Hear hear..
I was 5 minutes and 29 seconds away buying an A7R when it launched those days, but thought... hey wait until its bads shows up. I did not regret. A7R is a tripod camera to me. It takes really a great deal of shooting discipline to handle 36 MP's, and then came the very bad news about the shutter shake.
What made me choose the EM1 system instead of the Sony A's was exactly the huge selection of quality glass available in the MFT world.
Then came the A7S and what a camera it is. I deeply recommend it, your files will show you abundance of beauty and wonderful tonality. Very true there's some MF look to the files.
Still we are back to the missing FE lenses and looking at the road map... puhhh... no comfort in that. So here I stand with a lovely camera and left with a headache what to throw on them.. except going bulky again.
Do you expect some FE lens surprises at Photokina?
How terribly impatient and entitled we all have become.
This initial A7R/A7 camera, and the A7S model that followed in short order, is a young system barely dry behind the ears. It represents a push into uncharted territory and all that implies as Sony moves forward.
Unlike Leica, Canon, Nikon, Oly, Fuji, etc., Sony has no heritage of making lenses … they partially bought one with the acquisition of Minolta, but mostly have come to rely on their partnership with Zeiss. In my experience, Zeiss has never been all that fast at pumping out lenses. Plodding would be more accurate. I'd bet that Sony didn't pull the financial trigger on more FE lenses until they were sure this system was accepted and was selling. After all, the whole camera business has been nosediving and shaky for years now.
What we tend to overlook is the revolution that Nikon introduced with the D800 that jumped to the top of the DSLR heap (and did it at 1/2 the price anyone would have expected) … has been continued with a camera even less expensive and 1/2 the size. Pretty astounding if you ask me.
A Tripod camera? If you insist. Not only has mine never been on a tripod, it doesn't even have the strap installed … I use a wrist strap which is a clear indication of how I position this camera.
Is it demanding? Sure. Can you lose some of its potential in certain shooting circumstances? You bet.
However, like with almost any other camera, I would submit that we are smart enough and skillful enough to avoid its weakness and exploit its strengths … while forgiving somethings when we delibertly override what we know as a weakness … because we still got a great shot that may only equal one from a 12, 16, or 22 meg camera … without the expense of a 12, 16, or 22 meg camera.
Plus, when you expand the narrow band of use usually discussed here to include other uses, the A7R suddenly becomes a revelation. For example, I recently slapped my Profoto AIR transmitter on the A7R and shot in "beyond crappy" low light @ ISO 320 and 400 instead of ISO 3200 or 4000 … where flash duration doesn't care about shutter speed or anything else related to the shutter. Instead of comparing this camera to some 12 meg version, this application pushes it into comparisons with the IQ of a MFD camera … without the drawbacks of a lumbering MFD kit.
-Marc
