By site editor Dan Chung:
With Sony’s new A7 and A7R finally reaching dealer’s shelves, several well known users have been putting them through their paces. Their first impressions seem to tally with my own observations from the brief play I had with the cameras at Inter BEE in Japan. The images from both are quite clean but do not resolve as well as video cameras like the C100 or Sony FS700. They also seem to exhibit fair amounts of aliasing and moire in common with cameras like the Sony NEX7, Alpha99 or Canon 7D. This is likely the result of the way pixel binning is used to downscale the high megapixel image captured by the sensor to HD resolution. It’s not all bad news though, as the camera handles well and has a OLED viewfinder that negates the need for a Zacuto Z-finder or similar LCD loupe – keeping the whole shooting package small. They are certainly the smallest full-frame video-capable cameras around right now.
Curl Curl Dawn. Sony Alpha 7r from Jason Wingrove on Vimeo.
Director and Cinematographer Jason Wingrove of the RC podcast has been shooting with the A7R. His lovely low light footage was shot at 50P then conformed to 25fps. The camera was set to neutral picture style, and the footage cropped to 2.35, with no post sharpening. Light grading was done in Premiere Pro CC. Although the camera image is not technically perfect, the video ably demonstrates that a keen eye and some nice glass can produce beautiful results.
He shot with Dog Schidt Optiks modded Contax 50mm f/1.4, Zeiss ZE 35mm f/1.4, Rokinon 14mm cinestyle and Contax 135mm f/2 all mounted with a no name EF mount adapter.
Cinema5D have also taken a look at the aliasing and moire of the Alpha7 and 7R in comparison to the Canon 5D mkIII. They note that both Sony cameras exhibit stronger aliasing than the 5D mkIII.
Resolution / Aliasing / Comparison: Sony A7 vs. A7r vs. Canon 5D mark III from cinema5D on Vimeo.
Lastly Johnnie Behiri of Cinema5D has shot with the A7 on a behind-the-scenes video and written a short review which you can read here.
Sony A7-first look from Johnnie Behiri on Vimeo.
