all right so a7RIV I'm with Colby Brown a Sony Artisan who actually got to use
it for what how long about 12 days in Alaska 12 days in Alaska we're looking at
some photos here now tell me what was your first takeaway using the camera we
were first impressions well I think the biggest thing that I learned early on
was that the camera is kind of a bit of both a evolutionary you know kind of
jump and revolutionary in certain aspects once you dive into the details
you know little things like the hand grips the new economics really make the
camera feel better in the hand buttons are more tactile larger especially for
myself who has big hands it kind of makes a big difference which is a common
complaint quite large oh yeah oh those are massive common complaint for a
mirrorless cameras right they're too small to me the biggest thing was more
so when you started combining the increase of 18 megapixels to 61
megapixels you get IBIS is it's been designed specifically for these high
resolution sensors autofocus you know coming from coming aspects of it from
the a9 and you know you just have this this high amount of detail that you just
couldn't get in a camera before especially for a full-frame what alone
mirrorless so I should mention that you are particularly at landscape wildlife
travel photographer correct yeah I shoot a wide variety of things but it's pretty
much everything outside of a studio I work in remote places around the world
and I prefer to be outdoors the interesting thing for me about this
camera is that yes you're getting 15 stops of dynamic range which is great my
landscape photographers which we had close to that with the a7RIII but because
you can now use this camera with wildlife and other things with the
improved autofocus and the 60 megapixels you now have or I have increased dynamic
range to use in those situations whereas like the a9 or the a7III always
offered slightly less dynamic range than the a7RIII so it's again combining best
of both worlds where I'm getting the benefits of dynamic range in situations
with camera bodies I previously didn't get because of the limitations of
previous generations so I think one of the things that stood out to me that I
wrote down was like all this is perfect for wildlife is the image quality but
also matched with the speed you know again with the a7RIII when I'd
use it for a wild life in the past I would mostly focus on animals that
weren't moving so fast just because it was a little bit inconsistent once you
had fast moving subjects and I usually reach for my a9 or a7III if I needed a
backup or didn't have my a9 in close proximity but with this camera it's kind
of changed the game a bit so I'm able to photograph bald eagles at full speed
flying towards me and getting every single frame in focus as it's coming at
me which is the most challenging aspect of any wildlife you know situation
really any situation where you get a fast-moving subject coming directly at
you and this camera can do that with 60 megapixels which is a bit ridiculous the
other thing that they mentioned too was now you know how I have IAF we're not
just humans but animals so I'm wondering what animals were you using your I am so
IAF for animals you know typically sony says that you know cats and dogs are
what it's mainly for right now that being said I went out and I was spending
most of my time out there photographing Alaska coastal brown bears as well as
birds like bald eagles both mature and juvenile and my experiences the Bears
actually did very well I'd say probably about 85% of the time it was able to
find the eyes and track and stay with it every once in a while you'd still get a
little bit of a glitch because the AI is kind of improving their birds are a
little bit of a different situation the bird's faces there's so much you know
diversity and so I think that's just gonna take time as the AI improves
across the board with all the different new models that have AI for wildlife
they must have a zoologist on staff making sure that there's honors of
families across all animal kingdom's I took bioenhancement
let's talk a little bit about the resolution here 61 megapixels help you
is that important you for sharpness or is that more important for cropping do
you crop a lot or no it's it depends on what I'm photographing but I think for
myself and especially for wildlife oftentimes we can't control how close we
are to animals at least if we're taking safety into account you know our lenses
can only take us so far and so having the ability to have a 61 megapixel
full-frame image if I can fill the frame is awesome but
times than not you know it's like this situation where I'm photographing you
know these bears playing I'm quite a far away cuz I don't want to get between the
mother and the two little ones don't want to be between that and I definitely
don't want to be between the mom who was not too far away and so being able to
crop in is a pretty big deal and so with the a7R for what I did is I customized
one of the buttons on the back of the camera to essentially jump me into aps-c
mode it's gonna ask you about that yeah yeah and so I can quickly do that on the
fly and the result is a 26 megapixel image and so well what would happen in
this particular part of Brooks Falls is that there's all these seagulls around
the seagulls are kind of a scavenger is taking the leftovers of the fit of your
nurse they're everywhere and so what was interesting is there was actually the
telltale sign when the bald eagles were coming in so what happened is the bears
are fish in doing their thing all of a sudden I'd look up and all the seagulls
would be like we're out of here and then I look around I would say okay where is
the bald eagle coming in because you knew that it was coming in steal one of
the fish that was missing and so that was a signal in this shot essentially I
saw all the seagulls take off I look over to my right and coming up the river
was the bald eagle and so I had all the settings that were already kind of
dialed in you know this image was shot at ISO 1250 I was at almost you know 600
millimeters which is the 200 is 600 shot at f6.3 and 1/2000 of a
second and essentially turned it it locked on right away and then continued
to track it as it was flying at me at full speed it's gonna change the way
that I photograph it's gonna change the way that I approached certain types of
genres and it's gonna open up a lot more doors whereas previously as I said I had
to bring a mixture of cameras to kind of photograph different types of things it
seems to have taken the best elements of the a7R series improved upon them based
on feedback from people like myself and you know customers out there that have
been looking for certain you know iterations to improve on and then hold
the best parts of the a9 and kind of created this this mixture and made the
camera much more versatile than it ever was before awesome alright Colby Brown
my pleasure my man thanks man thanks for having me enjoy
the a7RIV I can't wait to get my hands on it This is Jake with B&H just keep shooting