Robert Collins

Oh... there is no doubting it is a cash grab. Nice work if you can get it.

The angst about Sony menus from camera 'reviewers' merely reflects the profile of 'reviewers'. Rather than using one camera system like most people, they typically 'test' an array of cameras from many systems. Sony menus are detailed and deep. My A7riii has 23 pages of options for setting up custom buttons. That might seem overkill but it does at least enable me to setting the custom buttons to do exactly what I want. Reviewers dont much like this because it takes longer to set up a Sony camera than others and they have the next camera review on the horizon. Some cant be bothered to make the effort and then complain they are always having to delve into the menus because they simply havent set up the camera properly for their needs in the first place. So it is fair to say that Sony menus arent great if you have to change cameras and systems constantly. Personally I like them because I can set up the camera exactly how I want. But then again I used to like the Olympus menus (when I used Olympus) and everyone said their menus were rubbish too.

The issue really isnt 'subscription software' per se. I am sure this payment model suits many people - well me at least!! Banning subscriptions software makes little sense. The real issue - which is anti-competitive by nature is that Adobe has 'taken away' the 'one payment stand alone' option. The 'subscription only' model means that Adobe has 'virtually no incentive' to innovate or improve its product - at least while its software maintains its near monopoly/industry standard status. People have to pay to use it whether it improves or not. If they had 'competing' payment offerings consumers would at least have a choice (of sorts). If Adobe's offerings were not consistently improving most people would vote with their wallet, buy the stand alone product and then not upgrade. It would make sense to only 'allow' software companies to offer subscription services if they also offered a 'stand alone' alternative.

Yes, sorry. A7r4 photo....

Look first off camera specs dont have that much influence on market share. Canon has been consistently the market leader overall in ILCs for the last 20 years and their camera specs are years behind their competitors. Sony is doing fine in FF mirrorless. Look at this data from BCN for April this year... The a73 is massively outselling say the Z6 in April this year despite being launched at least a year earlier. Sony is at 50% market share of FF mirrorless despite not introducing a new model for 18 months. I dont dispute Sony A7 series is now behind Nikon and Panasonic for 'video' (not convinced they are playing catch up to Canon) but I dont think that video specs have much influence on overall ILC sales. If they did, sure Panasonic would do better....

The vast majority of people I know who like high megapixel FF cameras - like them not because you can 'print big' but for the ability to 'crop'. So an apsc sized crop on the A7r4 (1.5x) gives you 26mp (as much as any existing apsc camera) and 15mp if you crop to M43 (2.0x) which is pretty good. That for instance means I can shoot my 100-400 lens at 800mm and still have 15mp. As far as matching the S1. Panasonic has effectively been the market leader in mirrorless video specs for the past 10 years and it has seen its market share of the mirrorless market fall from well over 50% to under 10% during that period. And that is why Sony doesnt have to compete in that market.

Face it - nobody has a clue what Sony is going to do. I dont think you get much of a clue from reading the tea leaves of the A7r4. This is a top of the line stills camera with pretty much insane specs. Video is an after thought - it hardly even makes sense shooting 4k from a 61mp sensor. It certainly doesnt make any sense for Sony to bring out an A7s3 that doesnt shoot 10 bit. And I think we all pretty much know that for Sony to be competitive 'long term' in the video centric market it needs a bigger body to help with the heat issues. I imagine the smart business decision for Sony is to can the A7s line and leave the video side to the likes of Panasonic - it is a very small market... But I think Sony likes its 'halo'/'vanity' projects (A9!!). So I wouldnt be at all surprised to see an 'A7s3' in a redesigned body - it makes more sense to me than trying to shoehorn a video centric camera into a 'stills' body.

Mine was an 'auto adjustment' in Lightroom and 'white balance'. You can do a 1000 photos in less than 5 minutes....

Seems to me you have to work quite hard with that Sony image in post to make it look that bad.

Some interesting info here....

The rich colors of Sigma are down to the Foveon sensor that captures full color on every pixel as opposed to 'bayer' sensors that only capture one color per pixel and then interpolates the color through processing. One drawback of the Foveon sensor is poor lowlight performance. The other - more significant in my eyes at least - drawback is post editing. You have to use Sigma software and you can see the problem at the 10 minute mark of this video.... But the FP will be almost useless as a stills camera. Without a mechanical shutter, you will get rolling shutter rather like using a modern mirrorless in silent mode (unless it is a Sony A9.) Which means shot can come out like this.... even without subject movement.....

Supposedly, the Sigma FP is going to be 'very expensive'. https://www.l-rumors.com/the-new-sigma-fp-will-be-very-expensive/#disqus_thread

I dont think stills shooters will be interested in this camera. It has no mechanical shutter, a fairly slow sensor readout (as evident from a 1/30th flash sync speed) and therefore will be pretty much useless for photos of anything moving and longer focal lengths.

BTW there is a weird bug (or possibly a strange apple feature) in ipad OS. By default it doesnt recognize SD cards (or at least mine - A7riii, DJI products.) They show up as '#ERRORNAME' and are 'read only' (you cannot copy information anywhere.) You can 'correct' this by inserting the card into a computer and 'renaming' the card to a custom name of choice.

Apple has released the public beta of ipad OS which you can now download for free.

I think most photographers go through a 'film' stage at some point. At the very least there is a sort of romantic notion to it. I bought a Voigtlaender. Yes it slows you down which is a good thing - but I am not sure you need a film camera for that. I dont think it is very much of a 'learning experience' because the timing of the results are so divorced from the actual shot. The instant feedback of digital does give a much faster feedback in terms of a learning loop. I have to say I got over my film stage pretty quickly after I tried it. Perhaps consider something cheap and cheerful first before investing too much into it....

I did a double take on this because I thought this thread might be 3 years old. 'Torrenting' as a percentage of total internet usage has been increasing since 2015 - precisely because of the rise of streaming services. 4 years ago Netflix had a virtual monopoly and so you could watch pretty much anything decent on the service. The rise of competitors - Prime, Disney, HBO, Apple etc - means now if you want to watch the best shows you either have to subscribe to half a dozen services, torrent or miss out..... https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3q45v/bittorrent-usage-increases-netflix-streaming-sites

I am pretty excited about the ipadOD (long time since I have thought that about an Apple announcement. Now that ipad has its own OS, it is no longer shackled to the iphoneOS and can evolve into an OS for content creators as well as content consumers. So the announced features should only be the beginning - and from what I have seen so far they look pretty good.

Hopefully I can resist this one. June 11th...

The A7riii and A7iii have had their updates since the A9 firmware update. Aurofocus is improved but it doesnt include the same object tracking as the A9. (I think there are processor constraints.)

Nope. There is not file size limit.

I think a sensible approach is to have one local backup and one cloud backup. The cloud gives you automatic offsite and allows you to go 'back in time' in case you accidentally delete stuff and it is copied to your local backup (like I did a while ago.) Cloud doesnt need to be expensive. I use Crashplan for small businesses which is US$10 per month. Unlimited storage including connected external drives like my NAS (or a drobo). And restoring is free.

I think you can sign up (free) to the Apple Beta Program and get a beta mid July (as opposed to waiting until end September.)