Reviews on gear and software

Sony A7r with Leica R glass

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As many of you asked me about 3rd party glass on the Sony I’ve decided to do some testing this weekend with different convertors and glass.
Many thanks to our friends at CameraNU.nl for lending us the convertors.
Before you look at the samples do remember that the samples (and crops) are not straight out of the camera… well almost, the only thing I do with retouching is change the color and retouch the skin, so there is no “freaky” stuff going on, all retouching I do is always done within a few minutes per shot, for the crops it doesn’t matter but I did want to mention it.

 

Now the first thing I REALLY like about the A7r is the compatibility with so many different lenses out there, with the Kipon convertors I already can mount M42, Leica M and Leica R glass but with the Metabones convertors you can even mount Nikon and Canon glass (including the AF on some lenses from Canon, but VERY slow) which makes this system I think the best camera out there for compatibility, I know a lot of Leica shooters out there are drooling over the option to use their glass on a 36MP camera with the dynamic range of the Sony.

 

The first test is with a Kipon convertor for Leica R glass.
Here you see the two cameras next to each other.

Leica en Sony-1 On the Sony you see the 50mm f2.0 with Kipon and on the R4 a 135mm lens.
As you can see the Kipon does add some “body” to the A7r but it’s still a nicely balanced combination, and even with the 135mm I never actually felt that it was unstable or “too” long.

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Sony A7r review part II small flash and more

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During the workshop this weekend with small flash I also used the Sony A7r.
This will be a shorter review than the last one by the way.

nadine-789

For the flash control I used the Phottix Odin system which appears to be working just fine on the A7r.
There was an occasional misfire but from all the shots we took during the workshop this only happened three times and resulted in a highly overexposed image, I think this will be ironed out in the final version of the camera, if it’s a fault of the camera, even it it won’t be solved it’s not really a problem seeing that it only happened three times, but if you experience it you at least know you’re not alone.

 

During the small flash workshop it’s not particularly bright in the studio, but the autofocus of the A7r worked like a charm, it locked on reasonably fast, the only time it had real problems when I tried to focus on the red material you see in the sample shots. Changing the spot to large solved this problem. (I’m using the smallest spot normally).

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Sony A7r part I

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A lot of times something is released (or announced) and the words revolutionary, best in it’s class, world chancing etc. are used to make people more interested in the new product. Most of the times I have to be honest that I’m disappointed, yeah sometimes there are some things that are really new and cool but most of the times it’s just the same “old” thing in a new jacket……

Sanne Suikerfabriek October 31 2013 -65

However when I read the announcement of the new Sony A7r I was going like “oh…. I have to see that one”.

 

Now before we go any further I have to make something 100% crystal clear. I’m NOT paid by Sony, I’m NO Sony fanboy. However over the last year I’ve sold my Canon 5DMKIII for the Sony A99 and I recently switched away from my MacBook Pro to a Sony DUO 13, which I paid 100% out of my own pocket by the way. Sony did lend me a camera for this review and 2 lenses, but the review you will read today (and the coming days) are 100% my honest opinion.

 

Now why this disclaimer……
Well very simple because this camera is awesome and I wanted to make sure that you don’t think it’s an advertorial for Sony.

 

Let’s first take a look at the camera itself:
sony-a7r

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Innovatronix XT-3 review

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Shooting on location is still one of the best things to do, however not everyone will have the budget to buy into 2 systems, one for the studio and one for on location. In our studio we use a mix of Elinchrom units in the studio and 2 Elinchrom Rangers and a Quadra for the location work, but I have to be honest it’s quite an investment of course, especially when you don’t shoot on location for your work (get paid) or if you just shoot on location a few times. In the past there have been some solutions to get your “studio” strobes working on location but I have to be honest that I never really was truly excited about them, well that has changed. Let me start with how this story evolved…..

 

I love to use smoke on location, to get the smoke working we always bring a Kipor gas generator which works very well, and it can even power your strobes (make sure you get a clear Sinus version because otherwise it will fry your strobes) but let’s be honest it’s noisy and especially in locations where there are houses close by and you shoot at night well let’s say that it’s better to have something silent, so I started researching a portable accupack to power my smoke machine. Very soon I ended up with the company Innovatronix, in the past I already used one of their battery powered packs and sold it when I switched to rangers, at that point it was an ok solution but it was not perfect (far from), the guys at Innovatronix were so kind to send me their XT-3 for a review to see if it worked on the smoke machines and to let me play with it, what follows is purely my opinion so don’t read it as an in depth look at the system, just my working experience with it.

 

xt3 230v50hz 300x300 schuko [a]5

 

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