[•] Sony A7II Camera with Legacy Glass Review

First part of review with Leica then Canon FD.

Firstly to attach the lens to the Sony I use a Metabones Leica M to E Mount adaptor. Its important to use a quality adaptor as the cheaper ones rattle apart and this could land you in trouble with the loss of quality in your photograph and or have a lens fall off. Just not worth the risk to break or damage a lens. I find the Metabones is a really clean tight fit and snaps into place. I generally prefer to shoot with a 28mm focal length lens at the moment especially on the Sony but many different focal lens work exceptionally well. I rate the menu setup its straight forward and easy to use and what works best is the quick assignment to change the settings manually to correct focal length of the desired lens attached.

Focusing is very easy with a manual lens as you can punch in a digital zoom X1.0, X5.9, X11.7 having a digital viewfinder to finesse the focus of each shot you take is an amazing upgrade from a DSLR. I do not recommended this setup for sports unless you use newer Sony lenses.In the past I have used battery grips but for this camera being much smaller adding the grip makes it feel better in hand more controlled and well balanced. The battery grip addition helps with locking the pinky finger to the camera making it more secure. A7II isn’t the highest in Megapixels at 24.3MP, I just don’t need a 40 MP camera in full frame and either does my harddrive space. Digital capture does add up when you shoot RAW and make sure you set the camera to uncompressed.

Overall I give the Sony a 6.5 out of 10 but the score equates for a number of reasons. At times the camera has internal conflict and will not respond. As I use legacy glass on the camera with the Metabones adapter the small issue at times can happen when I press custom assigned button C2 for digital zoom the Sony goes black. Other times it can lock up and loose the shutter and aperture settings and default back to another setting. It could be the firmware 3.30 and I will look at resetting the camera and see if that fixes the issue.

There is so much potential with the Sony A7 series and could easily achieve a 10 out of 10. But the main concern for me is when the camera is not responsive and this can be at crucial times when you really want to take a photograph.

The ability to shoot with any older lens like Canon FD with Metabones FD to E Mount adapter makes it a hands down winner in the full frame mirrorless category. This is because there are many second hand lenses for sale on eBay allowing you to build a substantial photographers kit at a decent price compared to purchasing a set of new Sony lenses. The A7 Series does take newer Canon EF lenses with a Commlite or Metabones speed booster adapter but I’m not 100% confident on doing this as I’m concerned with ruining the electronics in the lens. Nothing worse than having the electronic aperture control die in a lens and can be a costly repair.There’s one downside to shooting with older vintage lenses you must write down what your aperture settings are and enter it manually into the EXIF data via Adobe Bridge on PC. I have found that because I switch between lenses at times I’m trying to remember which lens did I use and what setting. The only way to do this is write the settings down in a moleskin book the same as you would if you shoot film.

On one important note is the 5-Axis SteadyShot INSIDE Stabilization otherwise known as IBIS, In Built Images Stabilization with the sensor is an added bonus and something we are used to seeing in modern lenses. Sony has really taken this one step further in the technology department compared to the competition. Many Sony users will really benefit from this especially when using older lenses that normally are not stabilized.
At times I’m really comfortable shooting at 1/50th of a second and can trust the camera to perform to produce sharp images at such slow shutter speeds. No more worry about mirror slap like the DLSR. Really a wow feature and reminds me of shooting with a Leica rangefinder which also allows you to shoot if needed at speeds under 1/60th second.
I do give Sony credibility for risking the release of a mirrorless camera and because Sony takes chances with this type of camera development I thought it was a good enough reason to purchase and try the A7II. I think this is an important reminder we need to support camera companies doing something different even if the product is not 100% perfect. Isn’t photography all about trying different things and testing the boundary’s. I’m all for creating a signature look to my photographs and you can do this with Canon FD and Leica glass. The results are stunning.Well done Sony now lets fix these small issues to make it even better.

Purchase Camera Here: Sony Alpha a7II Mirrorless Digital Camera – Body Only https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00PX8CHO6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00PX8CHO6&linkCode=am2&tag=pazrahn-20&linkId=ec66da2c75122f808f30b2059911c2fe

Regards,

[•] p 🔺 z r 🔺 h n

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