Sony Sony Breaks New Ground with A7 / A7R Announcement

Ron was saying it is already happening with newly designed Leica lenses which are becoming bigger. You can see in the Zeiss designs too eg new planar Touit lenses which are more close to ze/zf big size lenses then to zm/contax g series. So Sony's 35mm sizes (new 2.8 & RX1 Sonnar) are pretty good so far after the bigger 24mm 1.8 Sonnar design. I have af adapter + Contax g 35mm, 45mm & 90mm to try. That will make the package very small. I saw only 45mm test which is normally very sharp lens but has softer corners on A7R wide open. I will see how they will behave esp 35mm being the softer of the three. The sensor solution will be the organic sensors, but I don't know what might be time frame for that...

Archiver said:
So, will future iterations of Leica lenses be bigger than their earlier film predecessors to accommodate sensor limitations, or will sensor tech overcome the angle of incidence issue before new Leica lens designs become necessary?
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Updates:
dpr: Tennessee in full frame: Sony Alpha 7 real-world samples

There will be cheaper and smaller Sony Full Frame E-mount cameras
 
I checked his rf samples and I cannot see/tell much on the corners due to his perfect shots of window... At least he could have shot he hotel lobby where we can see the corners better... After all the fuss and bunch of rf lenses with him, all I got his words that A7 is better with rf lenses...

Armanius said:
Very very weird.
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Ron Scheffler's samples show that the superwides don't mix well with the A7. I haven't looked at all of Ron's sample photos, but the Biogon ZM 21 on the A7 looks blah!
 
I downloaded all Ron's samples and checked quickly. I didn't see the A7 that much useful with rf wides. Steve is shooting close distance and that is where the lenses best perform on the M/A7(R). He needed to shoot infinity to max the corner issues.

I only have CV 12mm below 35mm as nex has similar problems w/ rf wides and I can use that with 1.25-1.3x crop until Sony comes with a wide tele next year. Zeiss will be coming with new lenses also. So at this point we know that the 35mm/55mm primes are performing good as expected. There is no sample/report on 24-70mm, which was missing at the NY event last week also.

Armanius said:
Ron Scheffler's samples show that the superwides don't mix well with the A7. I haven't looked at all of Ron's sample photos, but the Biogon ZM 21 on the A7 looks blah!
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A7r with the native 35mm, m-mount 50mm (ZM Sonnar) and 90mm (apo Summicron) in the bag. Ricoh plus wide angle adapter in the jacket pocket. Just dreaming.
 
Leica wide angle Tri Elmar 16-18-21mm @ 16mm @ F8.0 on the Sony A7R:

Conclusion so far:

Those who asserted that the Sony A7R is not suited to be used in combination with Leica wide angle M lenses propably arrived at a too vague conclusion. In fact it depends on the particular lens design. Lenses with an extremely compact and symmetric design may produce problems with color shift and edge smearing even on the sensor of the A7R with shifted microlenses whereas lenses with a more telecentric design like the Leica WATE perform perfectly fine without color shift and without edge smearing on the A7R.

There will be additional comparison tests soon with other lenses like the Voigtlander Ultron 21mm f/1.8 ASPH, the Leica Super Elmar 18mm f/3.8 and 21mm f/3.4, so please stay tuned!

If the first results convinced you already and you started craving for used samples, let me add, that you do not need the additional 16-18-21mm finder ("Frankenfinder") when you put this lens on the Sony A7 / A7R. But even then you may be shocked by the prices of this lens. Perhaps it helps to put into perspective that this lens covers the whole range from 16mm to 21mm with a quality perfect like the best wide angle primes from Leica when stopped down to f/8 and even at f/4 almost on par with them. Compared to the price of a Leica M 240 or Monochrom body, you'll get the WATE almost for free on top of the A7R... ;-)

There may be left some used copies at reasonably prices at the moment but I expect rising prices...
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Here is imaging resource image quality comparison of A7/A7R, jpg only:
Sony A7R Review

We'll have a print-quality assessment up in a day or two, but for now, it's clear that the Sony A7R delivers fantastic image quality, across a broad range of ISO levels. Sony seems to have finally gotten a handle on their in-camera JPEG processing, to the extent that they now lead the field, in our estimation. Thanks to their new BIONZ X processor and the more extensive image processing it enables, they've managed to suppress noise while maintaining great subject detail. Equally significantly, they've really refined their sharpening algorithms. Most camera's sharpening leaves visible "halos" or "outlines" around strong contrast edges. As a result, we've long preferred in our own shooting to dial down the in-camera sharpening, and apply strong/tight unsharp masking in Photoshop after the fact. (Try it - start with an unsharpened or lightly-sharpened image, use an 0.3 pixel radius and high percentages; 200%, 300%, or even higher.) With the Sony A7R, though, we've finally found a camera that applies sharpening the way we would ourselves, making the images much crisper, while maintaining delicate detail.
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That sounds good! Since I've experienced Fuji's jpeg engine, having a camera that does well in this regard has become much, much more important to me. Could it be that Olympus' engineers have had a hand in this sudden improvement?
 
bartjeej said:
That sounds good! Since I've experienced Fuji's jpeg engine, having a camera that does well in this regard has become much, much more important to me. Could it be that Olympus' engineers have had a hand in this sudden improvement?
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I love Sony's jpegs, I have never shot raw, and the jpegs I get from my Rx1, Nex 3n, Sony A65 are outstanding IMO..... It all comes down to preference and personal opinion, I shot with a Fuji XM1 and didn't think the jpegs were that great..
 
A7R review:
http://www.digitalversus.com/digital-camera/sony-alpha-7r-p17406/test.html#full-review

AF speed w/ 35mm 2.8 is a little faster then nex-6 @ daytime/nighttime & Fuji daytime w/ updated firmware. Nightime focus is btw Fuji 18-55 & 35mm w/ updated firmware. Also:
"Both in good light and in darker conditions, the absence of a phase-detection AF system isn’t really a problem, as the A7R focuses quickly."

"The ISO test results are just amazing. Hats off to Sony! Image quality is close to perfection with the A7R. Shots are incredibly sharp, finely detailed and mouth-watering to look at. "

One raw+jpg combo is around 45MB. Negatives are no charger, slow start-up time, same nex battery.
 

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