Craig Stocks
Well-known member
My wife and I had the opportunity to spend the winter on Maui in Hawaii and I decided to pick up a Sony a7RII and Sony 24-70 GM lens to bring rather than bringing the XF and IQ 3100. The overriding reason was weight and size of the kit. I've now been shooting with it for a number of weeks and wanted to share my thoughts. This isn't a review, and it isn't intended to argue that one is better than the other. But others may be in a similar position and wondering the relative merits.
I've been shooting mostly beach sunsets plus a few astro landscapes. You can see a selection of images at https://craigstocksarts.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Hawaii-Fine-Art-Landscapes/.
Pluses:
The Sony setup definitely satisfied my goal of a smaller kit that could easily be carried aboard even small commuter planes. There is ample room in a medium Domke bag for the a7RII, Canon 14mm and 70-200 f/2.8 lenses as well as accessories and even a hot shoe flash. I even have room for my Sony a6000 + Zeis 16-70 mm zoom "hiking camera" in the same bag. Of course, with the smaller camera you also get smaller lenses and a smaller tripod.
The Sony has good DR and high ISO capability
Ease of use (sort of goes along with size). The Sony is easy to carry down to the beach at sunset every night and sometimes I don't even take my tripod sine it's so easy to use handheld (high ISO, image stabilization, no mirror lock-up to worry about).
The flip-up LCD rear screen is very handy for low-angle shots.
Minuses:
Color in some images is difficult to work with but it does seem that Capture One does a better job than Lightroom, especially for those images that don't have great color to start with.
Resolution is nowhere near the IQ3100. It seems to be a combination of raw pixel resolution and quality of the lenses. The images just don't have the snap you get from the IQ3100 and I believe even fall short of what I previously got from my IQ260.
The Zeis lenses seem fairly prone to lens flare, much more so than most of the Schneider lenses so I have to be careful with sunset images.
I really miss some of the XF tools, such as using the hyperfocus tool to set a reliable infinity focus for astro landscapes. I find the Sony pretty difficult to focus for stars and have now purchased as Sharp Star filter to see if that helps. Oddly the a6000 + Zeis 16-70 is easier to focus at night since I've found I can just manually focus to the very start of infinity. With the 24-70 mm it seems to end up around 29 meters, well below the infinity setting.
I'm not sure if it's a plus or minus since I don't have enough experience with both systems, but astro landscapes seem to have pluses and minus. The Sony seems to do a better job of capturing the unique colors of individual stars, but I believe it's because it's not as sharp as the Phase One. With the XF / IQ3100 + 35mm LS and a tracking mount stars are rendered as very fine points of light (good). But, they are so finely focused that they tend to blow out the color (a challenge). With the Sony stars seem to be soft enough that they are less prone to blowing out. I'll have to wait until summer to really have a valid opinion with the Milky Way. The Sony does seem to have at least one or two stops advantage on ISO.
Overall I feel like the Sony is a valuable addition to my tool chest but it will never replace the Phase One for most of my "serious" photography. The Sony is good enough that I don't regret buying it, but it's not so good that I regret having bought the Phase One kit.
Just my 2 cents.
I've been shooting mostly beach sunsets plus a few astro landscapes. You can see a selection of images at https://craigstocksarts.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Hawaii-Fine-Art-Landscapes/.
Pluses:
The Sony setup definitely satisfied my goal of a smaller kit that could easily be carried aboard even small commuter planes. There is ample room in a medium Domke bag for the a7RII, Canon 14mm and 70-200 f/2.8 lenses as well as accessories and even a hot shoe flash. I even have room for my Sony a6000 + Zeis 16-70 mm zoom "hiking camera" in the same bag. Of course, with the smaller camera you also get smaller lenses and a smaller tripod.
The Sony has good DR and high ISO capability
Ease of use (sort of goes along with size). The Sony is easy to carry down to the beach at sunset every night and sometimes I don't even take my tripod sine it's so easy to use handheld (high ISO, image stabilization, no mirror lock-up to worry about).
The flip-up LCD rear screen is very handy for low-angle shots.
Minuses:
Color in some images is difficult to work with but it does seem that Capture One does a better job than Lightroom, especially for those images that don't have great color to start with.
Resolution is nowhere near the IQ3100. It seems to be a combination of raw pixel resolution and quality of the lenses. The images just don't have the snap you get from the IQ3100 and I believe even fall short of what I previously got from my IQ260.
The Zeis lenses seem fairly prone to lens flare, much more so than most of the Schneider lenses so I have to be careful with sunset images.
I really miss some of the XF tools, such as using the hyperfocus tool to set a reliable infinity focus for astro landscapes. I find the Sony pretty difficult to focus for stars and have now purchased as Sharp Star filter to see if that helps. Oddly the a6000 + Zeis 16-70 is easier to focus at night since I've found I can just manually focus to the very start of infinity. With the 24-70 mm it seems to end up around 29 meters, well below the infinity setting.
I'm not sure if it's a plus or minus since I don't have enough experience with both systems, but astro landscapes seem to have pluses and minus. The Sony seems to do a better job of capturing the unique colors of individual stars, but I believe it's because it's not as sharp as the Phase One. With the XF / IQ3100 + 35mm LS and a tracking mount stars are rendered as very fine points of light (good). But, they are so finely focused that they tend to blow out the color (a challenge). With the Sony stars seem to be soft enough that they are less prone to blowing out. I'll have to wait until summer to really have a valid opinion with the Milky Way. The Sony does seem to have at least one or two stops advantage on ISO.
Overall I feel like the Sony is a valuable addition to my tool chest but it will never replace the Phase One for most of my "serious" photography. The Sony is good enough that I don't regret buying it, but it's not so good that I regret having bought the Phase One kit.
Just my 2 cents.