Sony Alpha A7r with Nikkor 14-24mm sample image by Cameralabs, on Flickr
Here's the sound desk and stage at The Ryman Theater in Nashville, famous for hosting The Grand Ole Opry back in the day - and today once more over Winter. I was lucky enough to enjoy a tour of the building followed by a concert with Sony last week as part of their event to launch the full-frame mirrorless Alpha A7 and A7r.
Knowing I'd get to play with these cameras for the best part of a week in some interesting locations really got my testing juices flowing. I knew I'd want to compare the quality of the A7 and A7r against the full-frame leaders from Canon and Nikon, the EOS 5D Mark III and D800e, but to also see how well third party lenses from both companies could work on the Alphas via an adapter. Indeed the combination I wanted to test most of all was the legendary Nikkor 14-24mm ultra-wide zoom on the 36 Megapixel Alpha A7r. So I put a call into the lovely people at +BorrowLenses.com to rent a 5D3 and D800e body along with the EF 24-70mm f2.8 and Nikkor 14-24mm and some appropriate adapters.
Fast forward and there I am in The Ryman Theater with this amazing view from the back looking over the sound desk. This was an ultra wide opportunity calling out to me, so I fitted the 14-24mm to the A7r using the Novoflex adapter. This turns the lens into an entirely manual experience for both exposure and focus, but luckily there's a few things you can do to make life easier.
The Novoflex adapter has a ring control which adjusts the aperture in Nikkor lenses, so I turned it until I knew the lens was wide-open at f2.8. I then balanced the shutter speed in manual at 80 ISO until the metering read 0EV. After that I knew if I turned the control ring until the metering read -1EV, -2EV and so on, then it would roughly correspond to an aperture of f4, f5.6 and again so on. I turned the control to -3EV corresponding to an aperture of f8 then rebalanced the exposure so the metering read 0EV.
Next up came the focus. I used a combination of focus peaking and magnified assistance to get the focus almost perfect, but after a couple of slightly soft images, I essentially focus-bracketed by hand until I got a result that was pretty sharp. It was a tough ask though as the front of the desk was only a couple of feet away compared to effectively infinity for the stage.
It sounds complex, but even on this first attempt it was quicker and easier than I thought. Indeed I'd be perfectly happy operating like this for tripod based work. I'm also impressed by the image quality, and if you'd like to pixel-peep the original file, you can find it on my A7r sample images page at the link below.
This proves to me the A7r - and the A7 - are perfectly happy working with some amazing lenses from third parties, which makes the gaps in the current catalogue less of an issue, especially if you're moving from an existing system. Indeed the more I think about the A7 and A7r, their key benefit is their ability to use third party lenses via adapters. Yes, I know this has been possible for ages with just about any mirrorless camera, but the key difference is the A7 and A7r are full-frame, so those ultra wide options suddenly act the way they should on their native bodies.
Exciting times!
