MattK

I think you found your group. This is a great place to come to for support and questions. As for the camera, I'm sure you know that 100% any camera can take an amazing photo if you put the right person behind it and the right subject in front of it. However, I will say as some that switched 7 years ago, I've never regretted it. Sony pulled ahead and, to me, continues to stay ahead in every way. Both in support, community, gear, tech, etc... Good luck and always feel free to swing by here and ask questions along the way. Lots of us here happy to help 🙂

Hi Alex. I guess it depends what you shoot the most. You mentioned a variety of things that you like to photograph. I believe 100% that for landscape, macro and general nature photography that a camera from 10 years ago would produce exactly as good results as a camera today. For those genres, you're literally using a fraction of what the camera can do, and the only judgement you can make on the final photo is image quality - which was excellent 10 years ago and I haven't really seen much improvement since. That said, if you shoot a lot of birds and wildlife that could be a different story (fast moving that is). I was never really happy with my a7R4 for birds. AF was okay for perched or still animals, but not great if they were moving really fast. The a7r5 seems like it should be amazing, but we really have very few real world reports on it (I'll get mine in a couple weeks so hopefully will try it out and compare to my a1). So my suggestion would be wait and see. I think when you buy a new iteration of a camera, and expect your photography to drastically change we set ourselves up for failure because it won't. I'm sure it will be a great camera, but the main things I see don't relate much to what you like to photograph, so I don't know if you'll see much difference. In short, you have a wonderful camera that will take an amazing photo in any one of the genres you listed as long as you get yourself in front of an amazing subject. Use it. Wait and see how the new one shakes out and maybe even see if you can rent or try one out, before you buy it eventually. Good luck!

I was out shooting some bird photography the other day and another photographer asked to see my camera so he could try the lens I was using. We were both shooting a Sony a1. As he held it up to his eye, and started tracking some birds he immediately complained about the AF points jumping around following the bird. He talked about how he doesn't like that, and thinks it's cheating. I asked what he did instead. He said he used to shoot Skeet quite a bit, so he just uses a fixed center point to follow the bird. He said he really feels like the AF system I was using, was dumbing down photography and not challenging. So I'm curious... how does everyone here feel about today's AF systems (not just Sony's, because all cameras have systems to follow and track subjects). Is it cheating? Is it dumbing down photography? Oh... and in case you're curious, my answer to him was this... "So you mean to tell me, you bought a $6500 camera, which is known to have the best AF system on the planet, only to dumb it down and not use that AF system at all and track a bird like we used to 20-30 years ago?". I got a grunt, and a small smile back 😉

Hi Tom. Looks like you got some great answers already so I won't just repeat. But years ago when I was first learning photography, I had similar questions about what my eyes see and what the camera sees. When some one shared that our eyes don't work at all like the camera. So while we move from dark rooms to bright rooms, our eyes adapt (good computers in a camera tries to adapt as well). Same goes for white balance. While our eyes adapt and automatically adjust for varying white balances, our cameras do not do as good a job. Especially when there are multiple colors happening in a room. Our eyes will figure it out and we may not even see a difference - as you found out, your camera does. Good luck!

Landscape, wildlife and while I don’t do it often, I can get lost for hours doing close up photography too.

I’m also looking forward to the a7R5 as well as winter here in Florida. It’s a great time for bird photography so both of those things together should make for some interesting outings.

I'm curious to know if I'm the only one that doesn't shoot on full silent mode (even though you can). The other week I was having a discussion with another photographer and they couldn't understand why I wasn't shooting silent. Many of the newer cameras allow you to turn off audio signals completely. Not just the Auto Focus beeps, but also have silent shutter options. Now, I 100% get that silent shooting is necessary for some situations. It has revolutionized golf photography, for example, because now you can shoot during a backswing. However, for me and my bird photography, I find that I like the sound of the electronic shutter. If anything, it helps not fill up my cards as fast. When I have silent shutter on, I feel like I burn through my cards at twice the speed because I need the audio sound to let me know how much I'm shooting. Anyone else like this?

Hey Tony. I've done it quite a bit and I agree. If the camera is locked down it makes it infinitely easier. I often get questions from people that want to composite their photos, but they haven't done any prep work - in other words, it's an afterthought. And if it's an afterthought, then you'll get the results of an afterthought which sometimes are unreliable. The more prep work you do, a composite can almost be perfectly seamless and come together in just minutes vs. hours sitting at the computer trying to fake reality.

I'd use it for landscapes and birds/wildlife. Don't get me wrong, the A1 is amazing. Best camera I've ever used. But at the same time it's a little pricey and I love that a7r5 looks like it has amazing auto focus, and the megapixels too. When I shoot landscapes I don't find myself cropping in that much. But with wildlife, I find I often crop away half of the photo since we can't always get close enough. So I think great AF combined with great crop-ability will make the a7r5 really useful.

That was great Caroline. You mentioned photographing cars and races and I think it’s really going to shine there. I’m dying to test it out with some birds. The a1 is so good, so it’s got big shoes to fill 🙂 Thanks for sharing!

I’m a sunrise fan. Like you, not a huge fan of getting up early, but I always enjoy the quiet of a sunrise. Many places get more crowded at sunset. When I look through my favorite photos, more of them are at sunrise than sunset, but I have no idea if it’s any better or worse.

Love that photo! I do it sometimes when I have a great photo of wildlife with a bad background. It’s actually a lot of fun and I find people love the technique whenever I show it. It’s great for landscapes too. It gives it a mix between photographic and artistic quality and definitely looks great when printed.

Great article. Fall is probably my favorite time for landscapes. I really liked your third shot where fall and winter mix. Those are some of my favorites. Here's one of my personal favorites.

So what's everyone's favorite wildlife lens. Not necessarily brand, but I'm curious to see if people are more of a "the closer I get the better" or prefer something more in the 70-200mm range? Of course it depends on the wildlife too but, for me, I'd say I rarely ever regret having my longest lens on possible. I've tried the 100-400mm, and the 70-200mm, but I keep going back to the 200-600mm and when I look at my metadata almost all of my photos are around 600mm. Anyone else with similar experiences? Thanks!

Honestly, the need for print sharpening is less and less these days. Images are so sharp right out of the camera there is little need. I honestly don't sharpen my photos in most cases. I shoot a lot of wildlife, and run Topaz noise reduction on them, which cleans up the noise and does a nice job of adding a little sharpening after too. Glad to see I'm not alone. But what's funny is that sharpening is ALL anyone asks me about. I've always thought if it's sharp out of the camera it will always look sharp. And if it's not sharp out of the camera, there's nothing you can do to make it look sharp! 🙂

I could definitely see the benefits and I thought I would use it a lot more. I don't photograph people though, so wildlife is the only thing I'd use it for and the electronic shutter sound is actually pretty subdued. So I stopped using silent shutter mostly because I filled up my cards too fast. I need that audible sound to let me know how much I'm shooting.

Love how you shoot through the trees like that. It's very environmental which isn't something you often see. Nice!

I'm usually of the mindset that "if it makes me say wow, I don't care how it was done". I think of it as there is no definition of photography that states "a photograph is only a photograph if it was captured in one frame... in the camera... with no manipulation".

Love it David! The second one especially resonates with me: "Be busy. Seek and find a way to do what it is you want to do. Identify what that thing is and do it. Don’t stand around too long having conversations about it. Do it. Refine it. Do it more. Try it a different way. Keep at it until you break through to the next level. Don’t talk or think yourself out of doing it. Put one foot in front of the other and let it happen organically." I think we all see in this industry, especially when teaching, that people talk more than they do. We've all see the people in forums that probably know SOO MUCH about technology, the camera, and details. But all they do is talk about it. They don't actually do the important thing which is get out there and shoot. I like to tell people that take my courses that "perfection leads to procrastination". Get out there and do it... fail... do it again and repeat. You'll get way better much faster than talking and reading about it.

For me, hands down, without a doubt... Norway. I felt like I was looking at a post card around every corner. That said, I haven't been to that many places, so Norway sticks out. I'm sure New Zealand (from what I see) would rank up there too for me.

I've always heard people say the same thing about colors in C1. For me, color is so relative and subjective that I can't see a difference. I mean, I've never felt like I can't get the color to look the way I want in LR and honestly color isn't even something I edit for. Nearly everything I do is more tonal based. But everyone sees a photo different so I totally get it. It's just a feature that never resonated with me because I've never looked at my photos and thought "The color is so off" and I've never looked at a C1 photo and thought "Wow... those colors are amazing!". But I think most C1 users would definitely cite color as the defining reason they use it.

With more and more software editing apps out there I was wondering what everyone's raw editor of choice is? For me, for $9.99 a month and the great updates Adobe has been doing over the last couple of years I use Lightroom. Plus, while I may not use Photoshop a lot, I do use it on just about every photo (even if it's only 60 seconds to remove a distraction, branch, or spot from my wildlife photos). With that, it makes sense to stay in the Adobe family because I get both. Curious to see what everyone else uses?

Hey Caroline! 🙂 If I’m printing I usually bring the photo in to Photoshop and just apply another round of Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen (both are pretty close) to the photo so it visibly looks over sharpened on screen. That usually products a really great looking print, but not something I’d share online, because it usually has a few halos and sharpening artifacts (that will get smoothed out in the print). But you and Tony are right. The photos are so sharp these days that they don’t require the sharpening we used to need. If it’s sharp coming out of the camera, you could do nothing and the print would still look great. And if it’s not sharp coming out of the camera, I don’t think any sharpening tool will make it look sharp (and realistic).

On a related note to the blower, I learned from the last Sony Kando cleaning technicians not to do something I used to do. I used to hold the camera up with the sensor facing down and blow in to it. I don’t recall why, but they actually said just lay it on the table and use the blower at an angle across it. Does it make a difference? I have no idea, but I thought it was interesting that they told me not to do it the way I always was. And while I have tried cleaning the sensor a few times on my own, I never fully trust myself so I try to wait until I have an opportunity to have a cleaning by the pros.

I had a love/hate relationship with it. Having a business that sells courses and presets, having a presence and running ads on social is a must. Facebook and IG ads account for a large part of my income and they do work. Things have gotten better and worse at the same time. 10 years ago, you had to have a following to succeed in social media. So if you didn’t have the numbers, your posts didn’t get seen. Now, you can pay to play. It doesn’t matter how many FB or IG followers I have. If I pay, my posts will get seen and organic reach is way down. Is that better or worse? Not sure, but probably a little bit of both because people who may not have something great to share, get seen because they pay. However, personally I can’t stand what it’s turned in to. For me, seeing the same photo over and over again on IG has caused me to not want to go to places that I used to want to go to. They no longer have the allure they used to. Twitter is just people politically fighting with each other and complaining about things. I feel for my kids because all they see on social media is the highlight reel of everyone’s life and we all know it’s not like that. Anyway, so there’s a little bit of professional and personal mixing in. For me, I’ll continue to run ads for the business and post the bare minimum of content I have to personally. If certain aspects of my business didn’t require me to post something, I’d probably just delete the apps 🙂