New Camera Learning Curve

Back a few weeks ago, I wrote about a Black Friday Sale that I couldn't pass up.  A camera I have had my eye on for a few years was finally in my price range as a result of this sale (used, not new) so I jumped on purchasing it.  I happened to luck out because I got a much newer camera than I thought I was getting and it was at a much lower price than the current used rate.  In the end, it was about one-third the price of a new one.

Any new camera requires a bit of a learning curve but I didn't expect the learning curve for this new camera to be as steep as I have been experiencing.  This new camera is a much newer and updated version of my primary camera that I've been using for the past ten years (Sony a7) so I figured this transition would be fairly simple.  It hasn't been all that simple. It hasn't been a terrible experience but it has been more of a transition than I expected with some unexpected difficulties.

First, I was sorely disappointed in Sony for dropping some features I had used fairly often.  Also, I don't know how to describe this accurately but this new version of the a7 is missing some character that the original a7 exuded so this has been a bit of a disappointment too.  I was always excited to use my a7 but this new, better version seems to have lost whatever it is that gets me excited to shoot photos.  It just seems to be missing some of its original character.

This new camera has a larger and more adaptable menu system as well as more features but all of that was pretty easy to learn so, although I expected some difficulty here, I had no problems with this aspect of the new camera.  I'm finding that it is more difficult getting very crisp images which is a problem I never had with my original a7!

I think there are two things at work here causing my less-than-crisp results thus far.  

First, this new camera has a far higher resolution and that is causing some growing pains for me.  Very high resolutions are more easily affected by lens deficiencies and even negatively impacted by a little bit of motion.  As of right now, my biggest and most obvious obstacle seems to be motion blurring when shooting photos of the grandchildren.  

After shooting Christmas photos of the grandkids running around the living room while opening Christmas presents, I think maybe the kids sometimes move in one direction while my hand might move in a different direction.  Then the image stabilization moves the sensor to compensate for my hand moving but the child is moving in a different direction so that movement is now exaggerated.  The result is some slight motion blurring.  

This theory is related to the new in-camera image stabilization but my original a7 had no image stabilization.  I'm thinking that this in-camera image stabilization isn't playing well with objects that move quickly (like grandchildren) especially if my hand moves in the opposite direction.  The next time I'm shooting photos of the grandchildren, I think I need to turn off the image stabilization and see how that goes.  As I said, I think the correction for my hand shaking a bit is making the grandkid's movement more exaggerated.  I'm thinking that turning off image stabilization when shooting fast moving kids would likely resolve this problem.  I was already shooting with a shutter speed of 1/160th second with a 35mm lens so that should have been fast enough unless the image stabilization was working against me.

I don't know what it is but there is still something I feel is lacking in this new a7rIII camera body.  Some sort of character or a "feel" I get from the a7 is missing in this newer a7rIII model.  Maybe I expected more?  Maybe something is different?  Maybe it simply lost its classic look and slightly smaller form factor.  I don't know what it is exactly (not yet, anyway), but I'm not all that excited to be shooting with this new camera which I find to be very odd.  

Don't get me wrong...  there are features of this camera that made it an almost necessary purchase.  First, I needed the higher resolution for shooting in APS-C crop mode.  Next, I needed the far improved speed of this camera making it more useful for capturing the grandchildren playing sports.  The autofocus is significantly improved too.  My original a7 was rather slow and small in all of these factors.

Other photographers seem to really like this new Back-Side Illuminated (BSI) sensor but I'm not liking it all that much.  The images seem flatter, noisier, less contrasty, and simply a bit bland...  they look more like Canon images and I'm no fan of Canon images.  They are not identical to Canon images but they remind me of Canon images.  Also playing into this is probably the new color rendition of this new camera.  The color this new camera produces is slightly different than the original a7.  One thing is certain though...  I am no fan of this BSI sensor.  I use these BSI sensors for astrophotography so I have some experience with them and I don't like them for astrophotography either.  

On the positive side, I found a nice Rosewood base plate for this new camera.  It is visible in the photo above.  I also purchased an Arca-Swiss base plate for use on a tripod.  

I'm sure the advantages of this new camera will grow on me but there is a bit of a learning curve and some acceptance needed on my part for some of the changes, differences and form factor.

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On a sidenote...  I haven't posted much recently because I have been quite sick.  We had to go to Urgent Care a few days ago and I'm now on an antibiotic that isn't particularly agreeing with me.  I feel like crap and I'm exhausted too.  My throat is killing me and my sinuses inflamed with an acute infection and still bothering me enough to ruin my day.  

Hopefully this will pass in the coming days since I am on an antibiotic.  This illness started before our Saratoga trip which was the weekend before Christmas so this is already lingering longer than I would prefer.  And, it is not the least bit pleasant as it affects my systemic mastocytosis too.

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UPDATE:  I shot a few more photos with various lenses while sitting on the couch this afternoon.  I shot a few photos using both manual focus lenses and autofocus lenses...  with image stabilization turned on as well as turned off...  all the photos were sharp but I should note that all my subjects were static unlike when I shoot photos of the grandchildren especially when they are excited.  So, I'm left thinking that fast moving children and this particular in-camera stabilization doesn't work too well together.  

Hmmm....  I don't think the lens I was using on Christmas to shoot photos of the grandchildren had lens-based optical stabilization but maybe it did and the combination of the lens stabilization, in-camera stabilization and fast moving children was the problem.  Hmmm...  now I should look into that.  I don't think the lens I was using has optical stabilization though.  If not, then there is nothing else to test.  I'll just turn off stabilization whenever shooting photos of the grandchildren, sport, or wildlife.