignetting correction
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Roy,

Unlike film, which has no natural size scale, digital images, at least processed ones, have a natural smallest unit, the pixel. Computer monitors also have a (sometimes fictitious) notion of a pixel, and an image at "100%" or a "100% crop" is a 1-1 matching of image pixels to screen pixels. On a "retina display" where, by design, the pixels are too small to be seen at the usual viewing distance, "100%" is sometimes replaced by "200%", usually with no indication that the extra scaling has taken place.

--Matt
 
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