Dream Camera? - Sony A7R

First of all, apologies for not writing anything for the passed few months as I am getting lazier and lazier everyday in the Land of Smile :P I did had some drafts but later just dumped them as it's just my usual ramblings on our dear Singapore gahment.  Think I just get tired on my own complains and just let it be for the moment.  Maybe during election time I will be more active again on that department.  Haha

Enough about meself.  This post is about another camera (Yes, camera again... booorrrinng) that I recently accquired while I was back in Singapore.  The new Full -frame (35mm) Sony Alpha 7 R.   I got it at a special price from James of Lobangking.com.

The camera was released in late 2013 and I knew I would replacing it with my Nex-7.  I want Full Frame.  Period.  I am so used to taking film and getting the FOV of a true 35mm lens while I am shooting so it was a no brainer.  My initial choice was the normal 7 version.  Not the R version as I think 24Mp should be more than enough for me.  But when I learnt about the price of A7R that I would be paying for.  I jumped for it.  36MP is nothing much but NO AA filter.  That I am interested.

I have worked with digital medium format files before and all of them do not have an AA filter on their sensors.  The files are sharp and crisp and very very malleable for post processing.  My conclusion comes to the same after shooting with my A7R  for a month.  It's image quality is good,  very very close and to me personally, surpassed MF film in resolutions and details.  Some may argue that MF film can resolve better if I use drum scan.  Maybe?  But I have no luxuries of drum scanning in Thailand so I guess for me, this little camera is an ultimate landscape camera for me.  For shooting portraits of my family, it's a bit sharp and I need to reduce the sharpness in LR before printing them.  All the pores and scars can come out especially if I used the 135mm Sonnar.

There are some nitpicks of course.  Battery life sucks,  Loud thunderous shutter.  These I can live with as I am not that trigger happy and I have enough spare batteries around.  Shutter is not a major concern, I am used to loud mirror slaps of my Hassy last time and I don't really shoot in quiet places.  The major dislike is there is no in built image stabalizer (AS) like the Olympus and the old Alpha DSLR used to have.  I am so used to AS on my a900 so I found a lot of shaky shots on my A7R.  Still usable but it just could be better.

Dream camera?  Not really but quite close ... almost there.. :)