I’ve had the Sony Alpha A7 for a few days now and in this article I’m going to share a bunch of sample photos with 100% Crops using the FE 28-70mm kit lens and jpeg quality. I wanted to see and show you how the new full frame beast handles the information and processes it. After all, shooting Raw quality and developing is great, but if it’s perfect straight off the camera why not use the files?
Jpeg files on the Sony cameras in my experience/ opinion have always been a little bit over sharpened and over saturated right off the camera. The blues also appear to be deeper on the Sony’s. Every camera manufacture processes the raw data differently and in a proprietary way as well. Fuji, is known for the most accurate skin tones and real to life colors. It’s true; I reviewed the Fuji X-Pro 1 (click here) and the colors are better in that regard, but not necessary better overall. Especially when you shoot raw quality. Canon seems to be somewhere between Sony and Fuji in my experience and a nice balance of colors and sharpness on the jpeg files. Samsung, at least on the NX300 I review (click here), seems to be less saturated than Sony and more like Canon colors from the limited use I had.
Jpeg files are fully processed photos that have limited editing room left. The camera did it’s editing magic to the file on camera, and then saved it as a highly compressed jpeg format to conserve space. Raw files have tons of room for enhancement thanks to the large file size that has a lot more information on the capture. More highlight and shadow information, color and the power to selectively sharpen and/or edit additionally with software. When you try to edit a jpeg file, the colors will break apart quick and artifacts will start to show up if you do much more than a slight adjustment.
Moving on to some real Sony A7 jpeg sample photos, lets take a look at the latest jpeg processing algorithms and see if anything has changed, improved whatever. Mind you I’m using the kit lens, and these are mostly just snapshots..
Sony Alpha A7 Sample Photos
Starting off with an early morning scene that offered a distant shed and some lines to help compare the zoom range a bit. First 28mm then fully zoomed @ 70mm from the same exact spot.
28mm
Be sure to click the photos for the ~1000PX Higher Res version
70mm
A slightly different view pushing the depth of filed a little with the kit lens by zooming to 70mm and getting very close to the subjects 😉
Some High ISO
Check out the Z-Scene on my deck with the kit lens, poor lighting, and relatively high ISO #’s. Sorry the scene is not as interesting in the early winter months and no colorful flowers or fall foliage, but the depth still works well for comparison purposes. Wait till you see a fast lens on the full frame A7 and this z-scene!
28mm
70mm
More High ISO and slow handheld shutter speeds.
Check out the ISO 6400 photo first that I was hand-holding @ 1/6th of a second! It’s not razor-sharp, but for 1/6sec it’s impressive what the OSS (optical Steady Shot) on the lens can do. When you see the photo full size it looks sharp, but @ 100% you can see the slight blur shift captured. ISO 6400 is very clean compared to my Nex-6.
ISO 6400
ISO 16000
Even this ISO 16000 photo looks great in my opinion when viewing the scene. The 100% crops are pretty nasty, but do to the 24mp it’s still usable in many cases if you ask me. BW conversions often look great with a little nose anyway 😉
Here is another ISO 6400 photo that looks totally usable in my opinion right off the camera.
ISO 5000 looks really good and lens corner sharpness seams to hold up in this photo even though I was very close to the oscilloscope. Some barrel distortion is noticeable and I did try to get the camera as centered as possible hand-held. Pretty hard actually when so close!
I live near a bunch of old ski slopes and often pass this lonely chair that hasn’t been used in who knows how long. It’s been catching my eye for some time, but finally pulled over last night and took a few snaps from this area. As it turns out, some pretty killer photo opportunities and I will go back with another lens most likely. All hand-held jpegs don’t forget.
The lonely chair, silhouette:
Some heavy duty cable on top of the huge hanging counterweight coiled up.
A few views looking out.
And one last silhouette with 100% Crops.
Closing Remarks:
Overall I think the jpeg quality images on the full frame Sony A7 are a significant improvement over my Sony Nex-6. In both dynamic range and high ISO performance, the Full frame A7 is clearly better from what I’m seeing. The Kit lens is performing pretty good and as expected really. OSS works great and overall sharpness is a good corner to to corner with minimal chromatic aberrations visible. The AF seems to be nailing everything I point the camera except that fence picture above which I had to switch to manual for.
Very easy to do with your thumb and the button on the back towards the upper right of the lcd screen.
That is all for now, but I’m re-uploaded the A7 and Nex-6 comparison video to Youtube now, as the original had some serious errors I had to fix. Will post that asap.
Catch up with you later and please feel free to ask questions or make specific requests,
Jay
