A7R Disappointing Low Temperature Performance

[neelin]

A shoot this morning for spring attire:

-22C (not including wind chill)
First off I believe my 32g UHS-1 94m/s Sony card might be very temp. fickle. Over the years I've found SD cards to be the weakest link in low temperature digital photography.

I think I found another. Most of these were simple shots (I normally use manual focus for simple tripod shots). This time my relatively new FE16-35 and my A7R were put on AF. The green focus confirmation grouped around the model, yet at least 50% of my shots (1/1600 f/8 ISO200) appeared to be focused on infinity. More investigation is in order.

We shot for about 3 minutes at at time & I brought the camera back to the car with the model because the SD card was so fickle.

Yes that is a coconut fiber planter on her head

Robert

 

[turtle]

IMO multiple AF spots is a recipe for disaster. When you can move the focus point around, why would you rely upon anything but a precise focus point? When doing so, I have not once found my A7 or A7R to miss. If you use individual focus points in future, I am confident you won't have this problem again, regardless of temperature. That said, -22 + wind chill will tax many cameras, especially if exposed for a long time for the cold to seep deep into the camera, affect batteries, lubricants etc.

 

[neelin]

Well I knew the only way to break the cold weather up here was to do a bare leg shoot on a cold day. Yep, we're now getting above zero in the days!

I guess I won't be able to test this until next winter but I am going to be experimenting and closely watching this. As for the SD cards, I think I'll elastic on one of the chemical hand warmer packs right beside the sd card. I'll probably go back to manual focus for tripod shots.

Thanks for the tip about multi points/ single points focus. Next time I will try single point for this kind of subject. My old M8 pretty much only had SD issues at cold temps (within reason, but we do have some unreasonable temps here).