On August 12th there will be a special A7rII live streaming at BHphoto (all info can be read here). Also Sony manager Kenta Honjo will be part of the panel and this may be the occasion to also discuss the A7rII “flaws”. Because as with any new cameras you will have issues and bugs. Some of them can be fixed by Sony via firmware update and some not. Here is the “A7rII issues” roundup:
Autofocus: Marko on Dpreview writes:
Today I got the new A7RII. Everything is very good. But I have one Problem with the SEL2470Z. When I focus with the camera AF-S (Focus-Field is green), everything from 35 to 70 mm has massive front focus and the object which should be in focus is blurry. This is heavier when I use F5.6 to F7.1 or higher and not so heavy in F4.0.
All other lenses work great !
Manuel Focus on the SEL2470Z works fine !
I don’t know, if this a Problem of the lens or a Problem of the new camera. I tried my old A7R and here everything is fine. When I use AF-C on the new AFRII I often got good focus, but not everytime. Can someone try this with the new A7RII and the SEL2470Z ? Should I send the lens to Sony for repair ? Or is it the new camera ? Thanks for helping !
RAW: Diglloyd says the A7rII Raw Files Are Still ‘Cooked’:
While I can double or quadruple sharpening on a Nikon D810 file with minimal ill effects, doing so on a Sony A7R or A7R II files looks godawful.
I have to be very careful with sharpening Sony A7R II files, just as I had to with Sony A7R and A7 II and A7 files. The raw files are pre-cooked. Very disappointing to see this practice continue with the A7R II, which has superb sensor quality.
Front focus issues: Marko on Dpreview writes:
Today I got the new A7RII. Everything is very good. But I have one Problem with the SEL2470Z. When I focus with the camera AF-S (Focus-Field is green), everything from 35 to 70 mm has massive front focus and the object which should be in focus is blurry. This is heavier when I use F5.6 to F7.1 or higher and not so heavy in F4.0. All other lenses work great !
Autofocus jitter: Bphoto writes on SonyAlphaForum:
Picked up new camera and my first lens (switched systems entirely today), the zeiss 55. Now I’ve noticed the lens is still using firmware v.1 and I don’t have my computer with me to try updating to v.2.
That said, I’m using P mode with afs and wide focus settings, and I’ll focus on something (accurately) as usual right? Then after I release the half-pressed shutter button, focus should (on af single) remain on target, but it jitters and loses focus intermittently and kinda jumps around.
Long expsoure chroma noise: Again Bphoto writes on SonyAlphaForum:
I had read about these Chinese tests and a few others indicating poor performance by the new camera with long exposures. This concerns me as I do a bit of nighttime astro and landscape stuff. I wanted to check it out before getting to bed so here’s a couple RAW crops showing what I think is chroma noise in shadows. You can see my adjustments on the right. I haven’t really seen such noise before. Not sure what’s causing this, but I hope it’s something that can and will be addressed via firmware. I never had anything like this with my Nikon. The JPEG versions, i’ll note, are so compressed that banding happens far sooner than would have on the Nikon /:
Long exposure affects dynamic range: Anonymous:
http://forum.xitek.com/thread-1485077-2-1-2.html. Here some chinese users in the largest chinese camera gear forum, were discussing the noise issue with long exposure. They are not blindly accusing Sony in the chinese scene. You can see a lot of comparison pictures of A7rII A7S D800 D800E D810 D810A(which is specialized in long exposure) 5DSR. Can the raw decoding softwares include Rawdigger, exiftool, Capture One Pro(Sony recommends), RawTherapee. Also, they are referring to a similar test JimKasson @dpreviewforum was doing. You can download the raw files if you look for links in this currently two-page post.
Conclusion: A7rII did perform worst (worst dynamic range, most noisy) of all cameras tested here, in terms of long exposure, no matter it’s low iso (100, for normal landspace) or high iso (3200 6400, for astronomical photography).
This is a long list o issues I hope Sony will tackle down. And while we are hear…please Sony also improve your service! If you want to become successful you have to give us great hardware (which yo do) great software (give us “real” RAW) and offer decent service (in some countries you really don’t do a decent job here).
Feel free to add your issue description on our SonyAlphaForum.
A7rII preorder list:
In USA: at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, SonyStore US, FocusCamera, Uniquephoto.
In Europe at Sony DE, UK, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, CH, AT, SE, FI, NO, PT. Wex UK.
In Asia at Digitalrev, CameraPro.
A7rII case:
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