Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai. In this video I'm going to talk about the Sony A7.
Thanks the Camera Craft and Rockford Illinois for let me try this out at
their shop. The Sony A7 is still sold new. Right now, it's around eight hundred
dollars retail. Back when it was initially released it was $1700, so a
pretty significant drop in price. However you do have the A7ii and the iii out
now. So I'm going to talk about this camera and see if it is an interesting
option still. Has a 24.3 megapixel full-frame sensor with
optical anti-aliasing filter. That lowers the chance of moire in images, but you
do lose a little bit of sharpness with that filter. ISO range from 50 boosted
all the way up to 25,600. Autofocus wise, it has a
hybrid contrast and phase detection system. 25 contrast detect areas
and then 117 phase detect areas. Those are grouped in the
middle of the sensor, so it doesn't fill the whole frame. There is an option in
the settings to turn on a box on the screen that shows you where the phase
detect areas are. Video wise, it goes up to 1080p 60 frames a second. That is
encoded at 28 megabits. Flash sync speed of 1/250th of a second.
The camera does have a magnesium casing, very nice and solid. Viewfinder wise, 100%
viewpoint 0.71x magnification, 2.3 million pixels in the viewfinder. It does look a
little bit pixelated compared to more recent cameras. It does have a 3-inch
tilting LCD. It is not a touchscreen. 1/8000th of a second maximum
shutter speed. It does have the electronic first curtain mode if you
want to use that. Makes it a little bit quieter, and a little bit faster. Five
frames a second continuous shooting mode on the camera. The battery is physically
tiny. You do suffer for that. It's a NP-FW50. With a CIPA rating from
270 photos to 340 photos depending on if you use the viewfinder or the back
screen, and also around 60 to a hundred minutes of video recording time.
Ports wise, USB 2 port, HDMI port with the clean uncompressed output, microphone,
headphone jack. Ergonomics wise.. physical features wise..
This is one of the smallest, or probably the smallest full-frame interchangeable
lens camera out there. It's before they added the in-body image stabilization, so
it's pretty thin for a camera like this. The video record button is on the side
of the thumb rest. The shutter button is an older style. It's kind of vertical so
it really depends on you if it'll work with your fingers easily. I did feel a
little bit cramped while using it, but I had used another camera earlier for
about an hour. So I was definitely starting to feel it. The front dial has a
sharp edge to it. It's a little difficult to adjust. There is a single SD card slot.
Oddly it goes from the back of the camera to the front of the camera, but it
does work well. It fits... Again, it is a single card slot, so if you need some
type of in-camera backup just keep that in mind. There is a switch button combo
that defaults to either autofocus/manual focus or AE-L modes. With autofocus/
manual focus you have that set. And then you press the button to switch to manual
focus. I did test out the peaking feature with that. It's pretty quick and easy to
use. You just hold that button down and then you can do peaking with a standard
autofocus lens. Peaking wise it does have the three levels of peaking. Three
colors of peaking. A setting to have the zoom automatically show up with a
distance scale. I think that's one of the more interesting features of this camera,
which we'll get to. I mentioned peaking, but it also has the zebra feature for
exposure aid which is nice. There's no locks for the dials mean you can
accidentally change something like the exposure compensation pretty easily.
There are two memory save slots on the main dial, which is always nice to see. That way
you can get custom settings for whatever you want to set up. General economics wise,
pretty solid little camera. I think that's really one of the best selling
points of this camera these days is that it is very compact for the full-frame
sensor, and interchangeable lenses. I've been considering one of these as
potentially something to use with adapted lenses. That way I have the
full-frame sensor. Could be a really nice option potentially. Especially used. It's
getting down there in price a little bit, and it's making it more interesting.
Autofocus speed felt average. It will really depend on long-term use to see
how it works in practice. If you want something with really good
autofocus you want to get one of the newer cameras. The A7iii especially.
Let's talk about who this camera could be for these days. The first one is someone on a
budget that wants a full-frame mirrorless camera. This is one of your cheapest
options. Someone that wants a very compact mirrorless full-frame camera
that has interchangeable lenses. They have a lot of old film era lenses that
they want to adapt to something. I think this is a pretty solid option in that
case. That's the main reason I'm considering this camera is the smaller
size being able to adapt lenses and still have that full-frame sensor. If you
are looking for in-camera stabilizer, you want to go with the ii or the iii version
of the A7. If you want the better battery life, you want to go for the iii version of
A7. Better autofocus, again, go for the A7iii. Really depends on your budget
though. I do think this is an interesting option still, but you have to keep in mind
the autofocus system and all of that. So that was a quick look at the A7. Hope you
enjoyed this video. Again, thanks Camera Craft for let me try this out at
their shop. if you did enjoy this video please consider subscribing, that helps
me out a lot. Likes and shares help out a lot as well.
Thanks again!