Iron Creek Photography®: Sony A7rII

f/4 1/30 ISO 160 (handheld)

FE24-70 @ 33mm

Sunrise at 7 AM

Sandy had been using a Canon 1DsIII until the winter of 2013 when she decided to try the new Sony A7r. Part of the decision in changing systems stemmed from weight and size differences between the 1DsIII and A7r with the Sony being a fraction of both weight and size. Additionally there was the size difference between Canon and Sony lenses; while both offer outstanding image quality the size (both size and weight) difference is substantial. Sandy quickly found she enjoyed shooting a mirrorless camera and we sold the Canon gear.

As shared on Instagram

f/8 1/125 ISO 50 (handheld)

FE24-70 @ 24mm 8:22 AM

f/11 1/125 ISO 50

FE24-70 @ 24mm (handheld)

8:23 AM

Sony released the A7r towards the end of 2013 and we happened to get it while shooting in Jackson Hole WY which offered a great place to test. The A7r offers a 36.6 megapixel full-frame Exmor CMOS sensor with no optical low pass filter. Sony upped their game earlier this year with the new a7r II which boasts 42-megapixel full-frame Exmor R CMOS senor as well as 5-Axis steady shot stabilization. The stabilization is worth the price of upgrade by itself. Sandy ended up upgrading her A7r to the A7r II June of this year.

f/11 1/160 ISO 50

FE16-35 @ 35mm (handheld)

7:46 AM

While we’ve had the newer A7r II for the past couple months we hadn’t really had the opportunity to try it out in extreme conditions thus we were looking forward to our Bryce Canyon trip a couple weeks ago. We spent 4-days in Bryce shooting in extreme weather conditions ranging from very cold, very windy and low light. We had wind gusts of over 40MPH (64KLM) and temperatures ranging from a low of 10 to a high of 35 (-10 to 1 C); the average wind chill was in the neighborhood of -14 (-25 C). Suffice it to say it was very cold in the morning as we waited for sunrise and we did this 4-days in a row.

As shared on Instagram

f/8 1/160 ISO 50

FE16-35 @ 16mm (handheld) 11:43 AM

Same shot as shared on Instagram

f/11 1/160 ISO 50

FE16-35 @ 35mm (handheld)

So the question to ask is just how well did the Sony A7r II do in these conditions. The short answer is very well. We were pleased in the overall performance of the camera as well as the lenses used on the trip. Power consumption was as expected which was good and the lenses used were equally exceptional. Sandy used a combination of the Sony FE 16-35 and 24-70. All of the shots included here were taken handheld with shutter speeds as low as 1/15 (ISO 50) and as high as 1/400 (ISO 50).

The following is an example of just how well the 5-axis stabilization works.

f/5 1/15 ISO 50 6:50 AM

FE 24-70 @ 24mm (handheld)

Notice the shutter speed!

The red box shows the approximate area of the 100% crop

100% crop

The following are more samples from the trip.

f/8 1/60 ISO 50

FE24-70 @ 70mm (handheld)

7:07 AM

Bryce Point

f/8 1/125 ISO 50 8:22 AM

FE 24-70 @ 24mm (handheld)

Cropped to suite

multi-shot merged into a pano (handheld)

f/11 1/250 ISO 50

FE 24-70 @ 30mm 11:55 AM

Hopefully you can see from the samples provided here why we like the Sony A7r II so much. Lightweight, full-frame 35mm camera with 5-axis stabilization in camera that allows for handheld shots in difficult conditions that other systems would not be able to achieve.