Reading mode: Light Dark

Unofficial Review of Sony A7s From A Professional Event Photographer

Go to last post
P

Photo Candy

Member
Messages
40
Reaction score
3
Location
Santa Barbara, CA, US
I come from a long background of Sony Cameras starting with the A100 > A700 (Jumped over to Canon 7D for a bit) then back to the A99 > Until finally resting upon the A7s today.

There is a lot to love about the A7s and many review sites already cover all of these points, so I will just quickly bullet point list these.

Pros:

Weight

Compact Size

Image Quality

High ISO Quality

Video Quality / Video options

Smaller file sizes means faster post processing & editing

Really sharp & vibrant photos with any FE Zeiss lens

EVF is awesome especially in low light situations

These were all the main selling points for making me move from the A99 to the A7s in the first place and ring true when using the camera day to day.

However, most reviewers don't cover the con's of this camera at all (I'm assuming they are all bamboozled by the insane high iso performance). However, I will go into depth now on the cons as I have shot with this camera for a couple of months on a multitude of gigs.

Cons:

Autofocus is bad in low light conditions and even in some daytime conditions. Even with a external flash mounted shooting an IR beam the camera will still hunt to lock focus. Usually I will have to make people at an event wait 10-15 seconds and sometimes more in really bad situations for the focus to lock. This is extremely annoying and I don't understand why the focus won't lock quickly especially if the external flash is firing off an IR beam. My A100 focused faster with an external flash attached to it in low light, literally.

Manual control dials ergonomics for aperture & shutter speed are equally bad. I wish they would use the dials from the A99 or any of the other DSLR's they have made in the past 5 years, but for some reason they went with these larger dials with less grip. It makes for switching camera settings on the fly much, much slower then with any previous dslr I've shot with.

Zoom/unzoom button placement when previewing photos is annoying to get to and again, slowing down the overall experience. Zoom should be able to be reprogrammable when in preview mode. I.E. it should be the center button of the control dial.

Grip ergonomically is a little on the small side, wish they would make it a hair bigger.

Startup to your first shot is slow and this causes you to miss shots occasionally.

Battery life is about 1-2 hours (depending on use), so you need to carry 4 batteries with you and buy a charger that can charge 2 batteries at a time for an all day shoot.

Conclusion:

I really hope someone from Sony see's this, so they can fix these issues in the next iteration. However, the A7s is an amazing camera, but has an update or two to go before it can truly live up to the demanding professional photographers standards. I'm still going to use it for my professional gigs, but I wish that the autofocus was better. It's painfully slow at times. Overall it's still worth the buy if you can live with it's shortcomings.
 
10-15 seconds? Why not just use MF?
 
All your pluses are where I want them to be - focused on outright image quality! Years later, after any shoot, would you look at the work and remember it this way: that mongrel camera made me wait an extra xx seconds to get this amazing shot; or alternatively: yes, the images are not as great as the a7 series but man, I just recall that fast AF/IS/ergo/customisation/grip/startup time/[add more here].

See the point?

Me, I look at any output I shot and remember the stuff that purely affected my image quality, made me work much harder in post, got me a lower hit rate, made me miss amazing shots - like bad auto WB, a huge body that intimidated subjects and got me chucked out of places, mirror clunking/flap, poor signal and DR, hideous dim tunnel OVFs, poor recovery in tone range, etc. a99 is a fine camera, but the SLT steals from you, and it's still large. Pros never bought into it! Sony went another way.

It's ALL about image quality with Sony in these cameras, plus the RX1. That is what brings a smile to the face later on, and endures over the years. But maybe for you, for work for others with no or little emotional commitment to the output, turf it and get your favorite device - it won't produce like the a7 cameras however.

Personally I would love Sony to not chase the tiny and locked up pro market - they are much too fussy and have very different needs to the core of the emerging market niches for Sony. Having said as much, my a7r auto focuses (FE55) in EV1-5 in around one second max, you might have a rare faulty camera.

They might eventually do a hardened, battle ready pro version, put another 300 grams on it, then it weighs as much as a light DSLR..

See, pros are sanctioned to shoot in their artificial world - so you see lots of equipment - flashes, reflectors, huge bodies, large bags of gear, etc. Not so the rest of us.

They (Sony) have the chance to be the Japanese Leica, which explains the interest M users have. Not many event pros use Leica...or the fabo ZE/ZF range either, for obvious reasons.

So other kinds of users have equally or more demanding work to do in the tougher real world, for which the a7 series is literally a hand in glove fit. Street, portrait (all lenses fit!), landscape, nature, enviro portraits, wilderness, cultural, stealth, travel. Quite a list.

I too hope they read this!

Long may they go with the direction of their current successes.

Now, news from today (SAR):

"Sony is selling less cameras but more high end and high revenue cameras. In short this means less “cheap” compacts” but more high end mirrorless and fixed lens (RX) cameras. Sony predicts to increase revenue in the Imaging Business."
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: pgb
Hi, I am in a similar situation. I shoot corporate events such as receptions, meetings, speeches, seminars, and parties. I shot Canon up to the 40D, then switched to Sony APS-C SLTs like A55 and A77, and now the A7s.

I have not found the autofocus problems you are stating. This is with doing candids, people looking at the camera, speaker shots, grip-and-grins, overall (scene) shots -- most everything I shoot. (I'm not doing subjects moving very fast, so no need for tracking focus!)

I never use the AF assist light -- I turned it off in the menus. I only have had a few focusing problems in VERY low light. But in normal and low light, no noticeable or significant problems.

One reason may be that I have face detection on (and of course that a face is often my main subject). As long as a person is looking more than halfway towards the camera, I get the white squares around the faces and then the green confirmation squares when I press the shutter button.

I've never seen 11-15 seconds to get focus lock. I wonder if perhaps there is something wrong with your A7s.

I also keep focus peaking on (set to "Low"). I can tell by looking at the yellow dots what the camera is focusing on. If it is the wrong thing, it is usually easy to change my aim, half-press the shutter and recompose.

BTW, having an external flash will not help with focus since (as I understand it) the A7 series does not use any AF assist light except the visible one on the camera body itself.

I agree with some other of your cons, such as the low battery life, slow startup from a newly-inserted battery, and slightly small grip. I'm ok with the front, back and Exposure Compensation dials. And I don't have any problem with C2 as the button for zooming in when in playback mode. I think my Canon had + and - buttons in a similar place.

One other tip for focus. I have the AF button set to switch between DMF or MF. Normally focus is DMF but if I press the AF button it switches to MF and I can then do manual focus with zoom. A little practice with the focus-by-wire and I can MF in a couple seconds which is fine in many situations (a non-moving speaker at a podium, for example).

I agree with your pros and would include the silent shutter -- great for meeting candids with the 70-200 f/4 FE. The low ISO capability is the top feature by far for what I do. The light for events is so often lousy, and even if flash is added, the background was usually very dark until I got the A7s.

I really would consider the possibility of a problem with your A7s, or maybe with the settings. As I say, I have not had issues with AF taking many seconds.
 
LTZ470 said:
Turn off the IR Beam, it is nigh on useless on a Sony MILC...
Click to expand...
I agree. Few people seem to know this but IR beam Pattern Lock is made for the traditional PDAF SLR/DSLR. On "any" mirrorless camera, its useless. You're better off buying a VIDEO LIGHT like this, as light enhance contrast for CDAF to lock in focus.



61ljki100xL._SX425_.jpg
 
Sometimes I do switch to MF just to be able to get a shot, but of course I'll miss the shot that I originally wanted due to this. I have been shooting in very low-light (nightclubs, concerts, etc), but the A100-A99 made short work of focusing in the dark with the IR beam. I didn't realize that IR beam is useless for mirrorless cameras, but that makes sense now.

I doubt my camera is defective.

However, I did take a look at my settings and I have been shooting on "single focus point" (what I always shot with all previous DSLR/SLT cameras with no issues), which I have now changed to "center focus area" which has made the AF much snappier. I have not been able to test this for an event yet however. I'll report my findings after I give it a go.

Here is an example gallery of photos I've shot with the A7s:

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Here are some key shots that I know I missed focus due to the lack of A7s focusing abilities in low light. There are countless others that didn't even make the gallery, but these were "good enough" to keep despite not being exactly what I wanted.

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net

Loading…

www.photos.thednalife.net
 
I think your use of single-point AF mode has been the problem. I read elsewhere that single point AF on the A7s is not optimum, at least in low light. I use multi-area AF plus Face Detection plus focus peaking. I can see before full-pressing the shutter what areas the A7s has selected for focus. If they are not correct I can recompose and refocus.

I looked at your shots; most were of people. So the Face Detection should really help. You may even want to play around with Eye AF (focuses on the closest eye) though that's probably more for studio portraits than event candids.

One good thing about event photography; you can try out different settings during the event. If one setting is not working, try another. Also, once you have gotten some basic coverage that you know is good, you can start experimenting with higher ISO, shallower depth-of-field, etc.

BTW, I saw there were lasers at one event. It looked like they were above the audience, which is legally required for U.S. shows unless special equipment and FDA permissions are in use. Avoid a direct hit into the lens from a laser; too much concentrated light can damage a sensor permanently. The human eye cannot tell when the laser is too bright, so just avoid any beams directly going into the lens.

Let us know how your next events go, using different settings.
 
My experiences with the a7S autofocus In low light are entirely opposite. I never experience hunting except in the very darkest situations, and even then, never 10 to 15 seconds.

Furthermore, I have yet to find a flash whose autofocus illuminator actually is triggered by the a7S.

I've tried using both my Sony and Metz flashes, four different models, and none of them will turn on their auto illuminator when used on any of my CDAF bodies, the a7S, the a6000, and the NEX7. I have been told by others on this forum and elsewhere that the auto illuminator on Sony and Metz external flashes is deliberately turned off since they are not designed to enhance contrast.

Indeed, all four flash units which I own will fire the external illuminator properly on my a77 which is a PDAF autofocus system.

My experiences with auto focus on the a7S and in low light have been quite extraordinary in fact and markedly disagree with the comments from the review in the original post.

My newest Sony flash has a built-in video light which can be used as recommended above to increase contrast but I have yet to find the need to turn it on.

Larry
 
Last edited:
Photo Candy said:
Sometimes I do switch to MF just to be able to get a shot, but of course I'll miss the shot that I originally wanted due to this. I have been shooting in very low-light (nightclubs, concerts, etc), but the A100-A99 made short work of focusing in the dark with the IR beam. I didn't realize that IR beam is useless for mirrorless cameras, but that makes sense now.

I doubt my camera is defective.

However, I did take a look at my settings and I have been shooting on "single focus point" (what I always shot with all previous DSLR/SLT cameras with no issues), which I have now changed to "center focus area" which has made the AF much snappier. I have not been able to test this for an event yet however. I'll report my findings after I give it a go.

Here is an example gallery of photos I've shot with the A7s:

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/

Here are some key shots that I know I missed focus due to the lack of A7s focusing abilities in low light. There are countless others that didn't even make the gallery, but these were "good enough" to keep despite not being exactly what I wanted.

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-RPkMmpW/0/X3/DSC05015-X3.jpg

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-mQ7fJNG/0/X3/DSC05026-X3.jpg

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-b69rjR3/0/X3/DSC05055-X3.jpg

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-vBWfMk6/0/X3/DSC05148-X3.jpg

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-FKSL3xC/0/X3/DSC05259-X3.jpg

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-tQ5hMtP/0/X3/DSC05448-X3.jpg

http://www.photos.thednalife.net/Events/Freak-The-Beat-x-El-Paseo-x/i-tpT86dX/0/X3/DSC05455-X3.jpg
Click to expand...
Hi

I have been using the A7r and the A7s now for quite a while, since December 2013 to be correct. The A7s is 100x better than the A7r in low light focus and I am wondering why the focus is always on the most front element, be it the hand or the keyboard.

I never had such an issue with the A7s when selecting the spot to focus on. I did a couple of parties and the keeper rate is about 90%.

I think you just need to improve your technique. The A99 has a ministick to select the AF point, like my 5D3 does, feature which you don't find on the A7 series.

Cheers

Martin
 
Photo Candy said:
I come from a long background of Sony Cameras starting with the A100 > A700 (Jumped over to Canon 7D for a bit) then back to the A99 > Until finally resting upon the A7s today.

There is a lot to love about the A7s and many review sites already cover all of these points, so I will just quickly bullet point list these.

Pros:

Weight

Compact Size

Image Quality

High ISO Quality

Video Quality / Video options

Smaller file sizes means faster post processing & editing

Really sharp & vibrant photos with any FE Zeiss lens

EVF is awesome especially in low light situations

These were all the main selling points for making me move from the A99 to the A7s in the first place and ring true when using the camera day to day.

However, most reviewers don't cover the con's of this camera at all (I'm assuming they are all bamboozled by the insane high iso performance). However, I will go into depth now on the cons as I have shot with this camera for a couple of months on a multitude of gigs.

Cons:

Autofocus is bad in low light conditions and even in some daytime conditions. Even with a external flash mounted shooting an IR beam the camera will still hunt to lock focus. Usually I will have to make people at an event wait 10-15 seconds and sometimes more in really bad situations for the focus to lock. This is extremely annoying and I don't understand why the focus won't lock quickly especially if the external flash is firing off an IR beam. My A100 focused faster with an external flash attached to it in low light, literally.

Manual control dials ergonomics for aperture & shutter speed are equally bad. I wish they would use the dials from the A99 or any of the other DSLR's they have made in the past 5 years, but for some reason they went with these larger dials with less grip. It makes for switching camera settings on the fly much, much slower then with any previous dslr I've shot with.

Zoom/unzoom button placement when previewing photos is annoying to get to and again, slowing down the overall experience. Zoom should be able to be reprogrammable when in preview mode. I.E. it should be the center button of the control dial.

Grip ergonomically is a little on the small side, wish they would make it a hair bigger.

Startup to your first shot is slow and this causes you to miss shots occasionally.

Battery life is about 1-2 hours (depending on use), so you need to carry 4 batteries with you and buy a charger that can charge 2 batteries at a time for an all day shoot.

Conclusion:

I really hope someone from Sony see's this, so they can fix these issues in the next iteration. However, the A7s is an amazing camera, but has an update or two to go before it can truly live up to the demanding professional photographers standards. I'm still going to use it for my professional gigs, but I wish that the autofocus was better. It's painfully slow at times. Overall it's still worth the buy if you can live with it's shortcomings.
Click to expand...
I am like others here with the A7S and have also had the complete opposite experience. There is something I will suggest that may or may not help, but you mention that you are shooting with a flash would that be correct? If so, you really MUST turn settings effect to 'off' otherwise it will play havoc with your camera and most importantly with your AF. Why might you ask? Well it is both terribly simple and absolutely complicated. See for the same reasons that your IR beam are completely useless to the A7S (and probably hinder more than they help) but the camera bahaves and focusses in a completely different scenario to a typical SLR. The difference is that normally an A7S will focus and operate at the 'taking' aperture. It will also function at the taking gain (ISO). So if you are using flash in all probability you are using the lens stopped down and a low ISO, or both. The is starving the sensor of light in which to acquire focus with. It can happen with only one or both. Without sufficient light the camera will really really struggle to focus. If you were to up your gain or open the aperture or do both it will focus much faster... which is all well and good but then you are stick using high ISO and your lenses wide open even if you want the deep depth of field, just so your camera can focus, not ideal! However if you turn settings effect to off the camera will gain up whenever needed and will keep the aperture wide open regardless of the taking aperture, which means it acts much more like a traditional SLR, so you can set the camera to whatever you want without affecting its abiloty to focus. It should be fast and snappy and you should have a bright clean viewfinder. As I say I am not 100% sure this is going to help as I don't know your exact setup, but if my guess is correct it should vastly improve your AF experience. Yes occasionally in very dim light it might still struggle with a lack of contrast, but it should still see a marked improvement. Also I find still using single point but with the biggest box tends to give me the best results as it just has a bit more area to sample from. I really hope this helps as I as I say have had quite the opposite experience. The only reason I know this is I still occasionally pick up the camera and try to use it and it's set to ISO 100 or f11 because I last shot in bright light and the camera definitely struggles until I give it more light to work with.
 
007peter said:
LTZ470 said:
Turn off the IR Beam, it is nigh on useless on a Sony MILC...
Click to expand...
I agree. Few people seem to know this but IR beam Pattern Lock is made for the traditional PDAF SLR/DSLR. On "any" mirrorless camera, its useless. You're better off buying a VIDEO LIGHT like this, as light enhance contrast for CDAF to lock in focus.

...
Click to expand...
I think you guys mean the reddish LED AF assist lamp. An IR beam (infrared beam) is not visible to the human eye and not used on any Sony mirrorless cameras, unless it is the other way around, an IR receiver to detect the signal from a remote ;-)
 
spacemn said:
007peter said:
LTZ470 said:
Turn off the IR Beam, it is nigh on useless on a Sony MILC...
Click to expand...
I agree. Few people seem to know this but IR beam Pattern Lock is made for the traditional PDAF SLR/DSLR. On "any" mirrorless camera, its useless. You're better off buying a VIDEO LIGHT like this, as light enhance contrast for CDAF to lock in focus.

...
Click to expand...
I think you guys mean the reddish LED AF assist lamp. An IR beam (infrared beam) is not visible to the human eye and not used on any Sony mirrorless cameras, unless it is the other way around, an IR receiver to detect the signal from a remote ;-)
Click to expand...
OP called/labeled it an IR Beam, in order not to confuse things further we suggested he turn off the "IR Beam"...thanks...
 
What lenses are you using to see the poor autofocus? Is this with adapted lenses?

I use the A7S largely in low light street shooting - and the autofocus is near miraculous in low light situations. This is with the two FE primes. Something is clearly askew in your settings if you are using the FE prime lenses.
 
I concur - the low light focus of the A7S is amazing - far beyond any other mirrorless camera I have used and at least as good as on any DSLR I have used. Extremely confident focus in any situation where my eyes can reasonably see detail.

I suspect may be a settings or some other complicating factor resulting the the OP observations
 
I'm shooting with a:

Sony FE 28-70mm 3.5-5.6

or

Sony Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8

For all of my events. I've been shooting events for about 6 years, so I have my settings & technique down. I know how to deliver high quality images in impossibly dark scenarios with a DSLR/SLT, but apparently not a Mirrorless camera.

What is a new news to me is that the external flash (Sony HVL-43 in this case) may be interfering with the autofocus of the Sony A7s (according to some posters here). I will have to do further investigating here.

However, no doubt about it, single spot af (what I have been shooting on for 6 years with no problems) is poor in low light conditions with an external flash attached to the sony a7s.

Just trying to figure out why now.
 
Ähem,

if you miss a shot because the camera was too slow you won't get a smile.

Maybe you forget some years later, but sometimes its much more important to get a shot than the question if the IQ is a little better or worse.

Saying this I think the A7s to be pretty fast.
 
Thomas? people had these things called rolls, guess what - they had to change them! Often. It took a while to do so. However did they manage to produce masterpieces? The beta dudes of today would be fun to watch with a film camera in their hands, ;-)

Asked what happens to the photos missed while he was changing rolls, Winogrand answered drolly: 'When changing a roll, there are no photographs.'
 
This is really good advice. I struggled with this when I first got my Fuji x100s and wanted to dominate ambient light with flash. The x100 has a leaf shutter and built in ND, so its killer for that sort of thing but I couldn't figure out for the life of me why it wouldn't auto focus or allow me to use the EVF in these situations until I got some advice and turned off the exposure preview.
 
Interesting I recently shot a wedding using the A7s and FE24-70 90% of the time and was amazed that how even with a f4 max aperture lens the camera focussed so quickly and accuratley in low light. Admittedly I come from a Leica background and haven't owned a DSLR since I had the D700 so don't really have other modern auto-focus cameras to coma per it too.

I agree about the dials and this is what I really miss with the Sony's when coming from the analogue controls on my Leica M
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top