Updated: Fresh from Tennessee - Sony A7R real-world samples

High tech and Tennessee... high-contrast situation right there. ;-)

The venom, small-mindedness, and mean-spiritedness shown by posters on this forum is really amazing. I've tried to understand what motivates these hateful people. An arrested emotional development is all I can come up with. People locked in a 10 year old's mind.

If you find yourself about to type something not only mean, but worthless, please reconsider. Then maybe ask yourself if you could be a better person if you tried.

People on this forum would appreciate it. And I bet the people in your own personal life (if you have any) would appreciate it too.

For the supremely intelligent who hate the stupid people here, and for the rest of us too, Shawn is back from the Sony PR event, this time with beautiful pictures of some great sexy models in excellent lighting conditions (sunny indoors - where is the cashier?) :-)
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/10/31/tennessee-in-full-frame-sony-alpha-7-real-world-samples

The pictures are stunning from a technical point of view! This is medium-format quality in your palm.

DPR: Did you use a tripod to get optimal sharpness?

Some people who commented here don't know the difference between camera review and photographic art. With tripod or not, the pictures are super sharp. And this is only jpg so far. The IQ, which is what's evaluated here, is very impressive. Thank you DPR!

another photographer took sample shots of the A7r in Tennessee also. Looks like the same people on horse. Sony must be in TN for some reason. He got some better shots indeed, but with a better lens.

Steve Huff:
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2013/10/30/day-two-sony-a7-and-a7r-with-zeiss-otus-and-more/#respond

For all the big talk about how indifferent the photos are I am quite sure that they far exceed the quality of the average photo that will be taken by these cameras.
The closest so many of you will get to these cameras is to put your fingerprints on one at a camera store and go home to your Casio P&S.

Has a single camera sample gallery ever been posted on DPR without someone saying how unimpressed they are with whatever camera it is. Ever?!

It's interesting to see the reports of the almost 50 bloggers and journalists who are on this press trip. I sympathize with them for being herded around and under pressure to outdo each other each night by posting late at night and trying to come up with something that separates their piece from the others, while being spoiled by the very company they have to independently cover. Not an easy feat. I also can't wait to get my own hands on the A7r and write my own review, free from the challenges these writers face.

Amazing low light photos. I can't wait to get a hold of this camera.
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/reviewsamples/albums/sony-alpha-7r-samples-gallery

Good IQ up to ISO6400 and then mush. Better DOF separation than smaller sensors. Over all, looks like a good camera and I expect good photographers will turn out very good pictures with it--as can be said for every other recent modern system camera. Sony is offering something smaller and less expensive than most FF offerings and I view that as good progress. For those who value it's strengths, it looks good. Unlike most of the pundits, I don't feel like it has to dominate every aspect in order to be a good camera.

It looks VERY promising, but first I will need a detailed comparison with other compact systems before I buy in. I need to know which compact primes will exist for Sony and how they fare against the excellent micro four thirds primes.

At the moment there is only the 35mm f/2.8 which is reasonably sized and I would like to know how it fares compared to the excellent PL 20mm f/1.7 on micro four thirds. Both have a 12mm maximum aperture, field of view is about the same, and the PL has proven to be incredibly sharp with beautiful rendering. It would be incredibly interesting to me to compare these two to see exactly how big the full frame advantage is!

On top of that I'd like to know which wide angle and tele primes Sony plans to make, how large those lenses will be.

If Sony fails to impress with the lenses, the upcoming Nikon DF seems far more enticing. The Nikon body will balance far better with the larger FF lenses, and many of us already have a lot of Nikon glass.

Almost exactly what I would expect viewing the scenes live. Makes me feel as if I'm there. Some of the best night time pictures I've seen from any camera. Of course the person taking the picture did a good job in composing the pictures too.

Really quite impressive image quality. But where are RAW samples?

The Sony 7R is an expensive camera for serious photographers, right? So it is the RAW image quality that matters most to get an impression about the cameras capabilities, not the "ironed-out", mushy JPGs.

So, please post some medium to high ISO RAW images.

Mmmhh, I don't see a picture that I could not have taken with my "lowly" crop EM-5.

Wow! Details and colors are awesome, and thees are only Jpegs.. Looking forward to RAW.

Well, I was impressed by the ease the camera handled colours in low light, and the very subdued noise, no matter what setting! The rest (choice of subjects, and so on) wasn't so impressive.

Oh, I wish you had had Steve Huff to take the photos, someone with a little imagination, outside the box. 50 pictures taken in neon light doesn't say more than a handful, but some portraits, close-ups, in short something interesting, had been appreciated!

The photos of the Jack Daniels guy going through the motions made my day, while those of our four-legged hoofed friends were the worst I've seen in a long time!

I love these pictures. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the dawn of a new era.

Oh, they serve whiskey in plastic...

Wow, look at the amazing "full frameness" of those images, horses nostrils in focus, some blurred thing sitting on it's saddle. You can see why FF is the only choice!

the samples seem to be a bit underwhelming....

what i can see: great resolution, very good dynamic range, excellent sharpness and outstanding details. and that's only jpg. it seems really good sensor, I wonder how it performs at high ISO in extreme low light situations. anyway, it seems to be good low light performer as it's expected from FF.
while it seems to have really great picture quality (maybe even on of the class leading), it would be good to see the overall performance and usability against it rivals.

Wow, I can see the veins and arteries in the horse's eyes. Incredible resolution. Other than that ... Maybe this is an electron microscope and not a camera.

Seriously folks, these were meant as initial shots, obviously not studio tests. Let's hope DPR puts out some more in a variety of lighting and subjects including landscapes which it should--not should--excel at as Sony touts the RX-1r. Give DPR a break, posters.

I could care less about the camera - I'm jealous you guys were in Lynchburg! What an amazing place - I used to go there a lot when I lived in Tennessee, but it's been years. I'm sure you enjoyed the tour.

Remarkable no one bothered to slip a few RF lenses and an adapter in their pocket for this shoot. That would have been some news.

As it is, we have known for some time the camera can produce very sharp images with the native 35. These shots, I'm afraid, mostly due to awful light, only partly show the potential even of the native lens.

Not really impressive reporting.

Some interesting shots, resolution and detail is excellent. About as good as it gets from 35MM.

Too many stupid people comment on news articles.

The web is sooo big.
Dpreview is not the only photo site in the world.
A lot stunning photos of this camera if you see around..........

Some of the responses below indicate to me that folks either don't know what to look for or didn't look at all. This camera produces a tremendous amount of detail - exactly what any landscape shooter would want. The lens? meh. It has the typical Zeiss bokeh (non-Otus of course) but it does a fair job otherwise. It would help if DPR would find a suitable landscape site that is worthy of the sensor and in this case, the lens pedigree.

Totally under-whelming!

Mom said if you can't say something nice, don't say it....so...um...
no comment.

sorry, my interest on a7 has gone now.

These pictures need a FF? LOL

WOW! Totally...mediocre.
No. Less than mediocre.

Not impressed at all. The Oly E-M1 and Pany GX7 can do it better. A lot better.

If I were a Sony exec I would be thinking long and hard about ever again giving dpreview a camera before the release date.

As the A7R is being touted as a landscape camera, I'm disappointed in the landscape pictures. Being taken at f/3.5 and f/4, these give no indication of what is achievable with the camera - most of the scene is just mush.

This seems to be a general theme with DPR - inappropriate aperture settings making it impossible to judge camera and lens quality in different photographic situations. As well as landscapes at large apertures we also often get wide open apertures in scenes with lots of depth, meaning that only a small part of the image, generally the centre, is in focus.

This makes it impossible to judge camera/lens resolution, especially at the edge of the frame, due to content at the edges often being at much different distances to the centre and hence way out of the focal plane.

Yes it is nice to see lenses wide open to judge sharpness and bokeh when trying to isolate a subject from background/foreground, but please don't use these settings on every type of scene!