I WANT my test photos shot in auto-everything mode. If the photographer starts jimmying around with the controls I will never know whether it is Sony engineers or the photographer who are responsible. All cameras will look good if you shoot, adjust, shoot, adjust, shoot until you get a reasonable shot. But I don't really have time for that kind of monkeybusiness anymore. I have a life to lead and an artistic vision to follow.

It takes a great camera to deliver well-exposed, well-focused photos with no human intervention, and that's what I want. If I wanted to fool around with exposure meters and loupes and all that, I'd shoot with an 8x10 view camera.

So as usual, you DPReviewers just keep on doing what you're doing. You are the best.

Unimpressive. Sony makes fancy gadgets other companies makes cameras it seems.

Shish! There's got to be some QC here when posting pictures! This is not a camera for a soccer mom! All the shots look like P&S camera! Did anybody bothered to use anything else than Auto? It's a disgrace for a reviewer...

Just look at the original jpgs with Exiftool, settings reveals that they used the camera as a point and shot: program auto, AF area and point auto, metering auto,... it's normal you got just point and shot results.

What a poor attempt at photography. Here you have a cutting edge camera with the power of a D800 and the images showcased are blurry and shot in terrible lighting conditions. Are there any real photographers reviewing these cameras? I mean even a semi-pro would not shoot into the sun!

The samples displayed here (and many other reviews on this site) are always of poor quality. Do you ever use a tripod? Maybe 1 flash??

So bad.

I do not see that the pictures are any better, really not as good, as I can get with my Nex C3 with kit lens or older Pentax prime lenses. Dynamic range is no better and looks to be a problem. There are quite a few burned out pixels within the pictures. These photos do not appear to have been taken by DPreview staff in that there is no Space Needle in the group. If they were sent to Dpreview highly compressed that could partly explain the sharpness issue although there seems to be a lackluster beyond that. From what I see here I would not trade my Nex C3 for this camera. When a camera store in Seattle gets the A7 in house I will take a memory card with me and shoot me own pictures - the only true test.

WOW, WOW The best or one of the best FF sensors ever according to DXO! "Although we can’t provide any commentary on image sharpness at this stage in our tests, the sensor in the Sony Alpha 7R performs exceptionally and is on a par with that found in the D800 models. Given the Sony’s small size, low weight and outstanding sensor performance, it’s one of the most intriguing and compelling new additions in recent times."

Unfortunately these seem no better than the A7R samples in terms of applying appropriate settings to different scenes, and I have downloaded them all and looked at them carefully.

As mentioned already, in many cases way too slow shutter speeds have been used, resulting in blur, especially with moving subjects. Also poor choice of aperture for landscape and other scenes where significant depth of field is required, meaning large parts of the images are recorded as a blurry mess.

Someone else said that snapshots and simple everyday shots are the best way to get an idea of what a camera can do. I certainly agree that most of these shots are no better than snapshots, but disagree that they are in any way useful for assessing the camera - at least not if you want to differentiate between what a camera phone and a state of the art FF camera can do.

I am sure the A7 and A7R are very capable when used thoughtfully, but I think DPR are doing Sony no favours with these samples!

It looks to me under close look that hardly any of these images are that sharp. As a matter of fact I rarely see an image on this site's galleries that make me go WOW! If I had relied on what I have seen here I don't think I would have purchased and camera. I love this site but images always lack edge sharpness to me. Am I alone on this?

At least nobody here is too critical.

Excellent samples, thank you :D At the contrary to some others, I really think that snaphots and simple and well done unmodified every day shots are the best way to have a first honest idea/impression of what a camera can offer to most of us, so thanks for the time you took to share this. Keep up. I'm impatient to read about your future review of these two cameras.

These look really unimpressive to me. They seem to have a "compact" look to them despite their huge file sizes they lack sharpness and the colours look washed out too.

And as for those EVF's, most horrid indeed!

A lot of criticism of these sample images, however many around the net from this same trip too showing what these cameras can do. If anything they prove the point that its the photographer not the camera that matters.

In terms of the cameras themselves, they're impressive, but I agree we need to wait to see the RAW files with ACR support. At low to mid ISO, Sony sensor RAW files have huge dynamic range and color depth that enables them to be pushed around more than any other file I've ever messed with. While I actually think the JPG engine is doing a decent job, it is this ability to manipulate that I'm waiting to see, the ISO 12800 RAW images on Focus Numerique, while showing noise, also show incredible detail (with auto noise reduction off!) and I can't wait to have a play to see what is possible when ACR support arrives. I don't expect it to make me a better photographer, but I do hope that the sensor will enable even better highlight, shadow and detail recovery than ever before

Right now I will skip Sony lenses and use it with adapted Canon FD lenses (even if I have some E-mount and A-mount lenses already)...Never used a Rangefinder lens so I'm really interested on these kind of lenses. Can you please make a stand alone test with adapted lenses like the Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4 or Zeiss and Leica M-mount lenses? Both on A7 and A7R and make a comparison.

I am sure both the 7r and the 7 are fantastic cameras, but I'll wait until some other site provides "samples" before I start pepping.

On the 55 wide aperture shots, the more distant eye was in focus *twice* instead of the closer eye. I wonder if that was a conscious decision on the operator, or 'face' detection. I thought this is definitely not a focus/recompose type of camera?

Me not impressed. A7r samples have knock-your-socks-off quality at pixel level. A7 samples are at best mediocre (lots of jpeg/denoising artifacts, not sharp even with the prime lens). I wouldn't blame the operator. Sony may have very different imaging pipelines between the two cameras. Though I'll wait for the studio samples before making a definite judgement.

Great IQ from both cameras!

Well done, Shawn, some great portraits there, thank you. The happy couple with the camera on the horse drawn cart is lovely, also the rider in the stable door. Wonderful cameras with significant weaknesses built-in by design, mainly lack of in body OIS and global shutter. And a system built to require expensive lenses for AF with a very limited choice of mainly slow ones on offer so far, and no normal lens with OIS. AF via adapters is slow.

Wonderfully detailed images even from the A7, great colours, no noise at base ISO, great dynamic range.

Although it looks like they largely succeeded in removing it in software, shuttershock is still visible at 70mm.

Anyone who buys a camera that is as much of an unknown quantity as this one, need to have their bumps felt.

Try before you buy.

Am I the only one seeing a lot of issues in the way these samples were shot? Lots of very low shutter speed in moving scenes (1/160 with a running horse) ? 1/100s with a moving singer? 1/50s using a 55mm non-stabilized lens etc? A lot of shots look blurry for that reason. Was it shot in auto mode?

The 7r shots look significantly better.

Tis the day when many people are going to cancel their pre-orders.

Sony please get someone to fix your jpegs