Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGoldilocks of cameras?
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2015
I was first attracted to the Sony A7 II because of the small form factor. I already have the Nikon D800 but I wanted something much smaller. I also have a very small Olympus OMD EM10 but I wanted something with much shallower depth of field. In some ways, the sony A7 II meets my needs but I will not get rid of the Nikon or the Olympus anytime soon.
The Sony A7 II meets my needs for a small camera with a 35mm sensor. I am a bokeh obsessed and when I shoot with my Nikon D800, I attach f/1.4 lenses and shoot wide open! The problem with this is, with the lens and the body combo, they weight too much to carry around everywhere. So I got the Olympus OMD to fix the weight issue. The Olympus OMD is very small and light, with even smaller and lighter lenses. I love the form factor of the OMD. I got some pretty good bokehs out of it too with the 75mm 1.8 lens but that focal length is not very useful everyday. So here I am with the Sony A7 II, with the small form factor and the full sized sensor. I’ve been using the camera for a week and here are the things I like and do not like about the camera:
Likes:
The sensor: The A7 II, has the same sensor as the Nikon D750/D610 so the photos coming out of the camera are great with very wide dynamic range and good color. And with the Sony 55mm 1.8, the bokeh is delicious.
The built-in SteadyShot: I can consistently get sharp photos of static objects at 1/10 sec. (this is useful for shooting fireworks handheld, and shooting with lower shutter speed in a dim light condition), using the Sony 55mm 1.8, wide open. This is great but not as good as the Olympus OMD EM1 which I can get sharp photos at 1 sec consistently. With that said, I do realize that the Olympus sensor is one fourth of the size of the Sony sensor so I am not complaining about it at all. In fact I am very happy with the system.
Customizable buttons: which I set them to mimic the functionalities on the Nikon and the Olympus.
The size/weight: my initial attraction to the camera. it meets my needs.
Dislikes (why I took off stars):
The UI/menu system/general user friendliness: I love the Nikon UI and Olympus. I find them very user friendly and some what intuitive. My bigger issue with the Sony is how the focus selector is designed. I am very use to selecting my focus point using the 4-way pad on the back of the camera body. I do not rely on the camera to select my subjects for me because many times this is not reliable at all. On the Nikon, I use the 4-way pad to select my focus point and click the shutter button to shoot. On the Olympus, I either use the 4-way pad, or the touch screen on the back to select my focus point and click the shutter button. On the sony, I have to first configure the 4-way pad’s left, right, and down (You cannot configure the up button) to focus settings. What the focus settings does is it let you change the focus method and lets you move the focus point. So you have to press at least one button to initiate the focus point change. I say at least one because sometimes, I push the up button first, which is not assignable, and fixed to display functionality. Even worse, when you are in the focus settings, if you accidentally touch the scroll dial, it will change the focus mode to something else. This could lead to 3 or more button pushes to just set the focus point. I’ve missed many shots of my fast moving daughter because of this issue. I am taking off one star for this madness. I feel like I want to take off 2 stars for this because this is extremely critical to me.
Auto focus: I didn’t have a high expectation for the auto focus but I am somewhat let down by it. The auto focus is slow and inaccurate at times. I only have one lens at the moment, the Sony 55mm 1.8. When taking photos of my very active daughter, the auto focus would focus in and out several times and when it does lock-in, I found many of the photos soft. I confirmed it’s not the lens by taking sharp photos, manually focusing. Coming from Olympus, this is very disappointing. The EM10’s auto focus is as snappy as the D800, very rarely slows down. I think this may be a learning process and hopefully I will get better at it. I am taking 1/2 star off for this though.
One other issue with the UI: the ISO functionality. I set the ISO to the C1 button and the scroll wheel. the way the C1 button ISO works differently from the scroll wheel ISO. When you use the C1 button to change the ISO, the exposure meter disappears so you have to guess what ISO to use. When you use the scroll wheel, the meter is there so you can set the ISO manually. I am not taking any star off for this because I actually like using the scroll wheel but the button should be consistant.
Sluggishness: After taking photos, I like to verify that I took in-focus photos by zooming into where I focused. A7 does have this functionality but it’s slow. When you click on the zoom button, you have to wait about a second for the camera to zoom in, then the camera zooms to the middle of the photo, not the focus area I used. With Nikon and Olympus, you click one button while viewing photos to zoom into the focused area and it’s instantaneous. I am taking off 1/2 star off.
The battery life: I am used to mirrorless cameras and not so good battery life. But it seems like the Sony A7 II has the worst battery life yet. When I got the camera, I charged the battery fully. After that, I opened up the menu to learn the camera and change different settings. I changed around some setting, took some photos to with different settings, took some short videos. 2 hours later, the battery was dead. This seems really low. 1/2 star taken off. Need to get some extra batteries.
I will be keeping the A7 II. I like it enough and I will have to get used to some quirkiness and hope that Sony will address these issue via firmware.
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Update #1: There is a functionality called "Standard" that you can only set to the center/OK button. When the standard assigned center button is pushed, it will bring up the focus selector. This is different from the focus setting functionality. If Sony would let me set the standard functionality to the directional buttons (including the up button, which currently is not changeable), it would solve the most serious problem that I have with the camera. When this does happen, i will up the review by one more star!